So – How do you choose happiness (or at least a sense of calm) when chaos is raining down around you? One of my coaching clients posed this very question to me last week. Here’s my short answer:
Practice happiness daily.
Olympic athletes don’t show up on game day to give a peak performance without practicing a few (hundred) times. To strengthen your faith, you need to practice building faith daily. To strengthen your ability to choose happiness and increase your overall sense of calm, you need to practice choosing happiness daily. And you can’t wait until your transmission leaves you stranded with a huge car repair bill and then hope you’ll remember to choose happiness in that moment if you haven’t been choosing it daily.
Practice happiness daily! Choose it every chance you get, and you get myriad chances sprinkled into your days.
What constitutes a happiness practice?
There are LOTS of options, and it’s different for everyone, so you get to put together the pieces that resonate with you! You get to choose what to call your daily practice (happiness practice, spiritual practice, faith-building practice), and select the tools that fire you up and make you feel energized and ready to seize your day!
A great place to start is to unfollow anyone and anything on social media that is not adding to your joy and start following people and businesses that do uplift your soul. You can find uplifting vibes at Practice Happiness Daily, along with about a million other choices to lift your vibe and inspire your day. When you focus on what you want, the Universe brings you more of what you want.
One of the ways I practice happiness is reading something uplifting every morning. My current inspiration is coming from Jen Sincero’s You are a BADASS Every Day. Jen describes what I am talking about in a much badassier way than I can, so let me quote:
“Strengthening these muscles of badassery is where something I like to call the spiritual gym comes in. As we travel the winding road to greatness, we’ve got to have some sort of workout routine to keep our motivation strong, our belief in the near impossible unwavering, and our focus firm – because muscles don’t stay strong all by themselves.” She continues, “Get specific about which practices make you feel like you could bench press a gorilla and make them a nonnegotiable part of every single solitary day with no exceptions.”
I couldn’t agree more!
Your practice. Your choice.
Despite what religions would have us believe, there is no one right way to connect to Source energy. You get to choose. My morning practice has evolved over time and currently looks like this: five minutes centering, read something uplifting for ten minutes, write a gratitude letter, read it out loud, visualization practice for ten minutes max, core strength & stretching for ten minutes. Then I like to write in my journal to process whatever I am growing through at the moment. It’s the first hour of my day and sets the tone for my energized and thriving life!
I sprinkle affirmations liberally throughout my day and do something active at least five days a week. One of my friends listens to inspirational podcasts while she runs on the beach in the morning, and another keeps a running gratitude journal throughout the day on an app in her phone. Lots of my friends practice yoga and meditation.
Creating your personalized workout for your ‘spiritual gym,’ consists of playing with any combination of options from the menu below, or myriad others that makes your feel like you could hike the Himalayas. Or you know, remain calm, centered, and effective while everyone else runs around with their hair on fire. You could even survive meeting your boyfriend’s parents, or calmly recite all the reasons you deserve a raise to your boss. Who knows what you’ll achieve if you tap into the infinite power of Source! Probably whatever you put your mind to.
Feel Free to add other menu items in the comments!
I would LOVE to hear what energizes your day!
Spiritual Gym Menu –
- reading uplifting books
- subscribe to uplifting blogs like this one
- centering/meditation ~ Link to my 7-minute recorded meditation
- write gratitude lists & read them out loud
- visualization
- affirmations – Click this link for affirmations on my photographs
- setting intentions
- journaling
- podcasts or YouTube videos of uplifting speakers
- breathing in the light, breathing out anything that does not serve you
- exercise
- stretching
- yoga practice
Here are some great ones Sincero’s book added to my list:
- Making gratitude lists that leave you sobbingly aware of what a miracle your life is.
- Listening to music that makes you feel like an invincible pillar of joy
- Ensmartening yourself
- Making a vision board & staring at it all the time
- Reading biographies of people who inspire the crap out of you
Some books & speakers that inspire the crap out of me:
Books:
- Feng Shui Your Mind by Jill Lebeau
- uncovering the life of your dreams by Bruce Schneider
- You are a BADASS Every Day by Jen Sincero
- (apparently she has a whole series of BADASS books!)
- The Path to Wealth by May McCarthy
- Anything written by Tosha Silver or Florence Shovel Shinn
- Thirst for Wholeness by Christina Grof
- Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd
- Ask and It is Given by Jerry & Esther Hicks
Speakers:
Add your faves in the comments to expand my Universe!
It doesn’t matter what you choose to practice, so long as it uplifts your spirit, plugs your Soul into Source, and inspires you to step into a more powerful version of you!
“Make them a nonnegotiable part of every single solitary day with no exceptions,” so that when those less than optimal moments arrive, you’ll be amazed at how little they affect your vibration, and how easy it is to respond from a place of confidence and clarity. You get to choose how to show up.
One option is NOT to practice happiness, and show up like a cork tossed on the raging seas of chaos. My choice is to practice happiness daily and show up awesome!
Awesome feels better in my opinion, but you get to choose for yourself!
My happiness begins by making the choice to sleep in late daily. It energizes the rest of my day.