Living Out Loud

The A-Z of Happiness: B is for...

Being happy now

If there were a journey towards happiness where would it begin?  In my opinion, it begins with a decision: to stop postponing being happy until your life circumstances are just how you want them.

 

If you believe that you'll be happy when you get a better job, a raise, buy your own home, get married, have kids, or whatever it is that you'd like in your life, (and apologies if this sounds harsh, but) you are labouring under a false illusion. 

 

When you achieve something that you've wanted for a while you will feel "happy".  However, it is a temporary happiness that will last just as long as it takes for you to adjust to your new circumstances.  And it never takes long before a new desire comes along to replace the old one. 

 

That is perfectly normal, and provides you with a drive to move forward in life.  But as long as your happiness is associated with having what you want in your life, it will always be a little out of your reach or will be something you experience fleetingly here and there.

 

Wanting your life to be perfect before you allow yourself to be happy is setting yourself up for failure.  This model requires your health, your love life, your relationships with family and friends, your work, your finances, your home environment and your social life to all be ticking along just the way you want them to be - and all at the same time!   And if anything is off, then you won't be happy.

 

Being happy now comes from accepting all of what is right now (refer back to A is for...), even if it's not perfect, and not allowing the imperfections to get you down.  It requires letting go of your idea of how things should be and making peace with how things are.

 

Being happy now also requires letting go of feelings of guilt, shame or regret related to the past.  You can't go back and change that.  You can only learn from the experiences and with that learning do better now.

 

The past is over and done with and there is no guarantee that the future will arrive.  Both exist merely as thoughts - either as memories or anticipations.  Neither is real.  The only thing that is real is the present moment.

 

Which leads to the conclusion, that if you want to be happy, you need to be happy now - no matter what your life looks like right now.  That is your challenge in life - if you wish to accept it....

Beliefs

"Men often become what they believe themselves to be.  If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it.  But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning."   ~  Mahatma Gandhi

Your beliefs rule your life! 

If you want to be happier, first and foremost you need to believe that it's possible.  If you don't believe you can be happy now, without things being different in your life first, then you won't be happy now. 

Whatever you believe to be true will be true for you.  The reason for this is that your mind will filter everything it encounters, allowing those ideas and experiences that support your beliefs to be noticed, and disregarding those that don't.  Therefore, day in and day out, your mind finds evidence to support your beliefs about life, further compounding your beliefs as being true.  That is both good and bad news!

This is bad news because most of our beliefs we carry unconsciously.  But it is good news too because once you're aware of this you can pay attention and - get this - change them!!!  Yay, how empowering is that!

Beliefs are merely thoughts that we think repeatedly.  However, because we hold our beliefs to be truths, we elevate their status as more than mere thoughts, and that's what makes them very powerful.  And of course they are truths (the evidence of our lives supports this), BUT they are only our personal truths.  They couldn't possibly be universal, because all of mankind differs in their personal sets of beliefs.

And if beliefs aren't universal truths, but merely thoughts that we give power to, then it must be possible to change our beliefs that don't support us to more empowering ones that do.  (Hooray!!!)

To change your beliefs, you must change your thoughts.  Repeatedly and continuosly.  Like most of the tools that will be discussed in this series, the concept is simple but its successful application will require lots of practice.  But on the plus side, practice does make perfect and you will reap the rewards : )

The first step is to identify what your unconscious limiting beliefs are.  (Leave the positive ones alone - if they serve you well, no need to change them)  This is fairly easy to do: look at your life.  Whatever you see is a reflection of your beliefs. 

What do you see that you don't like?  What might be the underlying beliefs?  What circumstances would you prefer, and what empowering beliefs would support you in achieving that?

Now write down those new empowering beliefs, and repeat them (out loud if you can, but silently works too) several times whenever you catch yourself thinking thoughts that don't support what you want.  Essentially, you'll be using affirmations (again, refer back to A is for ...) to try on your desired beliefs until they start to feel like your own, until they become as integrated into your way of being as the old ones used to be.

Practiced consciously and regularly, affirmations can help to shift limiting beliefs and install more empowering ones.  Sadly, this might not be enough.  You may need to enlist the help of a life coach or spiritual healer to help shift some of the more deeply ingrained beliefs that are holding you back.  But make a start yourself, and see how far you get. 

Whatever you do, do something about the beliefs that aren't aligned with how you really want to live your life.  Believing you can have what you want is absolutely essential to having it.

Believe you can be happy now, even if right now your life isn't perfect, and you are setting yourself up for success : )

 Doing your Best

In his guide to personal freedom, Don Miguel Ruez outlines Four Agreements which can have a profound effect on your life if practriced consistently.  One of them is "Do your best".

"Just do your best — in any circumstance in your life.  It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself.  And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment.  By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under.”

Doing your best will increase your happiness because you can't help but feel good about yourself when you know you've done a good job.  When you do less than your best, even if others are satisfied or impressed by your work, you don't have the same level of inner satisfaction.  When you secretly know that you could be doing so much more than you are doing, there's a big chance it's going to quietly eat away at you inside.

In doing your best you actively contribute to your own healthy sense of self-worth.  In a nutshell, you will respect yourself more.  You will value your own contribution and what's more, you will accept other's appreciation of your work - in knowing you deserve it, their respect and admiration will ring true to you and it will strengthen your own inner sense of respect.

Self respect and self esteem.  Inner states of being.  Just like happiness : )  They all go hand-in-hand. 

Doing your best can't help but lead to a happier you!

Feeling abundant = Being abundant

A Thought for the Week

"Feeling abundant surpasses the money in your bank account and transcends what others may think of you. Genuinely feeling abundant and successful is possible when you detach yourself from the things you desire and allow them to flow to you - and through you." ~ Wayne Dyer

 

"When you have too much month for your paycheck, then what you need to do is realize that there is abundance all around you, and focus on the abundance and not your lack, and as night follows day abundance will come to you." ~ Sidney Madwed
 

"Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things."  ~  Eric Butterworth 

Let go and let God

a Thought for the Week

"Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life." ~ Epictetus

"The road of life can only reveal itself as it is traveled; each turn in the road reveals a surprise. Man's future is hidden." ~ Unknown

"As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit." ~ Emmanuel Teney

"Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities."  ~  Deepak Chopra 

Make somebody else's day!

A Thought for the Week

"Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more." ~ H. Jackson Brown

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." ~ Buddha

"Unless we think of others and do something for them, we miss one of the greatest sources of happiness" ~ Ray L. Wilbur                                                                          Image by Le Petit Poulailler

 

"Consciously or unconsciously, everyone of us does render some service or another. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and it will make not only for our own happiness, but that of the world at large." ~ Mahatma Ghandi 

Advice from my future (and wiser) self

I've been inspired by Daphne's post at Joyful Days (and she in turn was inspired by Giovanna) to  write myself a letter from my older, wiser self.  A letter that will help the me in this here and now to live more joyfully in each here and now as it presents itself.  Here is is:

Dear Hilda,

Be patient with yourself.  Yes, you are a work in progress, but that is a process that will never be completed (at least not in this lifetime), so it doesn’t matter how long it takes.  There is no race or competition in life, we all get to where we’re going according to our own personal schedules.  All your life you will be evolving, even now I am still a “work in progress”. 

 Detach from all your worldly desires.  Yes all of them.  Each morning when you say the words “Thy will be done” add the words “not mine”.  You are currently afraid to do that. You are afraid to truly hand over control in case the Divine will is not aligned with your desires.  Hand them over and mean it – everything will be fine and you will have no regrets.

 

You have no idea how little you will come to care about the many things you obsess over now.  You have always aspired to “go with the flow”, yet you struggle too with the desire to control.  Control is an illusion and so is the concept of security or certainty.  Let it go.  Embrace uncertainty.  Enter each new day with a sense of curiosity as to what might unfold.

 

Yes it is true that you appreciate that life is more about the journey than the destination.  BUT you’re still just a little bit picky about what the destintation might be.  It’s ok to have preferences, but you need to be truly open to all possibilities.  Maybe the destination will be nowhere as exotic as you currently hope for, but as soon as you truly open yourself up to all eventualities and accept whatever shows up for you, you will experience more joy in the journey than you can even anticipate right now.  Trust me.  I am you, I have been through it.

 

The best thing you can do for yourself, now and always, is to remember every day the advice you offer so freely to others:  Live joyfully in the here and now – that is the only place where true happiness exists.

Always watching over you,

Love Hilda xx

This was a really nice exercise.  Why not do it for youself?  You will find yourself tapping into your innate wisdom that already exists.  You don't have to wait till you've experienced more in life to feel and trust that wisdom - just step into an imaginary time capsule and let it come forth!

How to make a difficult life decision

Last week I received an email from one of my ezine subscribers asking for advice on making a decision that might result in major upheaval and life changes.  Now as a trained life coach, I would never advise somebody to take one path or the other, or even try to influence them on what I think would be the most sensible path for them to take.  Instead of giving him my view of the pros and cons of either choice I outlined to him what I do when I have a difficult decision to make.

Photo by Joe Thorn

I believe that we all have all of the answers to all of our questions within us.  And so all we need to do is let them come to the surface.  But the more we think about what the best thing to do is, the harder it is for that inner knowledge to surface.  The reason for this is that we're engaging our logical minds to make the decision.  But the answer lies in a much deeper place than our logical minds can reach.

To make big life decisions, I tend to start off having a struggle with my logical mind, and then I get fed up of trying to satisfy all of its very demanding criteria.  At this point I turn it over to my Higher Self.  I have a very simple process for this:
 

1. I get clear about the outcome I want
2. I set the intention to just know what the right thing to do is
3. I let go of needing to know now, and patiently wait until I simply do know
4. When that Aha! feeling arrives, and I do just know what to do, I don't question it with logic.  I simply trust what feels right and I go with it. 

I find this to be an easy and stress-free way to deal with major choices.  Our intuition always knows what the best course of action is.  All we have to do is allow it to speak to us in its own time, and when it does trust it!  
 
It can be a scary thing to do though, to throw logic out of the window and just go with what feels right.  But I have yet to regret a decision made in this way.  ( But I have regretted plenty of decisions that satisfied my logical mind but were contrary to a little nagging intuitive nudge)

What about you?  Would you endorse this decision-making process?  What do you do when you're faced with a tough choice? 

Similar posts:

Learning to trust your intuition

Feelings versus Logic - Decisions, Decisions

Consciously choose your response

A Thought for the Week

"You can't always choose your circumstances, but you can always choose your response."  ~  Many, many very wise people!

 

"We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes." ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Photo by baskyes

 

"The one thing you can't take away form me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.  The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance."  ~  Viktor Frankl

 

"The more you bring your choices into the level of your conscious awareness, the more you will make those choices that are spontaneously correct - both for you and those around you."  ~  Deepak Chopra