Getting Started

"We are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves."— Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain

Before you can start to make changes in your life, you first need to identify what it is that you're looking to change. In order to begin the transition into a new approach to your life, it is important that you assess your life right now at this point in time. Take a moment to make a list of all the things in your life that you currently view as problems and want to change. There is nothing `right' or `wrong' that you can put on your list, just write down whatever enters your mind. At the back of this book you will find blank pages for you to do this exercise. This way, you can refer to this list at any point throughout your journey and use it as a point of reference.

After you make your list, look to see if your list is mainly composed of things that are more "emotional," or if it's composed of things that are more "circumstantial." An example of something "emotional" on your list might be: "I am constantly anxious and want to feel calmer," whereas something "circumstantial" could be: "I am assigned too much school work and have trouble getting it all done." Recognizing the difference between the two is an important step in learning how to put things in perspective. You cannot control nor change many of the circumstances in your life; you can only control and change how you feel about them. Let's face it: for the rest of your life, you will continue to be confronted with problems and stressful situations. It sucks, but that's just how life is. The good news, however, is that most of what you seek to change—your feelings toward these problems and situations—is completely controlled by you. For instance, if you refer back to the examples mentioned earlier, you can see that feeling anxious is something you have control over and can work to change, whereas the amount of schoolwork you are given is not within your control. Therefore, in order to change the "circumstantial" problems in your life, you must change your emotional responses to them. Rather than resigning and feeling hopeless about the fact that you cannot change certain circumstances you are dealt, you can take an active role in changing how you view and feel about those circumstances.

Once you realize that you hold the solution within yourself, you can start to change your perspective. Dr. Wayne Dyer, a prominent author and speaker in the realm of self-development, wrote in his book The Power of Intention: "Change the way you view things and the things you view will change." This phrase says something very profound: if you want to change something in your life, all you need to do is change the way you think or feel about it. Achieving and maintaining this mindset is not an easy task, but, if you focus whole-heartedly and practice what you learn, it can eventually come to be your natural way of thinking. As we move forward, we will explore this idea further and learn more about how to take command of our emotional responses.

Happiness

"Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions; it is governed by our mental attitude."—Dale Carnegie

"The purpose of our lives is to be happy."—Dalai Lama

So far, we have only been focusing on what we want to change or eliminate from our lives (such as stress, anxiety, and negative emotional responses,) and have yet to even speak about the ultimate goal that we wish to obtain: happiness. In order to expel or reduce the feelings of stress and angst from our lives, we must change how we view the circumstances that cause them. Believe it or not, the same holds true for happiness. In order to be truly happy, we must alter our perception—and even our definition—of happiness and what we believe to be its source.

Similar to feelings of stress or angst, we associate feelings of happiness with physical things or circumstances. What I mean by this is that we tend to measure our happiness (or unhappiness) by objects, circumstances, and other people. Therefore, we have a misconstrued perception of happiness, instead of seeing it for what it really is: an emotion that we, and we alone, can control.

Think about how you're feeling right now: are you happy or unhappy? What happened today that made you feel this way? If you are someone who bases your happiness on an object, circumstance, or the thoughts and actions of other people, then your answer will most likely be related to an object, circumstance, or person. Are you happy today because you scored higher than your classmates on a test, or because you bought new clothes? Are you unhappy today because you failed a test, or because the boy/girl you like didn't even look your way?

If you allow external factors such as these to control your happiness, you will never experience true happiness. Yes, these things may seem important, but they are always temporary and fleeting, and therefore, if we let our happiness revolve around these things, our happiness, too, will be temporary and fleeting. The test that we aced today we could just as easily fail tomorrow, and the clothes we bought this week will no longer be new next week. These things are frequently changing, so it is impossible to expect real, long-lasting happiness from them. That is not to say that we cannot experience joy or sadness in the moments that these events occur, but they should not be the determiners of our happiness on a long-term scale.

As we will learn to do with stress, we also want to put our happiness in perspective. We can start by simply analyzing the things that make us happy, and then by identifying whether they are internally or externally driven. What this means is figuring out what controls your happiness. Is your happiness dependent upon external forces like a test grade, friend, etc? Or is your happiness derived from an internal source that you control? We generally experience a mix of both internal and external sources of happiness in our daily lives, but the goal is to shift towards having more internally based happiness. In his "Wishes Fulfilled" seminar, Dr. Wayne Dyer quoted an accomplished Bulgarian philosopher, Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov: "Instead of always waiting for their needs to be satisfied by some external force, human beings can absolutely work inwardly by means of their own thoughts, their own will, and their own spirit to obtain nourishing and healing elements that they need." Happiness is one of these nourishing, healing elements that we need. It is what we all strive for; and it is presumably why you are reading this book.

One problem that is all too common in our everyday lives is the power shift—we give other people, objects, and,...