Choose Happiness!

"There will always be numerous reasons in your life to be either happy or unhappy. Each day of your life offers an abundance of rationales to support whatever position you choose. If you want to be happy, look at your life and find reasons to be happy. If you want to be unhappy, then you will likewise find many reasons to be unhappy. It's your choice."

-- John Kehoe

It's true: What you see is what you get! And you get to choose the focus of your vision. Today is colder than a witch's, well, let's just say it's bitter cold. I can focus upon that, wish I was in a warmer climate and get all bummed out, or I can notice how incredibly beautiful the snow is. Christmas is peaking over the horizon. I can bewail the fact that my daughters are in California and won't be here to share in the festivities, or I can enjoy the company of the loved ones that I have around me.

Everyday we have hundreds of time when we can choose happiness or unhappiness, choose to focus upon the half full or the half empty glass. I know, I know sometimes it's so much fun to indulge in a woe is me pity party. Just make it a short one. Choice is like a muscle -- the more you exercise it in positive ways, the stronger it will grow. Then it will become easier and easier to choose happiness, to keep your focus on the beauty of the night sky rather than the trash in the gutter.

But if your gaze does happen to fall to the gutter, pick up the damn trash! Or at least scan for lost change. Transmute even the negative into positive if at all possible. It will just give you more positive stuff to focus upon in the future.

So, just for today, choose happiness. Everytime you start to find reasons to be unhappy, refocus. Count your blessings, adopt an attitude of gratitude, do all those trite and corny things that we've all heard a million times, and that despite their hackneyed presentation, do, really do, make a huge difference. Or as the great 20th century musical philosopher Bobby McFerrin once said, "Don't worry, be happy."