Author: Susan Minarik

We live in stressful times, in a stressful, conflicted world. But the most significant part of that reality is contained in the first two words you just read—“We live.”

The quality of our lives, although impacted by external events, isn’t determined by them. How much goodness, and beauty, and truth we experience in our lives depends on how open we are to recognizing them and to creating them in our individual lives.

Happiness opens us to seeing broader vistas. But it’s not only we ourselves who are enriched by allowing more happiness into our lives. Happiness is contagious.

Happiness radiates out from us and affects everyone we encounter. It wakes people up. It encourages them. It makes them feel connected and validated.

Each person who finds happiness in life moves the whole world in a more positive direction.

Over the past nine weeks, we visited each of the nine choices that happy people make in their lives. Looking at them together, we can see that each of the choices supports and builds the others. 

What all nine choices have in common, is that all of them are rooted in the awareness that the choice is ours to make.

1. The first one is intention, a commitment to allow more authentic happiness into your life. This is the central choice around which all the others revolve.

Happy people begin their days by recalling their intention to find the juice in every situation the day brings. They imagine their plans unfolding well and benefiting everyone concerned. They expect happy outcomes.

2. The second choice, accountability, is a commitment happy people make to choose from all the viewpoints and alternatives available throughout the day the ones that are most in harmony with their genuine needs and desires.

In order to build more happiness into their lives, happy people make a choice to recognize for themselves what brings them joy, or pleasure, or satisfaction, or a feeling of well-being and peace.

3. Happy people work at noticing and naming for themselves what enriches them. Identifying the kinds of things that uplift you lets you know where to invest your energy and time.

4. The fourth choice, centrality, is a choice to make the things that enrich you central to your life.

You commit to giving those things priority over activities that hold lesser value for you. You learn to say no to the things that don’t matter in order to say yes to your honest desires.

5. Recasting is the choice to find new paths to happiness when your life is struck by misfortune. It’s remembering that you and you alone are accountable for your happiness. You determine to recast your attention toward positive possibilities regardless of the setbacks that life sometimes brings.

6. Happy people keep their options open. They look for alternative ways to create a sense of well-being or to achieve an important end when their original plans are blocked. They adopt the attitude that when there’s a will, there’s a way. They look for opportunities, or create them.

7. Happy people choose appreciation as a primary orientation toward life. They actively look for, and express, things to appreciate in their circumstances and in others—even those times or people who seem difficult or distasteful.

They look for qualities to appreciate in the current moment, in their surroundings, in their activities, in the company at hand.

8. Because they’re appreciative of the people, things, and events in their lives, happy people are giving. They share their talents and strengths, their wisdom and knowledge, their time, energy, goods, and money freely, with a sense of gladness, from the core of happiness in their hearts.

9. Finally, happy people unfailingly choose truthfulness as a fundamental guiding force in their lives. Knowing that truthfulness is the foundation for genuine intimacy with others—as well as for genuine personal authenticity—they choose to be honest and to live with integrity.

Few of us make all of these choices consistently. We all have our off days, our stretches of darkness. But as with all ways of being, we get better at what we practice. Practicing the choices for happiness allows them to come more and more freely and naturally all the time.

The key is being honest with yourself about wanting greater ease and contentment in your life and then making a real commitment to allow it. That commitment means you remind yourself every day that you are by nature happy, that you intend to let happiness play a central part in your life from now on.

Then you make the choices that foster happiness. For your own sake, and because your happiness makes the world a better place.

Wishing you a week of happy choices. Beginning right here, right now.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Pexels from Pixabay}

Well, here we are at the final, and in many ways, most fundamental choice that happy people universally make: the commitment to be truthful with themselves.

They’re truthful with others, too, of course. But happiness springs from their choice to be honest with themselves—about what they truly think, and feel, and need, and want, and value ,and believe.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. It takes courage and a willingness to look at the difference between what you’re pretending and what is genuinely real for you.

Think about an area of your life where you’re experiencing some difficulty. Then try this exercise: Say to yourself, “I’m pretending that . . .” and describe how you’re not being authentic. Then say, “But the truth is . . .” and see if you can dig down to a new clarity.

We fall into pretending for a lot of reasons. We buy into our stories or the stories our family or culture tells.

We obey programmed “shoulds.” We give in to fears of embarrassment, shame, disapproval, rejection and judgment.

We assume that in order to be a good person we have to put the needs of disadvantaged others above our own.

We tell ourselves that we’re being kind or gracious by holding back on our own desires. In reality, when we’re truthful about our own needs and desires, we empower others to be truthful, too, and that gives us a greater chance for meeting everyone’s needs.

Even difficult truths can be spoken with tact and consideration. And even when we don’t say them perfectly, we’re affirming the importance of honesty in our relationships when we try.

Honesty, especially with yourself, is the bedrock foundation of happiness, and the only path to genuine intimacy with others. It’s the quality that provides you with the third “C” of happiness—centeredness—because the voice at your center is the voice of your truth.

You can’t know who you really are without listening for that truth. Self-honesty is the very core of authenticity.

Lack of honesty leads to tension, distancing from others, lack of motivation, burnout, fatigue, even illness.

Without truth, trust can’t exist. You can’t rely on your own judgment when you’re not honest with yourself about what you value, what you feel and think, what matters to you. And others can’t rely on you either.

But know what’s true for you and you become a pillar of strength and trustworthiness both to yourself and others. You know where you stand, and so does everyone else. You can be counted on; you’re reliable.

Honesty is highly attractive to others. More than that, you’ll feel an inner harmony that nothing but the truth can give you.

We grow as we experience life, of course, and our truths can evolve or change over time.

 Happy people learn to pay continuous attention to their inner sense of truth to find new layers and new dimensions of it. What do I really believe? What do I genuinely want? What do I need? How do I really feel? Am I pretending?

These are the questions they ask, fearlessly listening for the answers, following truth’s light, and shining that light into the world.

Next week, we’ll put all nine choices for happiness together and see how they work as a synergistic whole.

Until then, I wish you fresh winds of honesty and a fascinating week.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Viktoriya Yu from Pixabay}