I just want to be happy!

He did not look happy at all. He was really upset that his life was not going the way he planned it. “Life was not supposed to be this hard.” He kept repeating to himself. “Why am I so unlucky at work, in my relationship, with my health!” The thought of getting out there and giving it his all was just too much for him. “I just want to be happy!” He exclaimed. “If only I had a better career, the right relationship, better health, I would be able to do all the things I dream about and I would be able to finally be happy.”

“I just want to be happy!”

There are people that believe that if they get lucky, they will win an amazing life. That they will win happiness. When I ask people what they want most in life, most people say they want to be happy.

When I ask people what they want most in life, most people say they want to be happy.

People buy things to make them happy but that does not last very long. They go out and have an experience to make them happy and that does not last long either. So we keep searching for this thing we call happiness and we never find lasting happiness. We keep hoping that we will feel it. That we will get to be like those lucky people that are always happy.

What many of those people do not realize is that happiness is a feeling that can be created and felt at anytime. It takes changing the way that we look at happiness, from being something that we get or something we feel as a result of a circumstance we are in control of.

happiness is a feeling that can be created and felt at anytime

Sure we all have unhappy moments and we all feel pain from time to time. That is not something that we can control but we can feel happiness if we learn how to change the meaning that we attach to everything that happens. We get to choose the meaning for every circumstance in our lives and it is the meaning that we attach that produces the resulting emotion.

We get to choose the meaning for every circumstance in our lives

When we attach a disempowering meaning, which usually happens by default for most people, we will feel anger and resentment when something happens to us that causes us pain. If we change that meaning to something more empowering we suddenly go from anger to hope and from resentment to gratitude.

If we change that meaning to something more empowering we suddenly go from anger to hope and from resentment to gratitude.

If your goal is to feel happiness in life, try these three simple steps and see how you feel?

1. Change your Body, Your feelings are attached your physical body. When your change how you position your body your feelings change too. What do people do when they are happy? Are they sitting on the couch slumped over with a remote or are they dancing their face off? Put on some music and dance to the rhythm, tap your feet, shake your head, clap your hands. Get into it with your entire being. If you can't bring yourself to do that, then go for a walk, get the blood flowing and get oxygen in your brain, you need to feel good to feel happy. You need to be hydrated and oxygenated to feel happy. Start with the basics, your body.
2. Change your Mind, Your mind likes to wander. If you let it go it will go where the default programing tells it to go. If you want to feel happy,  you need to take control of your conscious mind, your awareness and use your focus. When you focus on yourself and on your problems, you will feel stressed and full of fear. When you focus on the people that you love, on your success, on what you are proud of and you feel gratitude, your heart will fill up with pride and happiness. You can control where your focus goes, it just takes effort to change your focus. Let's try something right now. Focus on your left pinky and move it up and down 10 times. Looks silly? Makes you smile? You can't focus on your problems when you are focusing on the things that are working out . If you are breathing, you have something they can be grateful for.
3. Change your Words, The things we say matter. The actual words we use really do matter, even if we only say them to ourselves and in our mind. I told someone that if they want to suffer less, they need to drink more water. They told me they agree and as they take a sip of water, they tell me that they HATE water. I looked at them and said, how hard would it be for you to change one word. Be sarcastic if you have to, but change the word. Say I LOVE water. She rolled her eyes and said, I love water. Then she took a long swig and finished the bottle. Changing the words that you use can be the difference that pushes you over the happiness hump. Instead of saying FML say, I control my happiness and I love that I can feel happy anytime I want.

Follow these three steps, change your body, mind and words and you can feel happy. Sounds too good to be true, this is all that it takes to be happy? Why was I wasting my whole life suffering when I could just change my mood in an instant. This is harder said than done. You need a reminder that you can do this and you need a good support system to help you do this. Getting the right people around you is a great help. With practice you will be able to master feeling happy at any moment.

Now that you have happiness, what is next? Well it might be about making other people feel happy or realizing that if you can control your happiness, you can take responsibility for those dreams you were putting off.

Go out and make your dreams a reality. Nothing is stopping you because YOU FREAKIN ROCK!

BIO: Joe Apfelbaum is the CEO and co-founder of digital marketing agency Ajax Union. He is a public speaker, certified Google Trainer, and published business author. Joe enjoys speaking and writing about a broad range of business topics in his seminars, webinars and articles. Joe is the host of the popular podcast CEO Mojo and the producer of GrowTime.tv. Joe is a member of the Board of Directors of the Entrepreneurs Organization in Brooklyn, a group with over 11,000 CEO’s and a contributing member of the INC Business Owners Council, a community of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Joe is proud of all his accomplishments, but most of all he is proud of his successful foodie wife and beautiful amazing kids.

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