I share God’s Will for happiness for me, and I accept it as my function now.
Lesson 102
I have not always been as happy as I am now. In fact, I wasn’t as happy yesterday as I am today. Every day is an adventure in finding my happy. I want to share a few things that I have learned that help me to live a more joyful and fulfilling life. Each one of these methods is proven to work for me.
You still believe it asks for suffering as penance for your “sins.” This is not so. Lesson 101
First of all, I had to learn to want to be happy. I don’t think I used to believe that I could be happy or that I deserved happiness. I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and in my regret, I made the additional mistake of thinking that what I did in the past negated a better future. I had to forgive myself and forgive the past, letting it go entirely before I could experience the present joy.
Be happy, for your only function here is happiness.
Lesson 102
The other thing I had to do to accept happiness was to let go of the idea that I needed something to change so that I could be happy. I thought that the circumstances in my life determined my level of happiness. I was wrong about that. It wasn’t what was happening that mattered, but what I thought about what was happening that decided how I would feel.
What I have learned to do since this revelation is to decide on happiness; I just committed to being happy no matter what was going on in the world or my little corner of it. An example of this working in my life occurred near Thanksgiving. It seemed like my freezer went out. I stood in front of it and watched my ice cream melting, wondering what I was going to do about it.
I didn’t know if this could be repaired or who to call to do it. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. I checked the cost of replacing the refrigerator in case that was the route I would have to go and was further upset by the price. Then I remembered that I am committed to happiness, so I thought about that. Could I be happy while my freezer was on the blitz and I didn’t know what to do?
I thought about being upset while my freezer was not working and then I thought about being happy while my freezer was not working. Would it help the situation to be upset? Would it make it worse if I was happy? Since the answer was no to both questions, I decided to be happy. I believed in my answer, so all the stress just dissolved. The freezer thing worked out fine and I didn’t waste a day of my life being disgruntled and anxious.
Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral. Lesson 107
Another thing that helps me in my quest for a happy life is to realize that my thoughts are going to direct my experience. I discovered that I might not be able to control the fact that fear thoughts or anger thoughts come into my mind, but I can control how much attention I give them. When I release the false thoughts, truth occupies my mind. As in the freezer situation, I had thoughts that I didn’t know what to do and thoughts that I couldn’t afford a new refrigerator, so I was in trouble.
But I chose not to follow those thoughts. If I had done so, I would have caused myself greater upset, and it would be harder to see this differently, in a more forgiving light. Instead of following those thoughts, I chose happiness, and as I did so, my mind was clearer, and I could think better. Without the distress clouding my mind, I remembered that I had changed the temperature of the refrigerator and so I turned it back up.
Evidently, when I had adjusted the temperature of the refrigerator the day before it affected the freezer and that was the problem all along. If I had followed the fearful thoughts, I might have acted impulsively and replaced a perfectly good refrigerator, or at the least, paid a repairman for coming out to see what was wrong. By choosing to be happy and refusing to follow negative thoughts, I made room for the truth and liberated my mind from false beliefs. In so doing, I saved myself a lot of money and distress.
Happiness is an attribute of love. It cannot be apart from it. Lesson 103
Although there are a number of things that help me to live a happy life, I want to mention just one more, love. Applying love to any situation makes it better. I used to have a difficult relationship with someone at work. I tried everything I could think of to change the dynamics of the relationship, and it seemed the harder I tried, the worse the relationship became.
I had to work with this person every day, and our attitude toward each other was making that a miserable proposition. I could not do anything to change his attitude, obviously, so I worked on mine. What finally turned the trick was my decision to love him. To my logical mind this seemed impossible, but with the same commitment I give to being happy, love transformed that relationship. We are still friends today.
I think of love as the miracle salve that I apply to every injury, every hurt, every sad or angry thought. It heals guilt as well as grievances. It smooths out the rough spots in the roads we travel, and it brings peace to every situation in which we find ourselves. I am learning to love everything in my life, the people and situations I enjoy and those that challenge me.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude. Lesson 195
The bow that wraps up this package is gratitude. Gratitude is the close cousin to love, sometimes being the effect of love, sometimes being the walk I take to bring me to love. I might have trouble accepting that I love a particularly difficult person in my life, but I might be able to feel gratitude for him. I am grateful that he is playing his part in our shared lesson in forgiveness. Then it is just a short step to loving him for doing so, and another small step to simply love him as part of me and part of our Creator.
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