Monday, May 27, 2002

Choose happiness

The expectation that only certain things can make you happy will continue to keep happiness out of your reach. Putting conditions on happiness serves only to prevent it from happening.

The assumption that conditions must improve before you can be happy is precisely backwards. For when you can truly be happy with who you are and with what you’re doing, conditions cannot help but improve.

If you feel that you could never be happy with things the way they are, you’re absolutely right. So choose to be happy, and things will no longer be the way they are -- they’ll immediately start to get better.

Once you truly choose to be happy, then your thoughts and actions will reflect that choice. You’ll be moving in the direction of your most treasured values and desires, rather than holding yourself back from them.

But isn’t it naive or unrealistic or simplistic or disrespectful to choose happiness when the world is so filled with difficult and dangerous challenges? Not at all, because by choosing to be genuinely happy with yourself you’re also choosing to be the best, the strongest, the most effective person you can be.

— Ralph Marston

Just get started Determined to make it so next

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