Happiness can be had with little effort. Without anything changing in life, happiness just appears. We see it in young children all the time. In fact, we expect to see it in children.
As we age we seem to lose touch with happiness-for-no-reason-at-all. The natural fount of happiness we once enjoyed disappears as we move away from childhood. However, that happiness is not gone. All that happened is we lost our connection to it. This book is about recovering that connection.
There is a lot of wisdom available about how to be happy. Most of it is thousands of years old, but some is quite new. The seven practices we will look at in this book incorporate this wisdom to help you learn how to turn on happiness in your life. This kind of happiness does not require changing anything in your life. All you have to do is learn to turn it on.
Being happy is a little like flipping a switch. When it's on you are happy and when it's off you are not. It's so easy. How else can you explain being happy for no reason. What you need to do is learn to turn it on, and keep it turned on. This book discusses seven practices that help you do that.
Excerpt:
You have the power to be happy. Despite anything that has happened to you, or anything that may happen to you, you have the power to be happy. I am not saying you will be happy every second of your life. Bad stuff happens, and you will react with pain, grief, or anger. These are immediate but temporary responses that come with being human. Luckily, they usually occupy little time in your life. The rest of the time you can be happy.
Nobody is a victim of life. Nobody’s happiness is hostage to what happens in life. You are a free being with the power to choose the way you feel. You can be happy regardless of anything that happens or does not happen to you, and regardless of the chaos that is in the world or your life.
Yours is the power to choose what to think about, what to look at, and what to feel. You have the power to choose how you’ll experience life. This power enables you to find happiness inside of yourself, instead of waiting for life to be perfect. In simple terms, you have the power to control your mind, and with this power you can choose to be happy. With all this power at your disposal, your life can be heaven on Earth.
Now you may say, “If I have this power, why am I not happy? I have been slogging through life for a long time, and I am tired, bored, and unhappy doing it. Why can’t I be happy?”
The simple reason is that it takes practice. It takes practice to learn to search inside of yourself for happiness instead of constantly chasing after it in the world.
The purpose of this book is to show you where real happiness comes from, and how you can enjoy it into your life. The good news is: You need do nothing to bring it into your life. You just need to know what it is and how to stop doing what prevents you from experiencing the happiness that is your birthright.
