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
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 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
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
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
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
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
If we are not practiced in saying yes to life, then we can forget about bliss — we just want relief! Relief from our hectic lives, from our negative self-talk, from our perpetual fatigue. I used to think that I just had the thermostat set too low, at Relief, and that with a little more practice, I would easily move on up to Bliss. Instead, it turns out that the road to bliss and the road to relief head in completely different directions.
Relief isn’t much; it’s only an interruption of discomfort. It leads to a nice rest stop with a turnaround that plops you right back on the same road. Bliss, however, is the superhighway to the juiciness of life. As my musician friends Bev Daugherty and Garnett Hundley sing, “Live flat out, eat it all up with a spoon!” Having a high bliss tolerance means you’re willing to be pleased by life. And the better it gets, the more you can stand. In this scenario, you anticipate benevolence and are expanded by your experience. When you are consistently grateful, it’s impossible to feel like a victim; you know that no matter how well it may be disguised, you can find the blessing in whatever’s going on.
— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 140
To be happy, it’s good to make a point of knowing what it is in your life that helps you remember truth. What is it that helps you to love, to be real, to be free? What is it that helps you wake up from the slumber of your conditioning? As for myself, I love the sounds of laughter and friendship. I love to look at the stars, to walk in nature, to listen to the river’s song, to smell the heavenly scent of stargazer lilies, to watch a roaring fire, to feel its warmth and see its light. I love to be still, to smile, to meditate, and to pray. How about you?
— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 24-25
Noticing and counting the beautiful reasons unexpected things happen for us ends the mystery. If you miss the real reasons, the benevolent reasons that coincide with kind nature, then count on depression to let you know that you missed them. Anger, frustration, and aggressive reasons can always be imagined — and what for? People who aren’t interested in seeing why everything is good get to be right. But that apparent rightness comes with disgruntlement, and often depression and separation. Depression can feel serious. So “counting the genuine ways that this unexpected event happened for me, rather than to me” isn’t a game. It’s an exercise in observing the nature of life. It’s a way of putting yourself back into reality, into the kindness of the nature of things.
— Byron Katie, I Need Your Love — Is That True?, p. 187