In this post I’d like to offer you a challenge. I’d like to challenge you to spend 10 minutes today either improving your ability to be happier for the rest of your life, or proving me wrong.
If I told you there was a simple exercise that could increase your ability to feel more happiness for the rest of your life and that it only takes 10 minutes, you would probably either be excited to try it and see if it works, or you would think I was full of it.
So I’m offering you a challenge to find out. If you accept the challenge, after the 10 minute exercise you will either feel happier, or you will feel right about me being full of it. In either case, you win!
Here is the basic idea:
Being happy or unhappy is completely 100% a decision that we make. This decision is sometimes made unconsciously and that’s why it can sometimes appear that things outside of our control are causing us to be happy or unhappy.
Happiness or unhappiness is the result of three concepts being strung together inside our brains:
A) The concept of “I” (what your brain thinks you are)
B) The concept of “enough” and
C) The concept of “now”
The decision to be happy or not is the decision to assume that either:
A) “I am enough right now” or
B) “I am not enough right now”
Happiness is the result of these three concepts being strung together like this:
“I” = “enough” + “now” or in other words: “I am enough right now”
Unhappiness is the result of these three concepts being strung together like this:
“I” does not equal “enough” + “now” or in other words: “I am not enough right now”
Being happy or not is 100% caused by this decision. Whichever decision you make in any moment, the feeling of happiness or unhappiness follows.
Whenever you are unhappy, you are assuming “I am not enough right now” and whenever you are happy, you are assuming “I am enough right now”.
Try to find one example from your entire life that proves this wrong. I bet you can’t.
This explains how we can be happy in one area of our lives and feel unhappy in another area at the same time. We are making the assumption that we are enough right now in the one area of our lives and we are making the assumption that we are not enough right now in the other area.
This also explains how we can feel happy during one period in our life with something and then become unhappy with that same thing later on. As time goes on and things change, we begin assuming we are no longer enough when it comes to relating to that thing, person or situation.
So knowing this, becoming more happy in life is simply a matter of deciding that “I am enough right now” more often.
So how do I do that? You might ask. I’m happy you asked!
Whenever you catch yourself feeling unhappy, saying the following phrase to yourself can help your brain make the decision to change the assumption it is making from “I am not enough right now” to “I am enough right now”.
The phrase is: “Who am I no longer expecting to be because of this, and how am I choosing to be now instead?”
The challenge for us when we are unhappy is remembering to do something different than we are used to doing when we feel that way. So in order to have this be easy, we can make remembering this phrase into a lifelong habit so that it will be on the tip of our brain, ready to use when we want it. To make this phrase into a habit, we can simply say it to ourselves 100 times.
Here are the steps to the 10 minute happiness challenge:
Step 1: Create a grid with 10 cells in it, like 10 check boxes in a row
Step 2: Say the phrase: “Who am I no longer expecting to be because of this, and how am I choosing to be now instead?” to yourself 10 times in row.
Step 3: Put an X in one of the 10 cells
Step: 4 Repeat steps one, two and three until you have 10 X’s filled in
This exercise should take 10 minutes or less.
After doing this, notice how you are feeling. Even if you were feeling pretty happy before the exercise, see if you notice feeling even happier now. If you were feeling less than happy, see if you notice it being almost impossible to feel that now. If you feel no change at all after getting your 100 repetitions in of this phrase, see if it pops in your head the next time you are faced with a challenge and see if it provides you with and instant way to choose more happiness in that moment. If this exercise has absolutely no effect on your levels of happiness, then you have proven me wrong!
Whatever your results are, please let me know!
Thanks for listening and thanks for choosing to be you!
-Andy
For words and music that ignite your unlimited possibilities, please visit: http://www.AndyHarrisonMusic.com
Comments