It seems that happiness has always been one of the fundamental pursuits of humankind. Our founding fathers thought that this pursuit was as important as #life and liberty, and they included it among the tenets we based our war of independence on.

The problem is, they got it wrong.

Happiness—like success—is not a goal to be pursued. It is not the prize at the end of the journey, but is rather a state of mind, and can be found in the journey itself. In your #life, you can set out on the road to adventure, to wealth, to fame . . . and as you travel this path you can, and will, be as happy or as miserable as you choose to be.

Many people are so caught up in trying to get to a place where they will be happy, that they fail to see this basic truth. Happiness is available to all of us, at any time, if we truly want to be happy.

But don’t we ALL want to be happy?

Hmmm . . . that may just be the ultimate question. I sometimes think that a lot of people either feel guilty for being happy, or they are so busy looking for a magic formula that they forget this one simple fact:

HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE.

I’m not the smartest guy I know, but I do know this:

The only thing in #life that you have complete control over is how you respond to what happens around you.

Read that again . . . it’s THAT important.

How you respond defines you, and sets the foundations for everything else that follows each event in your #life. You cannot control your spouse, your children, the stock market, the fall TV lineup or the weather, but you CAN control how you respond to any and all of these things.

Do I get upset when things don’t go my way? Sure—but I don’t let that emotion dictate my response. After all, even though my team lost, next week there will be another game (and hopefully those blind ref’s will make the calls RIGHT), the spinach will wash out of the baby’s hair, and that bad lasagna I ate, well, like all the other bad things . . . ”This too shall pass.”

Happiness is NOT a lack of sorrow

I’ve heard it said that courage is not a lack of fear, but how you react when you are afraid. In much the same way, happiness does not mean you don’t have sorrow, grief, anguish, and pain in your #life. #life is not fair, and we all experience a lot of pain and heartache along the way—but again, we can ALWAYS choose how we respond to the negative events in our lives.

Does being happy mean that I don’t hurt and cry? No . . . It simply means that even though I hurt, I choose to focus on the good. As I cry the tears of sorrow, I try my best to smile; after all, the only people who don’t feel pain are those who feel nothing at all.

When my grief for loved ones lost, or my sorrow over bad decisions I’ve made, lies heavy on my heart and mind, I let myself cry—for there is no better pain reliever known to man than tears. Once my tears have washed away a little of the harder edges of my pain, I choose to smile, for #life is far too short to spend it being unhappy. We all have a finite and limited number of minutes to spend with our loved ones, and I choose to keep the percentage of my time spent negative, as small as possible.

I may not be pleased with some of the things that have happened to me in my #life, nor with all of the choices I’ve made—but I prefer to respond to these negatives with a positive outlook. Far too many people walk around in a gloomy mood, wearing either sad ‘feel-sorry-for-me’ expressions, or with anger boiling just beneath the surface of their faces, and subsequently, their hearts. I decided long ago, that I would rather get better, than be bitter.

A Challenge

The next time you are upset, or angry, or scared, or sad, I challenge you to try this little experiment. Find someplace private, and look into a mirror. Now make yourself smile. As hard as it may be, really make yourself smile into a mirror . . . I will guarantee that you cannot remain negative while smiling at yourself, for more than about 5 minutes, before the sheer silliness of your expression makes that smile become real.

Once you realize that happiness is truly a gift that only you can give yourself, you will be well on your way to living a much happier #life. The next step towards fulfillment comes when you learn that smiles are as infectious as yawns, and that you’re happiness can go a long way towards helping others allow themselves to be happy too.

Smiling at others feeds one of the basic emotional hungers we all have. Nothing will improve your ability to experience happiness more than making a conscious choice to spread happiness to as many people as you can, simply by smiling at them.

In the end, the amount of love, laughter and happiness that you have in your #life, is only determined by the amount you let yourself experience, and that choice is yours and yours alone to make. Choose to be happy, and then let it happen, every day, as often as you can. You might just be amazed at the differences you will see in everyone around you. #quote #poem #happiness