TEACH YOURSELF TO BE HAPPY

Most of us smile when we hear little children giggling and laughing. They seem to laugh with their whole bodies, from the tips of the toes to their foreheads and their arms are usually flying around like a conductor's baton at the sheer joy and music of their laughter. Adult laughter however, is much more restrained.

A few years ago, for a few months I helped out a friend in a place new to me, the modern trading office. The first change I noticed was that there was barely any sound in the room. No one spoke in a normal, and especially not in a loud voice. The television was tuned to BNN or some other business news channel but other than the sibilant earnestness that is the tone used to proclaim and declaim market changes, any natural laughter seemed to be inappropriate, as I soon found out, to my personal chagrin.

So even business is now conducted with silent respect and little extravagant emotions. What about what we consider appropriate behaviour on our own time? Sports allow noise, it proves you are enjoying yourself. Restaurants, not much sound there whether in conversation or real or pretended enjoyment. Transit, most people are playing computer games, reading text on their laptops or staring at posters. A lot of noise from metal on metal but anyone with a raised voice, is either looked at askance as a weirdo or we think that they must be school kids to be so oblivious to the rest of our quiet behaviour.

So where do we go to be happy? Our computers don't give us much contact with other people. There is obviously not much emotional, and of course, no physical contact at all. Blogging to strangers, making some new friends. Maybe if you are very lucky and those you communicate with are even sometimes telling the truth. There is no laughing together here though. Somehow an Emoticon does not chortle or even add sound to our lives.

Nevertheless, wherever you are and wherever you do go, you can ensure that you can be happy. Not only will you be happy, but you can make others who meet you happy too. All it starts with is a bit of reflection and some changes you can easily make to your behaviour.

I am convinced that you can turn every frown upside down if you try. I am also convinced that you will become a different person if you do. No longer will everything around you seem doomed to disappoint, your ennui will no longer be what is noteworthy about you. Your smile, however, might become your most memorable feature. The question is can you actually handle being happy? Only you can decide if you are willing to turn your life around.

When you are ready, take a small step forward, then go for it. To begin, take a small measure of reflection to see how far you have come. The mistakes you made are part of your life, yes, but so are a lot of important milestones that you have passed as you grew into the accomplished and confident person that you became. You are no longer constrained or answerable to many people. You may however, shackled yourself to a negative view of your life and neglect to remind yourself of how much you have accomplished, accumulated and lived through.

Life became a miracle to me when I realized that not only was I alive and well and generally living a pretty happy life, but it was still ongoing. It actually was going on around me, with or without my cooperation or participation. I then realized I could make a choice to be part of the life around me or sit on the sidelines indefinitely.

Loss of an important person in your life, leaves a large hole, make no mistake. Illness that is overcome, lets you sit on the sidelines longer than you may actually need to. Other setbacks can become a permanent part of your lifestyle if you choose to put them in front of you and keep your anger, frustration, disappointments and bitterness about some past event polished and brought out on each and every occasion, rather than set down in it's proper place in the past.

Sure you had some setbacks, losses, disappointments and sometimes probably actually had some heartaches and heartbreaks. You also had some very wonderful people and experiences along your journey so far.

When you think of your life in balance, and you let yourself appreciate and celebrate, you can see that most of us have already experienced more than we ever dreamed we might. Not only could we not have predicted where the turns in the road of our journey might take us, but the wonder of it all, was for all the times there were sorrows, there were also hundreds of other happy, even blissful times.

The miracle of life is something to be celebrated, anticipated with optimism and gratitude for all we have been given, all we have learned and earned.

Beyond this, we might yet, if we are lucky, teach ourselves not only to SMILE again and be happy, as addictive and contagious as this is; we might also learn to be childlike somewhere along the way. That's when we will know we have made real progress in the quality of our lives.