Happiness is a Choice - Six Tips for Being Happy Now
Rick Osborn | October 2, 2008
The question - “When will I be happy again?” - was posed to me recently by a friend in an apparent state of discomfort and agony. I’m sure many of us, if not in the present, certainly at sometime in our past, have asked ourselves this same question.
And, how does a wise person respond to such an inquiry? I’ve given it some thought, and here’s what I’ve concluded:
The truth is that when I endeavor to give wise counsel to anyone, I reflect upon my study of scripture, as God is the author of all truth and wisdom. Certainly He has a fitting answer for such a difficult question. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, I’d like to state what my mom (whom I perceive to be a fighter AND a happy person) has told me for years, which I believe to be profoundly true . . .
Life Is What You Make of It
It’s true, we all face difficulties at times, especially now in light of the current political and economic climate around the world. Unfortunately, on this side of eternity, this is the nature of life. But, I believe that when confronted with trials, fear, heartache, difficulties, disputes, sickness, despair, disillusionment (Did I leave anything out?), we have a choice. . . we either CHOOSE to crumble or we CHOOSE to conquer. It’s always easiest to surrender, throw up our hands and scream “I give up, I can’t take it any more . . .” And, maybe the answer is that we shouldn’t “take it any more.” The truth is though, we DO have a choice in the matter! We either choose to live the best life that we can live, or we choose NOT to live and allow our circumstances and apparent misfortune to blow us all over the place, making us miserable, ineffective, sorry, depressed people. The problem with the latter CHOICE (and it is a choice) is that we never quite know where we’ll end up and we surrender any control that we have to our misery and sad circumstances. And let me reiterate, the way we conduct our emotions, actions, energy, lifestyles, etc. IS A CHOICE.
Six Tips for Choosing Happiness
In all practicality, let me just get to the point here and give you some tips on how you can CHOOSE to BE HAPPY NOW on a daily basis:
- Remember, HALF FULL, NOT HALF EMPTY! Adjust your perspective. Every day will have it’s challenges. We need to look at this as life’s daily exercise routine as God’s way for making us wiser, emotionally stronger and better people.
- Check your moral compass and LIVE BY IT! Filter every thing, every decision and every action daily! (If you don’t know how to do this, click here to read my blog on “Checking Your Filter”.)
- Make Psalm 37:4 - “Delight yourself in the LORD: and He will give you the desires of your heart” your mantra! You can’t go wrong with this one.
- Live in the present! When you focus on past mistakes or constantly worry about what might be in the future, you miss living in the NOW and forget to enjoy the ride.
- Finally, do something good for someone else. When you take your time and talents and use them to help someone else, you WILL be happier. Being egocentric is misery. Don’t forget the Golden Rule.
- Get some daily exercise! It’s a simple fact that being physically active makes us feel better.
If you practice the above six tips, I can promise you that your life WILL BE A LOT HAPPIER - right away. You won’t even have to wait for joy to overwhelm you.
