I’ve been receiving The Eco Parent magazine which is a fabulous magazines and I highly recommend subscriptions to it. I pulled out an article about “sustainable happiness” a few months ago and it has been sitting on my desk. I love each point and I think it’s a worthwhile list to revisit every couple of months to make sure you are on your own path to your unique happiness.
Here is how we choose to be happy: The 9 choices of extremely happy people – by Rick Foster & Greg Hicks. Putnam, New York: 1999.
- Intention. The active desire and commitment to be happy, and the fully conscious decision to choose happiness over unhappiness.
- Accountability. The choice to create the life you want to live; to assume full personal responsibility for your actions, thoughts, and feelings, and the emphatic refusal to blame others for your unhappiness.
- Identification. The ongoing process of looking deeply within yourself to assess what makes you uniquely happy, apart from what you’re told by others should make you happy.
- Centrality. The non-negotiable insistence on making that which creates happiness central in your life.
- Recasting. The choice to convert problems into opportunities and challenges, and to transform trauma into something meaningful, important, and a source of emotional energy.
- Options. The decision to approach life by creating multiple scenarios; to be open to new possibilities and to adopt a flexible approach to life’s journey.
- Appreciation. The choice to appreciate deeply your life and the people in it, and to stay in the present by turning each experience into something precious.
- Giving. The choice to share yourself with friends and community and to give to the world at large without the expectation of a “return.”
- Truthfulness. The choice to be honest with yourself and others in an accountable manner by not allowing societal, corporate, or family demands to violate your internal contract.
