I am pretty sure what people want most is to be happy. No, change that, I’m POSITIVE what most people want is to be happy. No, let me try again; Positively Speaking, what everyone wants most in this world is to be happy. The problem is; we don’t know why we’re not!
For the longest time, I had things “bass- akward”! I was always looking for “things”, and “circumstances”, to bring me my happiness: “As soon as I meet the right women, I’ll be happy”! Then,” as soon as we buy the right house”, I’ll be happy! And, “If only I could lose 20 pounds”, I’ll be happy. But acquiring the things, and achieving the circumstances, only yielded the need for more things and greater circumstances to bring me to the much elusive state of happiness I was searching for.
Than I learned something quiet startling! Being happy is a choice! I can choose at any time to be happy. I also learned that most of what appears in my life is a result of choices I have made. I learned that we attract to our lives conditions that are related to how we think, and feel. This is “The Law of Attraction”. This is a universal truth.
If I become grateful for the things I now take for granted, and change the way I look at life, I can be happy without any conditions being met. This next part is a killer: Once I decide that I am happy, all the things I thought I needed, will show up anyway. But, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch! The secret lies in how I look at life! “ What so ever you sow, so shall you reap”!
There are a number of shifts in perception I will need to incorporate into my attitude toward this experience I call life. The one I want to look at first is called JUDGMENT. There are many philosophers, and poets, prophets, and spiritual leaders that have taught us much about judgment. In Christian Scripture, the Teacher from Nazareth tells us: “Judge not, lest ye be judged”! Sounds like good advice. But why? So what if we judge, and are judged. Well, what I read into that quote is that by putting judgment on a thing, person, action, condition, way of life, or circumstance, we create a label that is now part of our perception of life. All negative labels create situations that will cause us to be uncomfortable, and rob us of our happiness. These labels establish conditions that we find ourselves in, like having the label stuck all over our bodies, we can’t get away from them. By deciding a thing is “bad”, or “wrong”, or even just “unacceptable”, we now have a condition that will cause us pain. We end up all caught up in this bad thing, that we determined was bad, and now our own determination is coming back to haunt us. The key word here was deciding! Should I decide that previously held notions of bad, wrong, undesirable, or uncomfortable, were nothing more than actions different than actions I would take, shrug them off, and go about my business, then there is no need for me to decide to be bothered by them.
The truth of the matter is that within every ac-tion, (act of creation), humans can experience, lies an opportunity to find love, peace, and compassion hidden somewhere within it. The same is true for natural disasters, crimes, and acts of violence. For with each incident that we label as bad, there lies tremendous opportunity for compassion, healing, charity, forgiveness, and love. So, instead of looking at the tragedy as good, or bad, we could just look at as part of life, and focused on all the opportunity we have to reach out to those in need. For every story of grief and pain, there is two stories of courage and compassion. For every situation of loss, there is 10 demonstrations of unselfish giving. The old
adage of the glass being half empty, or half full is not just an inspiring little quote, it is one of life’s secrets to happiness.
There is a nation wide fitness center that claims to have a “Judgment Free Zone”. I think it is an advertising tool to allow us to feel comfortable utilizing their establishment in spite of the fact that we may not already be “buff”. After all, if we were “buff” we wouldn’t really need them. Ploy or not, they may have started something! That is where I want to be, right in the middle of a “Judgment Free Zone”. Wouldn’t it be great if we all created one of those! Let’s give it a try. The zone of my influence, that is the area I come in contact with, will be a “Judgment Free Zone”. I am going to try for a few weeks, and see if that can help me decide to be happy. Won’t you join me? All you need do, is suspend your opinion of right, wrong, good, bad, acceptable , and unacceptable, realize that anything you encounter that does not seem to be aligned with your idea of spreading joy, as simply “ another way”, than look for an opportunity to bring joy to it. I think that will bring about some changes. No, wait, I know that will make things better. Hold on now, I AM POSITIVE that you will find more happiness this way.
We may not change the world with this, but I am POSITIVE, it won’t hurt anything.
POSITIVLEY SPEAKING, it’s worth a try.
in alignment and then I will be happy. But; there is nothing “OUT THERE”. we look to outside conditions to bring us what we need, forgetting that the conditions we see “OUT THERE” came from within us.
When we look to the external reality all around us, we must cease from expecting it to SAVE us, and realize that we are seeing what we have put there. Looking within for those situations that have restricted our ability to live in joy and changing how we view life, will then put an entirely different picture outside the window of our creation.
Happiness is not the result of getting everything you want in life; IT IS THE BIRTHPLACE OF IT!
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