How to be Happy

I am beginning to recover from my cold. It has not been fun. I have been spending most of my free time napping. Today I am on the computer tracking Mandy's progress across the country as she flies to see her grandparents on her own. We got to text message back and forth as she changed planes in Dallas and now she appears to be on the plane headed toward her grandparents. I am so nervous. She paid for this trip on her own. I couldn't be more proud.

I have been doing a lot of driving lately in my pretty new car. Listening to my free for three months XM radio. I have been listening to talk radio mostly and find it fascinating that most of these programs seem to revolve around the topic of happiness. Seems that Americans are unhappy and seeking advice to remedy their discontent.

The advice I have heard so far: meditate, seek your bliss, be more productive, have more sex, listen to your inner voice, and flirt more.

Here is my advice from one happy camper to you. Happiness is work, it isn't something that just happens, like some people are happy and some people are not, it only happens if you do the work. First you cannot be happy unless you feel safe. If you are in an abusive relationship or if you are fearful for your shelter, your food, your survival, unless you can change that you will not be happy.

Step one: people. The people you interact with on a daily basis are an important part of your happiness. You do have quite a bit of control on how that interaction goes. Smile, laugh, make eye contact, listen, be nice. Treat others well and they will light up and enjoy your company and you will then enjoy their company. Grumpy, grumbling, complaining, is going to get you unhappy people around yourself and contribute to your unhappy environment. You might have to fake it, but be nice anyways.

Step two: environment. Declutter your life. Take the time to keep your environment clutter free. Keep up with dishes, laundry, don't leave stuff laying around. It will amaze you how much a clutter free enviroment will affect your state of mind.

Step three: the mind. If you are unhappy chances are that you are very hard on yourself and very critical of yourself. So be nice to yourself. Instead of thinking of all the things you need to do all the time, make a list of all those things and pick one. Whenever you start to think I need to, and then you start your never ending list of a thousand things, stop and think of the one most important thing on your list. Think of all the things you have done toward accomplishing that one thing. Think, those other things will come later, I am making progress on my number one priority. Also have dreams for your short term and long term future, imagine how it will be when those dreams come true. Come up with a plan to make those dreams come true and think of all the steps you are taking to make those dreams come true. See thinking about positive things and your accomplisments instead of thinking all the time of how you are failing and don't have the things you want.

This is my advice, see it is a lot of work to retrain the way to act toward others, to clean up your environment and to change your inner dialoge. Everyone has down days and down moments but overall you can be happy for the most part.