A couple of months ago, I was hanging out on State Street in Madison, sitting on a bench.  It was about 50 degrees and overcast, and after a long winter of being inside, I was feeling just great about the wonderful weather.  Just then, a man came out of a restaurant, looked up at the sky, and said to his friend, “Man, what a lousy day.” 

I’ve been thinking lately about happiness.  As a coach, I talk a lot about creating the life of your dreams, and it occurred to me that I might be giving people the impression that you can’t be happy unless you’ve set up some perfect life, and that we have to work hard at that.  The truth is that it’s the journey that matters, not the destination.  Happiness is available to you right now.  Your attitude has much more to do with how you feel than the particular circumstances you find yourself in.  Pursuing happiness requires very little external effort, like getting a new career or finding a perfect partner, but it can require effort internally to change ingrained negativity.

If we are unhappy because of attitude, how do we change our attitude?  Here’s the short list that I’ve come up with:

1. Maintain a meditative or spiritual practice.
2. Be present to yourself, to others, and to the world around you.
3. Question stressful thoughts.
4. Practice seeing beauty everywhere. 
5. Accept yourself, others, and your situation, but don’t be complacent. 
6. See that you have choice, and take responsibility for your life. 
7. Be of service and have an altruistic life mission. 
8. Vision the life you want, and follow your heart. 
9. Play, laugh, and exercise.
10. Be you. 

Looking over this list, I think how obvious it all seems, and how trite this commentary must seem.  And yet, I find that while most of us know what’s best for us, in the business of life it’s easy to forget these practices, and to fall into habits of negativity and filling up empty spaces with noise.

Over the next several months, I’ll be writing about each of these in depth.  Look for more to come soon.