Being Happy About My Book Being Done~!

My apologies for the lack of newsletters lately. I’ve been engrossed in getting a novel to the publishers. It’s now IN!!!! Done! It’ll be out in November! I’ll post more about it closer to the time!

Being Happy and Having Stuff!

I love that our culture is starting to study happiness now and is ‘getting’ that happiness doesn’t result from having stuff. Otherwise, why would the U.S. top the list of countries most suffering from depression? (According to a 2004 study done by the World Health Organization that rated 14 countries.)

Happiness doesn’t result from accomplishing stuff either. The suicides of hugely successful people have woken us up to this fairy tale and have shown us what Jon Kabat-Zinn, the meditation teacher points out, “wherever you go, there you are”.

Irritations That Block Being Happy!

But meanwhile, ‘issues’–things we don’t like or find irritating continue to occur. How to deal with them so you can experience being happy anyway? Here are some tips!

Decide not to be a pinball machine, just reacting to the button-pushing events. Asserting that you have power and choice is HUGE!

Recognize that you can choose being happy anyway. You may not think you have a choice, but just asserting that you do will get you searching for new and different ways of responding.

Let go of any resistance to the fact that an ‘issue’ is there. As Byron Katie says, “When you argue with reality you only lose 100% of the time!”

Now for a special technique. See if you can find ‘space’ for what’s irritating. To do that, you have to become bigger, more expansive. A little visualization will help. Imagine yourself as a huge ocean and see the irritation as a small bit of rubbish floating within it. See it, but within a bigger vastness of Who You Are!

A Meditation for Being Happy!

Here’s a meditation that will help you do that. It’s one I’ve made myself. Check it out. Click HERE to get it. The meditation will help you create the conditions for being happy ‘anyway’–which is a powerful skill to have. Especially in these tsunami-like times!

If you like this meditation and want to explore other techniques for modulating your energy, click on -Change Your Energy, Change Your Life which is a 40-day online course you can try out the first week at no charge to see if you like it!