30 Day Happiness Challenge

Popular wisdom tells us it takes 30 days to change a habit or behavior. Does this apply to happiness?Take the 30 Day Happiness Challenge and let's find out. 

Any time you don't like the way you are feeling, choose happiness, right then, even before you fix all of those things you want to change. In any situation, just choose happiness.  

Whoa, any situation? Yes, pretty much. I haven't found one that can't be improved by the peace of acceptance at the very least. For example, if you read the last Breakout Message, you know I spent more than 2 years with a misdiagnosis for emphysema, taking the wrong drugs for the wrong thing, As my ability to breathe declined and the pain in my arthritic knees increased. I confess, I dreaded what appeared to lie ahead. Still, over and over I chose some form of happiness, sometimes, peace, sometime gratitude for this era of the Internet, connected to you and coaching via Skype.

Ready to start? Close your eyes. Take a sweet, slow breath. Notice your answer to this question: If you could feel any way you want to right this minute, what would it be? When you have an answer open your eyes. How do you feel now? Is it some form of happiness?

If you still want to feel some painful emotion, you've got some work to do. "Emotional Options: A Handbook to Happiness" will show you how. 

Reviews/info in digital or paperback format  http://amzn.com/1878639005  

Why 30 days of this choosing happiness? Decades of practice taught me that it's a challenge to remember and a bigger challenge to do it. Why would something so easy and beneficial be so hard to do? Because we have learned a different way. We may habitually, unconsciously use other feelings to make our way through life, like:

• Fear to keep us safe
• Anger to stand up for ourselves
• Guilt to correct our behavior
• Sorrow to prove we care

A guy named Destin posted a YouTube video that shows how hard it is to change the way we do something we've learned to do without thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0. It's well worth a watch to prove you aren't just lazy or stupid. It really is a challenge to change an emotional habit, or any other kind..

Choosing happiness is not the only component of emotional health but it's power and ease make it the best first step I know. Please take it and let us know how it goes for you.

Cheering you on to happiness and success with love, 

Mandy

How to Begin Again? First New Steps.

Dear Subscribers, 

This is a new step for me, back from the brink. Maybe you need a new step too?
I was slowly shutting down. A few years ago I began to have more and more trouble breathing. Then came the dreaded diagnosis -- emphysema. I saw my mother and an aunt slowly suffocate from it. I knew I had a lot of work to do to avoid despair, panic, depression.

I've had arthritis since my 30's -- all over, with bone spurs springing up like mushrooms. The combo left me so short of breath that I could only walk about half a block before I had to stop to catch my breath -- with joints on fire.

Grateful for the work I've done on myself and with others for decades, I managed to find peace most of the time. But since I didn't know what I could count on my body for, I stopped planning seminars and most travel. My gaze turned inward, the outer world grew smaller. I didn't feel as if I had much to share that would help anyone but me.


But wait! After the third respiratory specialist fires me for refusing to go on oxygen, I ask my family physician if there is a definitive test for emphysema. You betcha, a CAT Scan.  The results come in on my birthday, three years ago, No Sign of emphysema! The best birthday present ever .Off the drugs, on with life. My breathing slowly improves. But now my knees begin to give out. The left one locking in oddly bent positions, so on March 30 I got a new one. Amazing. Here I am a few days after surgery.

In the middle, there's this cataract surgery, but enough is enough! So what's this got to do with you? I promised useful info, not a litany of my troubles.

At some point, we all have to begin again in recovery, from the loss of a loved one, an addiction, a divorce, getting fired, release from prison, the military, a death sentence. Sooner or later we all have to make some kind of new start. Daunting?

I turn to a quote from my own recovery book, Travelling Free, info: http://amzn.com/1878639048  "If we want to change our lives, all we have to do is turn, perhaps ever so slightly and take the very next step in a new direction. It's never, ever too late to change course and follow our dreams."

• Tell my dear subscriber list, "I value our connection; this is why it's been so long since you heard from me."
• Equalize the focus on the well-being of self and others -- from mostly fixed on others
• Accept new coaching clients
• Walk or do water aerobics and the dang knee exercises
• Have a really good time

Time for you to set out I a new direction? Cheering you on to inspired first steps.

With love and thanks,

Mandy