On Choosing Happiness

     Happiness by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Like many things in life, it is easier to give advice, then it is to follow-it. You can read an article like Neil Pasricha's 7 Science-Based Ways to be happy right now, and be like "Oh - I got it I see" the happiness equation is backward. I need to choose to be happy first.

..Any maybe it helps, for a while, you feel happy everything appears to be going great, and then one day out of the blue you read an email from your boss, and your face sags, or anger boils up inside you. Like a switch being flipped you go from feeling like a million bucks to feeling like you just won the 'worst employee of the year award'

So why does this happen? Zig Ziglar talk about changing our names, the idea that regardless of our present circumstances we can choose to be in the "Tate" family that is about helping others, thinking through our decisions and intentionally choosing the way we want to life our life.

It's great advice, it's IMPORTANT advice, and yet I can slip so easily into victim thinking, a poor me attitude, as easily as slipping into comfy pajamas before going to bed.

My "best me", is the me that thinks with a positive attitude that believes in my ability to share my ideas with others, that is confident, that is willing to create an environment that allows others to be the best version of themselves too.

..but doing so requires work, hard work, constant work, and it gets tiring, and slipping into anger, frustration, blaming others, blaming the world, is easy and comfortable.

Have you ever successfully encouraged someone in your life? Made a real impact, real positive change, only to come back a couple of years later only to find they have slipped back into their 'old habits' back to having the same troubles they told you about to begin with. Upset that you advice only seemed to work for the short term?

That's the problem with advice, it's easy to give but can be hard to live.

And when we fall off the bandwagon, because we are all human, we make mistakes, how do we find the strength to start over, to begin at step one all over again? Maybe we think "What's the point?" I'm just going to end up in this same dark place again anyway.

I don't have all the answers, I think this next time around, I will try to fill my life with like minded people, people who also want to intentionally live a life that matters, people like me who struggle with falling down, perhaps we can support each other to be the people we are truly meant to be, to love the people we are and to make the best of the situations we find ourselves in, and get back on the road to happiness and success...