Happiness is a Choice

I was watching the movie, "The Fighter" with Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in it last week, and I was really disturbed that people actually CHOOSE to live like that.

The one term that came to mind when watching the characters portrayed in this movie was "White Trash." I mean the ending of the movie was great, and it had its moments, yet, there was still a long way to go to get there. Kinda like life, right?

Then it hit me when I thought that Happiness is actually a choice we make in life. In every circumstance, you may not be able to control what happens to you, yet you can certainly control your reaction, or how you choose to view it.

So if you were to choose to see things on a positive side and choose to look at everything that happens for a reason, whether or not it went according to how you wanted it to go, it would have a big difference in the way you view life occurring to you. Hmmmmmm...

I have an example from my own life that I would like to share with you about this...

I was late for a client lunch because I took a wrong turn in getting there. When I realized it and turned around, I realized that I was not going to be able to make it there at the agreed time so I called my client and told them that I would be possibly 15 minutes late. I was like a mad man trying to get there! I was honking my horn at everyone who I felt wasn't driving as fast as I wanted them to, and I was a wreck.

When I finally got to the address that my client had given me, it was a hair salon and not a restaurant. Well, this just threw me over the edge. I double checked to make sure that I had the right address and that I wasn't going crazy. Yep, I had the correct address and my client had given me the WRONG address. So immediately I went into making them wrong, and trying to preserve my sanity. -Sound familiar?

When I was looking at this salon, a woman was just then walking out towards me. "Chuck, is that you?"

"Yes" I said.

It turns out that this woman who just moved into this salon was a friend of a friend I used to hang out with in the 1990's and I had lost touch with them even though I had been looking for them for over 10 years.
Co-incidence? No way, I don't believe in co-incidences anymore.

So, here I was trying to thwart off all of this that was happening to me when at the end of the day, it was all happening for a reason and a purpose. I ended up finally touching base with my old friends and making it to my client meeting with an amazing story, and it all worked out perfectly. As soon as I accepted that things in life are not going to go according to the way my agenda is set up, and realize that a larger power is at play with my best interest in mind, my life got exponentially easier to deal with.

Now I don't see things that don't go according to my way as "failures", rather as experiences that are happening perfectly in my world. I mean, how arrogant is it to think that the entire world should work the way we want to control it when we have NO idea whatsoever that it is happening for a reason that we can't see yet.

We cannot connect the dots moving forward, only looking backwards. So if you were to look at your future this way, allow the dots to connect as they may and accept that choosing that option is a way that will enable you to choose happiness, rather than looking at life as a struggle. If you look at life as a struggle, then it always WILL be a struggle. Yet if you choose to look at life happening to you as perfect, then you choose happiness, and life will be much more workable for you, and those around you.

So try this for a week. If you really want to commit to a more powerful life, try it for a month. Give your word to the fact that you will not react negatively to anything during this time. It will be a greater experience than you thought it would be. Watch the reaction of the people around you and see how you occur for them moving forward. -It might really surprise you to see how other people now treat you.