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Creating Happiness

Blogher is asking the question, "How do you plan to create happiness for yourself in 2012?" I love this question and before Blogher even asked I had spent a lot of time thinking about this question.

Really, this is what this blog is about finding and creating happiness.

What I have discovered over the past few years is happiness is something you have to create.

Happiness just doesn't happen. If you are waiting around to feel happy you are probably going to be waiting for awhile.

Feelings are funny because we ultimately choose how we are going to feel. Angry, sad, happy, joyful, blessed. Each one is a feeling we seek after and embrace.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes life sneaks up on you and dumps a whole lot of not happy in your lap. Sad things happen, bad things happen, unfortunate things happen, things that make us mad happen. However, do we take those moments and foster those feelings, let them grow into something ugly, or do we reach for something better?



Blogher's question is asking how do you create happiness for yourself.

It is a tricky question and it takes some serious thought about yourself. How do you react in bad situations? If the worse thing happened what would you do? Could you endure everything Job endured and still be happy?

Personally, I use to think that Job was the dumbest story in the Bible. Seriously, who could really endure everything he endured and still have faith? Not one grumble, not one fist to the sky with the cry why me? He just took it all. I use to wonder how that was even possible.

Then one day I decided to try to feel different. I decided to try to look at the world through rose tinted glasses. I decided that the cup was half full. No, the cup was all the way full because the other half was air. Air is pretty darn important.

I started to see the blessings in everyday. I started to see how hateful feelings poisoned me and made me less happy. Even when those hateful feelings were pointed at someone they hurt me more.

I also learned that I had to admit my shortcomings.

Oh boy! I'm taking a long time to get to the point I hope you are still with me.

How I plan to create happiness in 2012 is by addressing my biggest happiness killer.

Self Doubt!

If you read my post "Scerred," you read how I let negative thoughts consume my happiness. I have the capability in a very short time to turn the smallest of things into a major, scary, very bad thing.

It is a talent! Try not to be jealous.

At the end of 2011 I started to think about a word, or phrase, that would carry me through 2012. What would my theme of the year be? What mountain would climb? What could I learn?

A few days ago after leaving my student teaching classroom it kind of hit me.

Be Brave!

Happiness is found in our challenges. Happiness is found in our ability to accomplish hard things. Happiness is knowing at the end of the day we did good. Happiness is created when we cheerfully challenge ourselves to be better!

Here is what I now know about Job. Job was probably not to happy about all the bad things that were happening to him. He was probably sad, upset, and even a little angry. However, he knew that God had a plan for him, and if part of the plan was for Job to loose everything there was probably a reason. There was probably a really good reason. Job's faith helped him to survive even the worse circumstances. In the end Job was richly blessed for enduring faithfully.

I choose to believe that Job was brave. He made himself be brave enough to get up each day and endure the pain of loss. The story I once hated is now an example to me about creating happiness.

Be Brave Friends!

Blogher is asking you to share your answer to, "How do you plan to create happiness for yourself in 2012?" Please click on this link and share your answer after reading Dr. Aymee's wonderful post about living life in the moment.

Share another comment here for a chance to win a Kindle Fire!!

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