Happy, Happy, Happy

Happy Tuesday!  I hope that your week is going great and that you are putting the happiness challenge into play in your personal and professional life. If you have had a rough start on Sunday and Monday make your Tuesday the start of your happiness week. Remember you only fail if you allow the unhappy moments drain you and control you. Our “Happiness Tanks” will from time to time become dry and that is why we have to identify those things in our lives that will recharge those tanks. One bad minute doesn’t make a bad week, there are 10,080 minutes in one week, one bad minute only makes one bad minute. I wish that I could tell you that being happy in this negative world is easy, but I will not lie. It is a daily struggle, a daily battle, but it is a battle worth waging. As you grow in your happiness journey, you will find that your past demons will arise from the dead to haunt you and you will find that you have critics that you didn’t even know you had. Misery loves company.

Speaking of critics, one of my critics asked me recently if I thought that I had found a new cure for depressed people. My response was “no, I never said that I had.” His follow up question was do you think you are an expert on this subject. I had to laugh at this, because anybody who knows me knows that I tread lightly on using the word “expert” or allowing the word expert to be used against me. My laughter offended my critic and he demanded an explanation. So reluctantly I offered up an explanation, not to defend myself, but to educate my critic on me and what I am trying to do here.

One of my biggest statements is that happiness is a choice. Abraham Lincoln said “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” In no way do I think that I am more intelligent than Abraham Lincoln, but I do believe that we are subscribing to the same school of thought on happiness just decades apart. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel.  I am just telling my story and how I view the world to the best of my knowledge. Many great people have said the same things before me and many great people will say the same thing after me, I am just saying it in my own language. Some will be able to relate to my language and others will not, but that isn’t the important part. The important part is that we all at some time hear the message of happiness, because a life lived unhappy isn’t much of a life at all.

As far as being an expert, well the only way I know how to counter that is to quote a guy that I ran across a few years ago. When I said it is up to you, you are the expert he replied, “Ex-spurt, ex equaling has been or past tense, I am still alive. Spurt equaling a little drop of water and again that does define me, so I am no expert. To some of you that will not resonate with you, but to a few that will be as revolutionary to you as it was to me.

I am saying mostly the same thing that any happiness guru is saying or has said in the past. I am just trying to put my twist on it. I believe that a person can hear the same topic 99 times and not absorb the message, but on the 100^th time it clicks. Not because the 99 people before the 100^th said it wrong, it was just the 100^th person said it right for that one person. I haven’t found a new cure for depression; I am just using my past tragedies, demons, and experiences to say it in my tone. Will I reach thousands of people with my message?  I don’t know.  I am only concerned with reaching the one. I know by helping the one, I am creating a ripple effect that will span out larger than I will ever be able to reach. We should all be focused on helping that “one” person toady and then another “one” person tomorrow. I guess you can say I’ve been bitten by the ‘happiness bug’ or I’m drinking from the ‘happiness koolaid.’  All I know is that I will continue to spread the gospel of happiness to one or to hundreds. I will close with one of my “Happiness 10 Commandments” “Thou shall not covet happiness; it is to be spread out across the land to inspire others!”