When I was a child, my parents would ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and I would reply “Happy!” Somewhere I have always known that if I was happy, everything else in my life would work.

However, for many of us happiness seems just out of reach, like a place we will all ‘get to’ one day when certain conditions are met: e.g. maybe when we find the perfect relationship, when we’re earning a certain amount of money, or when we’ve reached our ideal body shape. Ironically, seeing happiness as a destination is the very thing that keeps it so elusive.

A New Perspective on Happiness

Your point of view creates your reality, reality does not create your point of view. This is a vital element in finding your happy and creating your life. Being happy comes first: it’s the catalyst for creating the life you truly desire, and accessing all of the experiences, people, possessions and situations you’d like to have in your life. What if all it takes to be happy, is to alter your perspective? Which bring us to…

4 Ways to Choose Happiness Today

1. What lights you up? Find out what lights you up and do it daily. Hang out in nature, visit that friend who you feel great around, go window shopping, create, watch your favorite movie. Treat yourself, take a day trip somewhere you love, or buy a donut and eat it in the sun. A lot of us lose touch with what makes us happy over the years. If that’s you, ask yourself: What is it that makes me happy, that I’ve never acknowledged?
2. What if you lived every day as a celebration? Reach into your wardrobe and wear that special dress or shirt you’re saving for the perfect occasion. Prepare that meal you love to cook for guests — just for you. And eat it on the dinnerware you’re saving for Christmas. If not now, when?
3. Move your body. There’s a reason this is recommended by doctors the world over — physical exercise releases endorphins, giving you that beautiful, natural sense of happiness that comes with a side helping of vitality. Put your favourite playlist on and move your body! And, if you’re happy, could you let your face know it? If you don’t, your body never knows it’s actually happy! Just saying!
4. Say this out loud: All of life comes to me with ease, and joy and glory. Say it ten times. In fact, say it ten times every morning, and every evening. It will invite ease and joy and an exuberance of living into your whole life, the good the bad and the ugly. Who doesn’t want that?

Happiness is actually your natural state. Once you start accessing more of it, a momentum is set in motion, and more and more will show up with ease. If you make the choice to be happy today, what could your life be like this time next year? What about five years, or ten?

Would you like to find out?

Here’s to your happy!

Dain

P.S. Find the full article on Pick The Brain.

P.S.S. And for even more tools for being you, being happy, and so much more, please check out my class Being You, Awakening the Sleeping Giant Within replay. Truly, what else is possible for a life and living filled with happiness?