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Tag: happiness

The hunt for joy

Times have been tough for many around the world (including me). While wading through ups and downs, I’ve learned the importance of hunting — an active effort, not a passive longing — for joy.

My wish this holiday season is that you become as relentless as I have become in the quest and creation of joy: joy for self, joy for others, and joy for this puzzling magical surprising world we get to live in.

Here’s to a joy-filled new year and many, many, many more to come.

Pick your word

It’s been a heck of a year and with a few days left, I want to share a ritual of mine: Choose a word, a theme you’d like to set for for the year to come. (This year my word was “Courage,” and boy, did I need it.) For 2021, I’m choosing “Joy.” I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to welcome more spark, more pleasure, more happiness, and more fun.

Tell me your word for the year to come @redheadlefthand.

Sending greetings and wishes for a restorative, healthy, and calm new year — a year filled with laughter, joy, and magic.

The psychology of wanting what you can’t have

There’s something out of reach, and your mind is focused on it like a laser. A job, a relationship, a sum of money, a status. Whatever it is, it is unavailable, and you know it. But that doesn’t stop you from dreaming about it.

Your brain has tricked you into thinking this is where the rewards are. A tasty cocktail of novelty, desire, delayed gratification, and dopamine has you convinced this is what will make you happy, this will bring peace and prosperity and satisfaction. You compare yourself to those who DO have, and you’ll never measure up.

This is easy.

You’re spending your energy and time on the unattainable. Your yearning is conveniently preventing you from focusing your attention on what you do have. While you fantasize about what you can’t have, the problems you can solve, the circumstances you can change, the talents you do possess sit idle on the sidelines.

Catch yourself. Catch yourself longing and redirect your thoughts to what is in the realm of possibility. Channel your energy towards places you can affect.

I have a hunch you’ll find more happiness there.

Life’s a set up.

We all know the crime scene where the good guy is framed by the bad guy. “It’s not fair,” we say. “He was framed!”

We set ourselves up every day.

Happiness, good friends, a rewarding career, an organized household — they’re the result of choices. The places we go and the people we surround ourselves with result in particular outcomes.

The choices aren’t always easy, but that’s why not everyone is successful.

Set yourself up to prosper.