True Happiness

      What truly makes you happy? Are you experiencing your ultimate happiness at this very moment? I am not talking about “sure, everything is fine” happiness...I am talking about waking up and knowing “today is going to be amazing; tomorrow is going to be even better; I cannot believe I get to live this life I have” happiness. Experiencing a life beyond happiness. Living in complete EUPHORIA. If you are already living a life that cannot get any better, then you have already made happiness a habit. If you are like me (or the old version of me), then you have made a habit of gossip, envy, guilt, helplessness, debt, clutter, disorganization, frustration, sickness, an unhealthy body, troubled relationships and the list could go on. Now, don't get me wrong...the old me did have happiness in my life but I was used to mediocrity or just getting by. I was not living my best life. I was not experiencing my ultimate happiness.
               My husband I have been self employed since the day we were married. Many circumstances led us to “the family business.” My husband's father was a brick mason and my husband grew up working hard from a very young age. While in college his father became very sick with cancer that eventually led to his untimely death. My husband chose to leave college to work full time laying brick to help his parents make ends meet during his father's losing battle with cancer. For a myriad of reasons, I did not complete my four year college degree either. We married young (which worked out well for us, but definitely NOT for everyone) and decided not to wait to have children. Though the years I have mostly stayed at home with our children, helped my husband with scheduling and book keeping and temporarily worked outside the home every now and then to bring in extra money when business was slow. I may not have missed a precious moment with my kids, but we lived a life of mediocrity. We just barely stayed afloat year after year.

            My day of enlightenment came when I heard about the book The Secret by Rhonda Bryne. Both my husband and I read the book and watched the DVD. We consider ourselves to be open to new or different ways of thinking, so the concept of like attracting like was one we were open to and wanted to learn more about. Reading The Secret led to an snow ball effect for us. Our favorite date night was now going to the book store looking for any books we could find pertaining to the idea of the power of attraction.

We could see this new way of thinking making drastic changes in our lives. However, being creatures of habit, we would focus intently on attracting great things to us and just when things were good we would just get lazy with our focus again and find ourselves back at square one. We did this dance with ourselves for about three years...once again, just.....getting.....by. I call this our relapse. Even though we could see the cycle and see the positive things brought to us by the power of attraction our old selves continued to get in our own way. We would revert back to having clutter and disorganization in our lives causing us frustration and unhappiness.

              Last year my husband noticed a habit of hair pulling that my son developed. He was literally pulling out his hair under his bang line. I still am amazed that my husband was able to catch this bad habit so quickly since where the hair was being pulled out could not be seen by just looking at our son. I am not going to lie.....I. Freaked. Out. I immediately, I ran to the internet to research this behavior and looking for advice to help us help him. As we learned more and more about this bad habit called trichotillomania we also learned a lot about habits and ways to break bad habits. Fortunately, we were able to examine this habit with our son and find the cue that started the behavior. Once we found the cue we were able to replace the behavior with another task (replaced the act of hair pulling) and, Voila, no more hair pulling. Examining and researching my son's bad habit he had developed started a whole new thinking process for me. It was what Oprah calls an “Aha Moment” for sure! We are all creatures of habit. If the power of attraction is the theory that like attracts like and ultimately I want to attract happiness, then I have to be happy. How do I create good habits? How do I make happiness a habit? I have to run on happiness autopilot and make happiness a habit.

          After completing further research on habits, I combined my new knowledge of making/breaking habits with my experiences of the power of attraction and devised my happiness habit plan with the purpose of attracting happiness into my existence. We have all joked about how you drove to work this morning and don't even remember how you got there. That drive to work is a habit and did not require your brain to focus on it completely. You were able to focus on other thoughts and still make it to work in one piece. You got to work running on autopilot. This connection of building habits to the power of attraction was a realization that physically knocked the breath out of me!

               I am so excited to share this idea and knowledge. I am not a professional writer (ekkk....obviously). I am not writing this blog to stroke my ego with what an eloquent writer I am. I am writing this to share my enlightenment. I am writing from the heart. I am writing from an urge I have pushing me to share this realization I have had with as many people as possible despite how silly I may feel about doing something I am not comfortable with. Now, I want to urge you to make a commitment to being happy and start your Happiness Habit today. You will begin to experience your best life. Together we can create a habit of happiness; thus, attracting extreme happiness into their existence. Happiness, like a clock; it requires many cogs make it run. Examine all of the ideas, relationships, experiences etc. that are required for your happiness. You can attract all of those cogs into your existence and create your euphoria. I am excited to take this journey day by day and share my experiences.