"I wish everyone could get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that's not the answer." -- Jim Carrey



Happiness is an inner state, and as such it is completely non-reliant on outer circumstances. This means that it is possible to be happy at any time, and there's no better time to be happy than right now.

Happiness is not a life without challenges. Your life will always be filled with challenges. So, if you're ever to be happy, it's best to accept this and decide to be happy anyway.

Here are some techniques to help you do that:

Watch your attitude because it is your attitude to your circumstances and not the actual circumstances that determines how happy (or sad) you feel. Your feelings are influenced by your thoughts, so how you choose to think about a situation will trigger either positive or negative feelings about it. Your attitude will determine whether you feel you can overcome your obstacles or be dragged down by them.

If the word ?choose? is sticking in your gullet here, then it would be useful to sit and reflect upon that. Yes, you can choose your thoughts. When you catch yourself in the act of ?woe is me? type thoughts, deliberately and consciously reframe them right there and then. To do this, try asking yourself some (or all) of the following questions:

? What is my preferred outcome from this situation?

? What opportunity lies in this challenge? What can I learn from this?

? In order to get to the outcome I want, in what way do I need to grow?

? How do I want to be when I get to the other side of this?

? What's great about this situation?

? What's funny about it?

? What assumptions am I making that might be false? What would be useful to believe instead?

?Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.? -- Abraham Lincoln

Instead of focusing your energy on the problem, focus it on the answers to those questions. When you change the way you think about a situation, you will notice a change in how you feel about it too. You will feel lighter, more positive and optimistic, and happier in yourself despite your less than perfect circumstances.

Develop a gratitude habit. Every day make a list (mental is good, written is better) of at least five things you are grateful for. Be grateful for a smile from your child, that the sun has come out after a week in hiding, that you have a roof over your head when it's cold and wet outside. Be grateful for the little things, not just the big. When you make a habit of appreciating the good things in life, you will find yourself consciously looking for things to be grateful for. This opens your mind to a more positive outlook, and starts to feed into the thought pattern you need to positively affect your feelings. It also attracts more of the good things into your life, because what you focus on and appreciate expands (this is a Universal law, like gravity, so whether you believe it or not, it still works!).

Ground yourself in the present moment. Making plans for the future is a good thing. But worrying about what might or might not happen is not. It is a pointless exercise that drains your energy and makes it nearly impossible to enjoy and appreciate the good that you have in your life right now. By focusing on what you have and what you are doing right now, and doing so in a positive, appreciative manner, you will be ensuring that your future will turn out just fine (again, because you attract more of what you enjoy and appreciate into your life, AND because when you're not fretting about how you will cope with a situation, you find that somehow you just do).

You don't have to know how you will get to where you want to be, you just have to trust that somehow you will work it all out, and concentrate on enjoying right here, right now. After all, that's all we ever have.