Taking control: What to do when joy and happiness is inaccessible!

Before you knew the meaning of a goal, you had a general view that you wanted to be happy; and that happiness will come as a result of purposely doing something to achieve it.  It is therefore an inborn desire to tirelessly seek until you find it.

General perception of joy and happiness!

Happiness is a positive emotional state and is not necessarily depended on other factors such as money or other material possession.  Joy is a lifestyle of continued state of happiness.  It is an attitude of choosing positive thoughts, words and actions which support and promote positive feelings.  It is for this reason that after the euphoria of fame for instance, the state of unhappiness will rear its ugly face and declare your need for professional help.  This demonstrates that joy and happiness are inclined to inward self determination than being responsive to good things that cause incidental positive emotion. 

What to do to access joy and happiness!

Often you look outside when you feel unhappy.  This is the first mistake which will set you up to fail repeatedly because your happiness and joy comes from within self.  When you do not get this right, you will set out to find something or someone who could make you happy.  If you are unhappy, you will carry your unhappiness with you into any relationship and environment – family, job, fitness club, even the church.  A tendency is to put all blame on the other party; yet you had your emotional issues which are still there regardless of other people’s attempts to meet you halfway by ignoring your controlling or manipulative behavior.  This means you need to know and internalize the truth; that if you carry a bad energy, it will ruin all things you become part of.  So, the remedy lies within you!  Let us consider the following:

1.      The law of love: The law of love is spiritual and says – Love your Creator first and love others as yourself.   It is easy to love your Creator because you can look at things He has given you – life, health, provision of things you need and could not produce without His assistance like high intellect, healthy babies, etc.  It is easy to love yourself; but it is challenging to love others unconditionally.

2.      The significance of loving others:  A law is binding and applies in all circumstances.  For an example; if your mother in-law hates you, you will likely be challenged to love her; and that will violate the law of loving others as yourself. Let me explain; you love yourself all the time – when you have done good things and when you made mistakes because your ego will surely reason it out and water-down your responsibility to love unlovable people who caused the conflict.  When you retaliate for any injustice, it does not tally with loving unconditionally.  In such incidents you are required to revisit the issue and consciously choose to forgive from your heart; meaning feeling joy as you let go hurting emotions. 

3.      Forgiveness leads to happiness and joy: The key to experiencing happiness and joy is forgiving all people who inflicted emotional pain.  It is also one of the key factors of attaining good health and access to wealth. If you read the Bible, God requires that you make peace with your brother before you approach Him about giving thanks and appreciation to Him.  This is hard but it is a law which opens doors for your happiness and joy.

The cost of experiencing joy and happiness is choosing not to harbor any negative emotion even if you have not provoked the other person.  In other words there is no excuse for not forgiving those who hurt you.  Successful maintenance of this virtue denotes spiritual maturity.  It is all about taking control of your life!

Taking control: Stir your joy by counting your blessings!

Counting your blessings is refusing to see the bottle as half empty, but half full.  It is inculcating the positive attitude towards your past, present and the future. It is always perceiving the big picture of success and expecting to receive that which you seek.

Stirring your joy!

The secret is that your mind does not know the difference of the myth and the reality.  Its task is to work on whatever you allow and focus on and ensure that it happens.  So if you dwell on your unpleasant past, you will surely see a flood of unpleasant circumstances in your life.  When you allow your pleasant thoughts to flood you mind, you will attract pleasant circumstances in your life. If you can bring your past joyful moment of your first date now and experience the joy you felt then, you got the concept!  You will know that you can control what you think about and therefore you are indeed could be the determiner of your joyful life.  This is a decision you must take to change the direction of your present and future life. I use the word ‘stir’ to instill the connotation of you generating positive feelings within you; thus convincing yourself that you can maintain positive attitude and change your life for the better.

Why counting your blessings is important!

When you sit down and consciously think of your past life which contributed to the good part of you, you will realize that you would not be a strong person you are had you been through a blissful life.  In other words rough experiences toughened your resilience to overcome life challenges.  None of the historical heroes and current achievers had a smooth childhood or great parents or uneventful schooling.  They have all been through challenging times to achieve their goals.  The exercise of counting your blessings therefore will enable you to visit your past with the purpose of thanking all the contributors of good and bad experiences.  The idea is to seal your emotional wounds with love and not bitterness or judgment.   Words are indestructible.  When you know this truth, you will understand why God said He will judge you by what you have said.  What you say effectively generates good or bad energy which affects the world.  This is why He gave us guidelines in the Bible about the nature of words that would bring life and not death in Philippians 4:8; “…whatever things are true, …noble, …just, …pure, …lovely, …are of good report, if there is any virtue and anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.”

Personal benefits of counting your blessings!

Those who count their blessings experience spiritual growth which manifest in their social life.  How? You learn to see good in people who raised you and added value through all social institutions you went through; this is a plus which put a smile on your face and that of your Creator.  Remember that when you decide to generate many smiles, you do yourself a favor of activating a healing mechanism in your body.  What a smart Creator we have! If you choose to be bitter, you surely are on a queue to developing one or more of a life threatening diseases.   Knowledge is power! Do your own study about this truth.

The day you become convinced that your good or bad thoughts, feelings and actions bring life or death; you would have taken purposeful steps towards being the light and the salt of this planet.  Everything is energy and therefore negativity anywhere will surely affect you.  This is another truth you must learn so that you know that your comments do count positively or negatively.  Mankind is to take dominion of this planet by nurturing it and not destroying it.  The starting point is focusing on you to be a positive influence so that jointly we could indeed bring good in this life!