Value Joy.

Joy, Trials 0

The only value suffering has is that it points out that you’re running low on happiness. The function of suffering is, therefore, to remind you to choose happiness, choose love, choose healing, choose forgiveness, choose laughter, choose freedom. Thus, the most helpful response to suffering is to use suffering as a chance to hit the “re-set” button in your life, and commit once again to what is truly important.

To be happy, you must value joy more than pain. You want to remind yourself again and again that suffering cannot buy me happiness.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 113-114

You Don’t Deserve Happiness!

Joy, Letting Go, Life 0

Ask yourself now: “Do I deserve to be happy?” Be careful how you answer this question, however, for there’s a catch. If you answer no, then no matter what you do, you will not accept much happiness. If you answer yes, then you’re subscribing to the idea that happiness must be deserved and you will, therefore, have to fulfill all sorts of criteria (set by you) before you can be happy. Both no and yes are dishonest answers. The point is . . .

you do not deserve happiness!

This is not a message of gloom; it is a message of hope! One of the greatest single steps you can take to happiness now is to let go of the belief that happiness has to be deserved. You do not deserve happiness, you choose happiness. Happiness is natural. It is freely available to all. It is unconditional. And when you’re unconditional about happiness, then happiness merely happens! Happiness happens, if you let it.

The belief that happiness has to be deserved has no power, other than the power you give to it. The problem is, you’ve learned to give it a lot of power. This single thought not only reinforces your belief in guilt and unworthiness, but it also contributes to almost every other major fearful belief about happiness. It contributes, in particular, to the work ethic, the suffering ethic, and the martyr ethic — three ethics heavily endorsed by our society.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 100-101

Happiness and Guilt

Core Value, Joy 0

You enjoy as much happiness as you believe you’re worthy of.

Happiness is natural, easy, and effortless when your Self-acceptance is high, but happiness is blasphemous when your Self-acceptance is low. When you feel low, you dream of being happy, but you also secretly fear that maybe you’re not worthy of happiness, so you question, doubt, resist, test, defend against, overlook, and push away invitations to be happy….

You suffer as much pain as you believe you’re worthy of.

Self-acceptance (that is, Self-worth) is the key to both happiness and unhappiness. If you can accept yourself as whole, worthy, and well, then happiness is natural and acceptable to you. If, however, you judge yourself as “not good enough,” then you’re not good enough for happiness. Indeed, for as long as you judge that you’re “not good enough,” you must always throw happiness off for fear of guilt.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 92-93

Time to Be Happy

Joy 0

It takes as much time to be happy as it does to be depressed or resentful.

Happiness requires no extra time. In fact, it requires no time at all. As I’ve already stated, happiness waits on welcome, not on time.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 91

Soften with Play

Growth, Joy, Marriage, Relationships 0

Growing older involves accumulating life experience in a way that allows us to know ourselves, and the world around us, generously, hopefully, and with a minimum of denial. If reality is to bring us meaning rather than despair, however, we need to learn to soften life’s hard edges with hope rather than illusion. Which means that we need to learn how to play….

When we engage each other in real and playful ways, we touch those places that have been most injured, and are therefore most closed to growth, with love, kindness, and compassion. We bring our deepest fears into creative contact with each other. In ways that are at once real and not real, that simultaneously embody both past and present, play, once again, invites seemingly immutable aspects of our histories into the present, and so enlivens parts of ourselves that have become deadened, lightens parts that have become too heavy to carry, and teaches us to live with pains that have all too often become too great to bear.

— Mark O’Connell, PhD, The Marriage Benefit, p. 171, 185

The Deciding Vote

Joy, Peace 0

The perception that happiness is a decision affirms that attitude is first, circumstance is second. It teaches you that whatever is happening, you always carry the deciding vote when it comes to happiness, success, love, and peace of mind. Sometimes this is easy to remember; other times it’s not so easy. Once again, it’s when you forget that you must ask for help.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 54

Your Choice

Joy, Life 0

Nothing in the world can make you happy; everything in the world can encourage you to be happy….

The world cannot take away your right to happiness or sadness. It may often appear to be trying very hard to take this choice away, but truly it cannot. Events in life can so conspire that you may lose sight of this choice, but never is the choice destroyed. In truth, the decision to be happy or sad always rests with you, whether you can see it or not. It’s when you temporarily lose sight of this choice that you must ask for help.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 48, 51

Pursuing Happiness

Joy, Letting Go, Peace 2

It’s ironic that the only joy you ever experience while pursuing happiness is when you very occasionally allow yourself to rest, relax, and stop pursuing happiness. Think of what joy you’d experience if you dared to stop pursuing happiness completely. Think how fearless you would be, how creative and at peace you would be, and how free you would be to enjoy the world more fully if you were to stop pursuing happiness and simply start accepting and allowing happiness to happen.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now!, p. 46

The Sanctity of the Present

Children, Joy, Life, Parenting 0

Too often, we miss the sanctity of the present. The present usually arrives peacefully, offering itself as a refuge over and over again while we sit muddled in our minds. We might believe that our thoughts are productive or even interesting, but we’re really ignoring the gift of the day before us.

This is where our children can teach us. babies absorb the world around them, touching, tasting, and seeing. They delight in their senses, enjoying the unexpected swoop of a robin or the warmth of the sun emerging from a cloud. Let’s suspend our thinking for a change, return to the simple and original mind with which we were born. Let’s immerse ourselves in the river of the senses — to drift, swim, and float in the day.

— Lisa Groen Braner, The Mother’s Book of Well-Being, p. 100-101

Focus on Abundance

Gratitude, Healing, Joy 0

When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.

It is true that we can’t be in denial about the pain in our life. That is damaging to our physical and emotional health. And just as importantly,

We can’t be in denial about the abundance in our life!

— Susan Jeffers, PhD, Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 132-133