Rodger Ruge, Peak to Peak.  “We are travelers on a cosmic journey. Stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” ~ Paulo Coelho

Pick the statement that you resonate with most;

I am happy all the time.

I am happy most of the time.

I am happy some of the time.

I am rarely happy.

I am never happy.

In North America, most people think it is impossible to be happy all the time and unrealistic to be happy most of the time. The vast majority of people believe they can be happy some of the time while an increasing number relate to only being happy every once in a while. Folks who fall into the never category, well, let me be blunt, you need professional counseling, now.

Whichever statement you resonate with most reveals a specific quality of your mind, largely based on the cultural beliefs that were installed into your internal programming (read subconscious mind) between the ages of 0 to 8 years of age. Those beliefs, reinforced and validated by life events, evolve into engrained, chronic patterns of thinking and behavior which can prove daunting to shift.

When I traveled outside of North America I met people living in shacks with dirt floors. They rode the bus if they had the money or walked long distances to get the most minimal of basics to make it through another day. Their jobs, if they had one, were often grueling labor in unsafe conditions or repetitive tasks that most could not do for an hour let alone as a career. Their lives, by our American standards, were a day-to-day struggle we would not wish on anyone. Yet, these were among the happiest and most joyful people I’ve ever met, and genuinely so. The had a secret most of us have likely never considered or dismissed as irrelevant. I’ll let you in on that in a moment because its simplicity is self-evident and yet its effect, when applied as a daily practice, can be life altering.

A life-tip for you, friends; If you are awaiting some miraculous change to create happiness, you are missing the point, which is that miracles are already happening to you constantly. For example; the miracle of breathing, the miracle of seeing, the miracle of hearing, of walking and talking, of thinking, dreaming and feeling. We simply take these things for granted to the point where they are mundane if we even think about them at all. To shift this perspective all we need to do is embrace what the people I met in the third world countries completely own; they are in a perpetual state of gratitude for EVERYTHING in their lives. Nothing is mundane and all things, literally ALL THINGS are a blessing. How do we shift to this as a belief system that manifests into something magical, something more than putting lipstick on a pig?

To cultivate a state of gratitude we must eliminate labels that say something is “good” or “bad.” If you look closely, you will realize that those are mental constructs that we make up, and trying to force a feeling of gratitude is obviously counterproductive as well. A great place to begin is with the simple act of saying “thank you” combined with the physical act of smiling. Frankly, it’s a lot easier to say a couple of words than to force yourself to try and feel something you may not be feeling, but when we do this as a practice for everything in our lives; the delicious latte, the smell of rain on summer pines, the laugh of a child, the elderly couple still holding hands, the Facebook post of two baby moose, we create the momentum that brings all things into gratitude!

If during your practice you find the door closing on your efforts to create a shift, just open the door again, it’s a door…that’s how they work.

Eventually there will be a swing that will move your happiness needle in the affirmative direction and, when that happens, watch the magic in your life transform. Oh, and as an amazing byproduct, those around you will tend to shift as well, happiness is an infectious disease we should not mind spreading.