I am now doing a few things to increase my level of happiness.

• Post-It note reminders
• Noticing when I (and others) think negative thoughts

I believe that the most challenging thing about being happy is simply remembering to be happy. I forget to be happy in the moment. Often I get caught up in national news or relationships or my thoughts about money. Negative thoughts seem to draw-in my attention. There is something compelling and interesting about negative thoughts. Perhaps it is the fact that negative thoughts often represent a problem that I need to solve or a task that I need to complete.

To facilitate my remembering to be happy I use Post-It notes. Each Post-It has a simple image of a smiley face on it, a circle with two eyes and a mouth. The Post-It is placed in random places all around my house, my car and my workplace. When I see the smiley face it reminds me of my desire to completely happy. When I am reminded to be happy I might cause myself to smile, laugh, or just think a joyful thought.

I have also been trying to be very sensitive to value charged words and phrases, and detect to when people including myself express negative thoughts. It is an interesting exercise. It helps me to understand my own thinking patterns. I have discovered that negative thinking permeates our culture. Like a giant waterfall, negative thoughts pour though the television set, radio and internet. It is important to guard our minds from this negative information. If it takes root in our minds, a life of chronic unhappiness may result.     

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 11:32 am and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.