Operation Happiness: The 3-Step Plan to Creating a Life of Lasting Joy, Abundant Energy, and Radical Bliss - Hardcover

Ling, Kristi

 
9781623365943: Operation Happiness: The 3-Step Plan to Creating a Life of Lasting Joy, Abundant Energy, and Radical Bliss
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1623365945 ISBN 13: 9781623365943
Verlag: Rodale Books, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

In Operation Happiness, happiness strategist and life coach Kristi Ling teaches you how to create immediate, positive shifts in your life by proving that happiness is a skill that can be cultivated, learned, and mastered--much like playing an instrument.

After experiencing a long-term illness, a divorce, and the sudden deaths of loved ones, Ling spent years studying the science of happiness. She focused on identifying and testing specific emotional support tools. During this process, she discovered something that goes against everything we've been lead to believe about happiness: it isn't just something you feel; it's something you do. Based on this discovery, Ling outlines the three foundational principles that lead to a life of joy: Change Your View, Make Over Your Mornings, and Create New Habits.

Part memoir and part how-to guide, Operation Happiness combines compelling personal stories, inspiring perspective shifts, and clear actionable steps to help you create a solid foundation for sustainable happiness that will propel you into a new, light-filled way of living.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kristi Ling is a happiness strategist, transformational life and business coach, and inspirational speaker who works with individuals and organizations on building a firm foundation for lasting happiness and success. She has been featured in numerous media outlets such as Success Magazine, Entrepreneur, Mashable, and CNN. She is a contributing blogger for The Huffington Post and Aspire Magazine, and hosts a popular straight-talking podcast, Happy, free, and Wild with Kristi Ling. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.

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My Story . . . and Major Perception Changes

As I was sitting in my light-filled studio recently, working long hours on the proposal for this book, I received an urgent text from my brother Scott.

Scott: Are you sitting in front of your computer?

Me: Yes.

Scott: I'm sending you a link and then calling you.

Seconds later, the phone rang. Before I could say hello, he asked anxiously, "Did it come? Click on the link!"

"What is it?"

"Just open the link!"

I clicked, and a page with a photo of a joyful-looking couple appeared, along with a news article announcing that they had made a contribution to a local charity. I blinked twice, without the faintest idea why he was sending me this completely random, albeit positive piece of information.

"Are you looking at the link?" he asked.

I was shaking my head. I wanted to get off the phone and back to writing. "Yes, what is it?"

He launched into words that would permanently change the dynamic of my family.

"That's Mom's biological sister. Our aunt. And I just got off the phone with her."

My breath halted.

"At first, she didn't believe what I was telling her, that she had a sister and that I'm her nephew, but I sent her copies of records and some photos, and she definitely believes me now. And . . . Mom's mother is alive and well at eighty-eight years old."

Suddenly, I felt like I was in a lucid dream. My brain went into overdrive trying to sort out what this might mean for my family. It was a moment I thought would never happen. I'm talking never. I'd put the idea of ever being connected to that side of my family out of my mind and heart years ago. Sitting there in my old, worn office chair where I've spent countless hours writing, everything changed in an instant. My life, and the lives of my mother and brother, were forever shifted.

My mother was born in 1946, just after the war. Her mother was very young and couldn't keep her, so she gave my mother up for adoption. Although a wonderful, loving family raised my mother, she always had a deep desire to know where she came from. An embedded desire . . . on a cellular level.

Over the years, she had looked for her biological mother but, at some point, gave up on the idea and worked very hard to let it go, unwavering curiosity burning in a closed little box in her heart. Her mother went on with her life and kept the secret of my mother's birth for nearly sixty- seven years. Sixty. Seven. Years.

Growing up, I'd always wondered about it, too. It's strange to go through life knowing that you have another grandmother, a grandfather, and probably aunts, uncles, and cousins who have no idea you exist. But yet I, too, had tucked that wonder away in a box. I so strongly believed I would never know about that part of my family, I hadn't even thought about it for years.

My mother and her sister are beyond overjoyed to have found each other. It's been amazing to watch their meaningful, sisterly bond grow. Each had lost her other siblings and thought she was the last one surviving, until my brother connected them. Imagine . . . in midlife, after losing your siblings, discovering a wonderful sister you never knew existed! It's an amazing story. A miracle, really.

In the midst of these delicious events for my family, I found a powerful message. I believe I'm a wildly openhearted person and always do my best to carry a mind-set of anything can happen. Anything. I worked hard to adopt that mind-set, which has supported me greatly. Before I received that text from my brother, if you had asked me if there was anything--anything at all- -I believed would never happen in my life, I probably would have answered absolutely not. Never is a word I don't particularly dig.

But with the unexpected discovery of my biological aunt and grandmother, I realized that this particular never was buried so deep, my belief about it so absolute, I didn't even realize it was there! If there was anything at all I truly believed would never happen, this was it. Never. Until it did.

I share this with you because it's a fantastic example of exactly what this first part of Operation Happiness is about: changing your view. Being willing to shift things you've firmly believed, or not believed, for your entire life.

You will begin to change your view by searching for and opening those boxes hidden within your heart that hold deeply embedded limiting beliefs about happiness and keep you from your most incredible life; you will have to be willing to replace those beliefs with new ideas and perspective. Give yourself the gift of a blank slate. It's the first step to creating a permanent, positive shift and opening yourself to an entirely new level of amazing.

Be open, be willing, clear your heart, and get ready to let a whole new light in.

MY QUEST TO DECODE HAPPINESS

I truly love myself and my life. But believe me, it wasn't always that way. When I was growing up and all through my twenties, my life, for the most part, seemed like a consistent stream of struggle and mediocrity with a few highs here and there. But over the past twelve years, I've learned to embrace my truth as well as live by it. I've learned how to catch myself and make a shift when I'm stepping on my own toes and how to get out of my own way. I've stopped beating myself up and instead treat myself with understanding and compassion, knowing that I'm always doing the best I can. Most important, I've learned what happiness is and how to allow it to be the driving force of my life.

I wake up every morning filled with huge gratitude to finally be happy--and in complete control of my happiness. Along my path, I discovered a huge, life-altering truth about happiness, which I'm going to share with you in this chapter.

My own journey toward a permanent foundation for happiness that sustains and serves me daily was quite long. When I firmly decided at thirty-one years old that there had to be a better way to live, I dedicated myself passionately to studies of happiness, spirituality, and personal development, determined to change my life.

I made that decision in a definitive moment. It was early one cloudy, humid morning in the early summer of 2002, as I was once again lying in bed in a frustratingly dark place, absolutely dreading the day ahead. I'd been going through a ridiculously difficult time at work and within myself.

What I'd thought was my dream job had turned out to be a soul-crushing disappointment, and I felt like a cat stuck in a box, scratching and clawing with no way out. On top of it all, I was in the middle of planning my wedding and had all this crazy talk going on in my monkey mind: "Will he still want to marry me if I'm unemployed?" and "If I tell him I don't want this corporate job, fancy car, or fast-paced party life anymore, will he think I'm a fraud?" In many moments, it felt like every part of my world was literally imploding.

As I was lying there that morning, I received a loud message from within the center of my soul that, until hitting this wall of extreme darkness, I'd been unwilling to hear. The message was clear: In spite of everything that was causing my angst, frustration, and emotional pain at that time, the core foundation and creator of the problems was me.

Me? The problem? This was a new concept. How could I be the problem? I was a victim of circumstance!

But somehow, in that moment, I saw clearly for the first time that I was the major player, the MVP in fact, in every area my life, and if I chose to be, I could be in complete control. I had all the power in the world to create positive change, to escape the crazy, stressful situations I had chosen and continued to allow--and I hadn't been tapping into that power.

The only person who could change my world of gloom, mediocrity, and...

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Verlag
Rodale Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1623365945
ISBN 13 
9781623365943
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
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Verantwortliche Person
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