Getting All Those Ducks in a Row

Are you close? Do you almost have everything in your life lined up the way you want it?  Or do you still have a ways to go?  And how stressful is it trying to get everything just right?

Guess what?  Never going to happen.  Control is an illusion.  Ultimately, no matter how good you are at manipulating the ingredients of life, unexpected things will happen.  Challenges and changes that you could not anticipate, and which you think you do not want, will show up.  Little things, big things, and everything in between.

Does this mean that happiness is doomed or fleeting? NO.  What it means is that you must choose happiness first, and choose it again no matter what shows up.  This choice is your power point in life. 

Everyone wants to be happy, but most people have a detailed recipe for the experience of happiness.  In other words, we will be happy when we can check off all the required ingredients on our list.  Even if by some miracle this happens for you at some point in time, it will not last more than a nano second.  In the blink of an eye someone will be rude to you, or something will disappoint you, or you will experience loss, or you won't get what you want, or a crisis will appear.  Poof, your happiness is gone.

The path to lasting happiness, happiness as a way of life, is to toss out the recipe.  Choose to be happy, and choose it again no matter what shows up.  No requirements, no conditions.  Let nothing change your decision to be happy.  This is not a matter of putting on blinders.  Rather, it is an acknowledgment that choosing happiness is the one thing in life that is always under your control.  In the midst of life's greatest challenges, in times of heart breaking grief, happiness is still yours for the choosing.

The Biggest Decision

"I'd say the biggest decision of your life was not your career, your marital status, or your home . . . it was choosing to love as often as you have." Mike Dooley

Every true spiritual leader who has ever walked on planet earth was clear on this topic.  Love is the one true reality, and the most important decision we ever make.  It is the ultimate game changer.  If you desire any thing in your life to be different, figure out how to pour love into it.

Life is a continuous series of choices between love and fear.  Every choice for fear will bring us pain.  Every choice for love will ultimately bring us freedom.  The number of times you get to choose daily is virtually infinite.  You become a master of life when, in every moment, you are able to create the space to choose love.  No matter what the circumstances look like, there is always a way to choose love.

Wishing you a day of unbounded love and joy.