Choosing to be Happy

For a long time, I waited for someone or something to make me happy. Like most of us, my life hadn't been a bed of roses for my three decades on the earth--enduring death and disease and betrayal (tired yet?) like everyone else.

Well I got tired of myself. Wallowing is self-pity and angry at myself for wallowing and then angry at myself for being angry and not giving myself permission to feel like shit, my life had turned into one relentlessly sorry circle. Digging myself deeper into depression but so sorrow-filled that I could hardly see the connection to my own sad state, I finally gave up.

That is when a really helpful piece of information entered my life: having despaired over how to deal with my autistic son, I "stumbled" over a book called Sonrise by Barry Neal Kaufman where through love and happiness he and his wife Samaria helped their son Raun overcome Autism. That got my attention.

Barry "Bears" Kaufman also wrote another book Happiness is a Choice. In it, there are five simple steps to happiness. A year before, I would have dismissed the book out of hand as self-indulgent psycho-babble--a book for people not grounded in "reality". Thankfully, having tried everything else and being utterly spent of energy to stay in denial, I read and accepted the words Bears wrote.

It has been five years now, since taking this journey. My life has not been a bed of roses since, either. The disease (my husbands cancer) and betrayal (too awful to even write) happened after I found my new attitude. Was this new philosophy fluff or did it actually give me the tools to succeed? To say the least, my life would have been far worse without exposure to Bears words and failure to put them in practice.

His advice includes gratitude, choosing happiness, forgiveness, etc. You may read it and say "what utter bull crap". There was a day when I didn't think life could be so simple and so happy. I thought that only Pollyannas could live in this hate-filled world and find joy. I was wrong.

From this day forward, I will try each day to include some information that helped me or helped others to live a better life. I have done that before, but haphazardly. Now, I'll incorporate it into the blog along with everything else. I've already told you about dreamboards--thought you might like to read it again. They work!