What does it take to be happy? In fact, how do we define happiness? The definitions are possibly as many and as varied as there people on this beautiful planet. But I think it may first be easier to take a look at what happiness is not.
We tend to hang on to the security that comes with our familiar but negative programming and beliefs. But what would happen if we decided to ditch this negative programming and become someone very different from who we have been up till now? For goodness sake, why don't we simply decide to be happy? Just BE happy!
Now I realize this sounds a very straight forward proposition, but is it? Decide to be happy and leave the familiarity and therefore comfort of my sadness, my fears, my regrets and even my relationships? This truly does present a challenge. I am discovering there is a price tag on happiness. Am I willing to pay that price? Is the prize worth the effort?
The effort is a challenge indeed. I must change my beliefs about who I am and how I think. I know I must do this because otherwise I would already be living in a permanent state of happiness. Something has to change, and that is me. Do I want to live in a state of joy and love and ultimately of happiness? Of course the answer is a resounding affirmative: Yes!
So I have decided that I am willing to do what it takes to live at this level of inner and outer happiness. My appreciation and love for myself will become my bedrock of happiness.
I begin to feel joy and peace evolve and emerge from deep within me. I feel the pulse and glow of joy building up inside my mind, my heart and my body. In fact I ask my body to be my barometer for happiness. Though this happiness is first and above all a state of being and a perception of mind, my body can decode happiness into physicality through my emotions and body feelings.
I no longer focus on what is not working in my life. I am seeing rather, all the good times. Loving feelings arise; the joyful, amusing and fun times flood my memory as I invite happiness in. I find I am standing straight and tall. My breathing deepens and steadies. The muscles in my face are relaxed and, looking in the mirror, I see a smile grinning back at me. My eyes are dancing, expressing silently, the joy of my thoughts and my gratitude for all the good things in my life.
Just by relaxing into allowing tensions to release and flow out of my thoughts and my heart, my whole being becomes lighter; literally. I feel the glow of new life energy filling my mind and heart and overflowing vitality into my body. Who would have thought it was this easy to let go of the tensions and allow happiness in?
My feelings seem to tell me I am now closer to who I really AM than ever before. I discover within, a serenity that is beyond words. Can serenity, peace, and allowing myself to be as I am, actually place me on the path to happiness?
They must, because my smile still reflects my inner awareness of being my real self: I am love and this love translates as happiness. Every part of me is alive with an essence of love/joy that has no end. It reaches up into infinity. I reach up into infinity. There is no end to who I am; no end to my potential for love and happiness.
I realize that tomorrow I may begin to forget my expanded feelings of happiness. But I know without a shadow of doubt, that having experienced an expansion of love joy deep within my mind and heart, I will never shrink back to my old negative self. Happiness has birthed in me and I will never be the same again. I have been touched by love, and love transforms.
I choose to be happy. I renew this choice every morning; during the day, before I close my eyes in sleep. I say thank you for the goodness and joy in my life. I fall asleep with a smile in my heart and confident of another even happier day tomorrow. I choose happiness as my way of being. I am happy. I am love. Yes, it is worth the effort: very, very much so.
