ONE RULE TO FEEL BETTER:

CHOOSE HAPPINESS!

 By Dr. Aymee Coget

I know. When you read the section title you were like, yeah right! If it were only that easy! Well if you listen to all of the experts who have achieved sustainable happiness, they all say that it starts with a decision to be happy!

Think about it. Before you go to the bathroom, you decide to go to the bathroom. Before you do the dishes, you decide to do the dishes. Before you go on a date, you decide to go on a date. Do you understand my point? Before you do anything you have to decide to do it!

The benefits of being a happy person are endlessly fruitful! I know this because I have been a happy person for most of my life, actively studied happiness scientifically and spiritually since 1996 and I have coached many people to achieve sustainable happiness in their lives.

Let me share with you how I wake-up and smile everyday…

The sun is shining and the birds are singing. I awake from a wellrested sleep and I turn on my favorite morning music that always puts a smile on my face. I dance in the spirit of happiness while making my coffee and I turn on my computer. I am feeling great, amazing, happy, healthy, optimistic, and excited for what the day has in store for me.

Every day I wake up and smile thinking…

“Today is the happiest day of my life!”

“There is no better day than today!”

“What gifts will I experience today?”

“How many people will I help be happier today?”

“I am grateful for all of my continued blessings.”

I love my work and I dive into it with happiness as my number one priority. I am feeling great and I want to help others feel great too!

My email inbox is filled with messages from people who

ask questions about how they can be happier

thank me for changing their lives and bringing them to a place of sustainable happiness where they have never been before

or from my business partners who

ask me about necessary next steps to help millions of others live happier lives.

No one has more “happiness” in his or her email box than me. I love my work, it gives me a deep sense of meaning and purpose. Everyday, I help others smile bigger and brighter than they have ever smiled before.

Soon enough, my phone is ringing with my clients who are merging onto the happiness highway, yet are experiencing happiness challenges. I help them tackle these challenges in the name of their happiness. Every one of them gets off the phone feeling happier and more confident in their ability to deal with the next happiness challenge that is around the corner. They work at their happiness as I guide them every step of the way.

If you want to wake up and smile, just like I do every day, keep reading.

Since we are thinking about happiness as a skill and a lifestyle, we need to make sure we are all on the same page, with the same basic understanding of the words “skill” and “lifestyle”. According to Princeton’s World Dictionary, a skill is an ability that has been acquired by training. Basically, you have entered into happiness training! In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person (or group) lives. This includes patterns of social relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. A lifestyle typically also reflects an individual's attitudes, values or worldview.

Take a minute to ponder the idea of happiness infused into a life skills repertoire that you can use in your social relations, consumptions, entertainment, clothing, and general world view. It basically looks like what it means to wake up and smile every day! I want to take this opportunity to demonstrate how this looks in my daily life. In all of my social interactions, I express gratitude, acceptance, love, kindness, zest, and optimism. I am smiling almost the whole time I am talking to anyone whether it is a conversation in person or on the phone. Imagine being the recipient of that gratitude, acceptance, love, kindness, zest and optimism. It feels great right? In my consumptions, I am conscious of the value of minimalism, ethics, and environmental sustainability. I aim to be happiness in all of my thoughts, words and actions, including my consumerism. In the entertainment sector of my life, I go to friend gatherings and celebrations, support local music, and dance until I cannot move any more! My clothing is colorful and some of the items have smiley faces. Now I am not encouraging you to dress head to toe in smiley face fabric, yet if you notice you are drab, gray and black with not much style, you may need to revamp your wardrobe to be a bit more colorful and a lot happier! As far as the sustainable happiness worldview is concerned, I always hold a vision of a peaceful, loving, happy, healthy enlightened world. If everyone held this vision, perhaps we could come closer to achieving it!

This happy life looks awesome, doesn’t it?! I am happy every moment. I am consciously choosing happiness.

ask me about necessary next steps to help millions of others live

Now let’s switch the focus to you…

In all of your social interactions, you express gratitude, acceptance, love, kindness, zest, and optimism. You are smiling almost the whole time no matter if you are talking to someone on the phone or in person. Imagine being the recipient of that gratitude, acceptance, love, kindness, zest and optimism. It feels great right? Sharing your happiness feels like the right thing to do. In your consumptions, you are conscious of the value of minimalism, ethics, and environmental sustainability. You are the embodiment of happiness in all of your thoughts, words and actions. In the entertainment sector of your life, you attend friend gatherings and celebrations, you support local music, and dance until you cannot move any more! Your clothing is colorful, vibrant and has smiley faces on everything, <just kidding> As far as the sustainable happiness worldview is concerned, you always hold a vision of a peaceful, loving, happy, healthy enlightened world remembering the importance of holding that positive vision of the future. You are happy! You are feeling like you never felt before, and you see happiness everywhere you look! You are experiencing what people call the “sunny side of life!”

Are you ready to make the decision to be happy?! To learn happiness as a skill and a lifestyle?

What about telling your friends? And family? That they too can learn how to be happy? No person is an island. And why should we keep this as a secret to ourselves? Please, this is what most people have been dying to know…. “How can I be happy in this miserable world?”

Well it is possible. And the way to do it is described in the following pages… so please tell your friends and family so you all can create your happy life together!

Imagine sitting around the dinner table with your family while everyone talks about what they are happy about. What they liked about their day. What they are grateful for. And then imagine each member of the family going around the table telling everyone what they like about the others. Amazing! And they would feel happy. And as long as a few people are feeling happy it spreads to the others! Imagine the happiness benefits coming to your whole family!? You can all make the happiness decision right now together!

Feel the power of happiness!

Dr. Bob Nozik, author of Happy 4 Life: Here’s How to Do It, studied happiness for twenty years and has consequently learned how to achieve sustainable happiness himself. His passionate pursuit of happiness began when he achieved all of his goals in life: a healthy medical practice, great family, a location where he loved living, his red convertible Mercedes, and a promising research and teaching career at the University of California. All this, and he wasn’t happy! So he began the twenty year study of happiness which led him to the realization that he had to make the happiness decision. And, as we have already seen, he has lived happily every day for the past twenty years! Now Dr. Bob teaches, speaks and writes about sustainable happiness.

Lionel Ketchian, founder of the Happiness Club, author of numerous happiness articles, former happy radio host, and a sustainable happiness coach himself, has been happy for the past eighteen years! As was true of Dr. Bob, Lionel found himself with this seemingly perfect life, yet he was not happy! Before Lionel realized he had to make the happiness decision to spearhead his sustainable happiness, he read over fifteen hundred books on happiness!

Julian Kalmar is another great example of someone who has learned to make the happiness decision. He used to be a physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with training in electronics, computer programming and physics. Then in 2002 he was struck down by a serious back injury and for three years he spent 22 hours a day flat on his back, bedridden in pain and unable to sit. He lost his clients and his 6-figure income. A year into his painful and bedridden life, when a friend asked him, “How can you still be so happy?” Julian had a sudden realization. He was at first stunned by the question. “Frankly, I didn’t realize I could have chosen to be unhappy,” he says. He was fortunate to have learned at a very young age from a trusted mentor that happiness is a decision! It had been embedded so deeply into his consciousness that he hadn’t even realized that he had chosen happiness as a child and that his happiness every day since was the result.

All of these men are on a conscious crusade to teach others how to achieve sustainable happiness in their lives. After we reach this level it only makes sense to help others achieve it for themselves too!

Okay, after hearing about these three examples of people who made the decision to be happy, you are convinced. Right?! If they can do it, so can you!

Before I go further, I need you to understand one major aspect of the happiness decision. No one is going to make it for you! Only you can make this decision for yourself. It would be like telling someone else that it is time to go to the bathroom. No one is going to do it for you. Now is the time for you to stand up and take responsibility for your own happiness! When you make this decision you realize you can no longer depend on all of those people, places or things for your happiness. This is the time we stop making excuses for the lack of happiness in our lives and give ourselves permission to take control of our own happiness!

I want to tell you a story of one my happiness clients.

Molly escaped the war in Bosnia and was able to come to San Francisco to start a new life. For many many years she thought that she should not be happy because the people in her country were suffering so much.

She participated in many self-help workshops, yet she was still unhappy. At last she came to the happiness club, over and over, and she never missed a meeting.

The message we teach at the happiness club is that “HAPPINESS IS A DECISION,” which never made sense to her. In her words, “I felt like you were telling me to be an orange and I am a lemon.” She thought that we were trying to tell her to be something she was not. One day, I told her a story about two women. She was sad for many years, was divorced and very bitter, felt that her life was a struggle, was always sick, and she always needed people to pity her. She felt like her life was miserable and it would always be that way because of the events she suffered in the past.

The other woman was happy, joyful, outgoing, colorful, fun, and excited about life. This woman also suffered a great deal of pain in the past, but chose to see and experience life’s positive side.

It was through this story that Molly realized that happiness really is a CHOICE!!!

This was big news in the happiness club because Molly once told the group that she would never be happy. NEVER. One woman who attended the happiness club even cried for her in empathy!

How about that? That is a very extreme case, yet it is very real and people struggle with their happiness all the time every day! Are you ready to give up the struggle? Are you ready to make the happiness decision?

Okay, for those skeptics who are saying this author is off her rocker and it can’t be that simple if I have been trying to be happy for years and now she just wants me to decide. My response would be that in all those years, you have been in your head trying to get other people, places and things to make you happy.

Place your hand on your heart, breathe and ask yourself, “Am I ready to be happy?”

If the answer is YES! Make that happiness decision!

Happiness is always available to you when you are ready for it. Or you can realize that at some point you are going to have to do something different if you are unhappy. Take a chance! Join me on the happiness highway!

HAPPINESS EXERCISES

Take a minute to ponder the idea of happiness skills joining your life skills repertoire in which you can use in your social relations, consumption patterns, entertainment, clothing, and general world view. Write about how you can see yourself being happy and what your social life would be like. What would you be purchasing? What would you be doing for entertainment? What would you be wearing?

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It looks pretty good, huh?! You in your happy life. And it feels good too! So are you with me? Are you ready to make the happiness decision?

Compliments of The Happiness Club, we have an actual certificate that you can sign and put on your refrigerator to remind you every day. I encourage my clients to sign their name in red, signifying their blood, because this decision is that important! Making this decision could be the hardest part of sustainable happiness, and you have to trust me that it gets a lot easier after this milestone!

http://www.happinessclub.com/Decision/decision.htm

If you want to learn how to sustain the decision you just made, contact info@draymeecoget.com or you can download her Feel Better Now course for only $189.00 here for a free 20 minute phone happiness consultation, www.happinesshomestudy.com