Close your eyes and take a deep breath, slowly exhale. What’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Is it more than one thing or a big mess of clutter reminding you that you have a million things to do and taking time to breathe is causing you nothing but anxiety! Is reading this post making you feel guilty because you have things weighing so heavily on your mind that should have been taken care of yesterday. Do you find yourself wishing your life away – “I can’t wait until Friday when my project will be done and…”, “Next Monday, I’ll be able to…”, “If I can just get through this day…”
Living in the present is not for sissies. For most of us, tiptoeing through the past and daydreaming of the future seems to give us purpose, a reprieve from the everyday stresses of life and a way to find our happy place.
Being happy shouldn’t be a memory, something you conjure up from another time.
There is no shortage of books, videos, courses and even life coaches that proclaim they each have the secret to happiness. I’m going to reveal to you the secret, free of charge, in the hope that you can pass the secret on.
SPOLIER ALERT: I am about to reveal the true secret to being happy. If you want to stay unhappy, dejected, downtrodden, sad, or miserable, STOP READING NOW.
Being Happy is…simply a state of mind. It is an emotion, a feeling or sensation. It cannot be pursued or captured. It cannot be possessed, and it is does not come tucked into those amazing boots you’ve had your eye on or in the pocket of that spectacularly gorgeous guy who just started in accounting.
Emotions are part of who we are and they can either rule us or we can be the master of our own state of being and gain power over them. What’s the secret to being happy? You are, but it helps to have the right tools to achieve it.
Cultivate Your Sense of Humor – Your boyfriend just broke up with you, your vet bill is bigger than your paycheck and the receptionist at your office was just promoted over you. It’s time to grab your girlfriends for a night out so you can really understand the dark humor your situation provides. Challenges are a constant in life and some can be more difficult than others. Choose to look at them as potholes in the road of life and not as devastating tornadoes that just uprooted homes, trees, cars and animals in its wake. This too, shall pass and even in the most difficult of circumstances, try to find the ridiculously absurd humor. If you can’t find it immediately, simply laugh. Laughing conjures up your happy feeling; it’s like a call to a friend in the dark. Exercise: Find something to laugh about daily.
Love Yourself – Why is it so hard for women to love themselves? My theory is that somewhere along the spectrum of life, we are taught to think of others first. Poppycock! The greatest gift you can give yourself is to love everything you are, from that frizzy hair that requires extra attention in the morning, to your chunky toes, best hidden away from the public. Embrace the quirkiness of you and be your own BFF first. Exercise: Write down what you love about you and read it once in the morning and just before bed. People who love themselves are happy, because their best friend is always with them.
Work Out Your Mind – Working out is a constant process. Once you stop, those muscles you’ve toned will become soft again. Workouts are hard, require commitment and offer amazing benefits for your health and your self-esteem. Your mind is also a muscle and it requires mental workouts, if left to its own wanderlust, it might simply gobble up all the junk thoughts and become bloated and lazy. Commit to consume more positive thoughts, reinforce those thoughts in a mental workout by visualizing yourself happy, replacing negative thoughts with positive affirmations. Your emotions are beholden to the powerful mind. Do you spend more time obsessing about the negative, trying to overcome destructive thoughts until you find yourself entertaining them? The only way to diminish the negative is to replace it with a positive. Focus on the positive, imagine the positive and learn to workout your mind as aggressively as you work out your body. Exercise: Create a positive affirmation that you can use to extinguish negative thoughts, ie. “I will only entertain the positive.”
Be advised that even with a powerful, well-toned positive mind, challenges are inevitable. When this happens, revert back to #1. Laughter is the magic elixir that casts out negative goblins. Be happy.
Author Kathy Scott follow Kathy @1000girlfriend
Founder of “Me and My 1000 Girlfriends, That’s Who!, Kathy Scott writes about current events and women’s issues. She is a member of the “Women on the Move” BlogTalk Radio Show Round Table which airs every Wednesday evening at 7pm eastern. To learn more, visit MeandMy1000Girlfriends.com or follow on Twitter @1000Girlfriends
