[Daily OM]: Those of us on the path of personal
and spiritual growth have a tendency to analyze our unhappiness in order
to find the causes and make improvements. But it is just as important,
if not more so, to analyze our happiness. Since we have the ability to
rise above and observe our emotions, we can recognize when we are
feeling joyful and content. Then we can harness the power of the moment
by savoring our feelings and taking time to be grateful for them.
Recognition is the first step in creating change, therefore recognizing
what it feels like to be happy is the first step toward sustaining
happiness in our lives. We can examine how joy feels in our bodies and
what thoughts run through our minds in times of bliss. Without
diminishing its power, we can retrace our steps to discover what may
have put us in this frame of mind, and then we can take note of the
choices we've made while there. We might realize that we are generally
more giving and forgiving when there's a smile on our face, or that we
are more likely to laugh off small annoyances and the actions of others
when they don't resonate with our light mood.
Once we know what it feels like and can identify some of the triggers
and are aware of our actions, we can recreate that happiness when we are
feeling low. Knowing that like attracts like, we can pull ourselves out
of a blue mood by focusing on joy. We might find that forcing ourselves
to be giving and forgiving, even when it doesn't seem to come
naturally, helps us to reconnect with the joy that usually precedes it.
If we can identify a song, a picture, or a pet as a happiness trigger,
we can use them as tools to recapture joy if we are having trouble
finding it. By focusing our energy on analyzing happiness and all that
it encompasses, we feed, nurture, and attract more of it into our lives,
eventually making a habit of happiness.