“So, how’s the Happiness Project going?” she asked.

“Uh, oh, yeah… the Happiness Project,” I whispered.

“Yeah, you know. The one where you decided to choose to be happy for a whole month? Because of International Happiness Day? You wrote about it in..”

“Yeah, yeah! I remember, I remember! Well, it’s been a little rough…”

Be careful of what you write in blog posts.   Be careful of great ideas and month long experiments.  People may hold you to them. And THEN what are you going to do?

My Happiness Project started July 1, inspired by International Happiness Day, which was on July 10. I figured, hey, if I can choose to be happy for one day, why not go for a whole month? How hard could it be to choose to be happy every day for a month?

It’s hard. Let me tell you.

Because one can choose to be happy but that doesn’t mean you will necessarily feel happy.
I can say to myself every morning, “All right! Today I choose to be happy!” But if I don’t feel it, genuinely, what good is that choice, really? And this is the rub. That “feeling” aspect.

There are tricks and techniques. As Abe (Abraham-Hicks) would say, you can consciously choose what you focus on. And by focusing on what makes you happy, say, the way my cat sleeps with her head turned upside down, or the way it’s been so foggy every morning this week, or the fact I just finished a big writing project (yippee!), I can start to approach the outer fringes of happiness.

I find that if I’m choosing to be happy but not feeling happy, it’s because of Stuff. Life stuff. Work stuff. Situational stuff. Or body stuff. I allow my thoughts about Stuff to rob me of the feeling of happiness. Which, if you think about it, is stupid.

Because Stuff is temporary. Transitory. Changeable. For instance, if you’re not feeling happy right now chances are it’s because of Stuff. Certain stuff isn’t going your way. You could be dead tired yet still have 4 hours worth of work to finish. Or you maybe you just got off the phone with your mother who spent 20 minutes complaining non-stop about your older sister. Or you ate something foul and now you are puking your guts out with food poisoning.

All that Stuff is temporary. Changing constantly. Sure, right now you’re tired and overwhelmed, but tomorrow you may be ready and raring to go. And your mother, well, she is who she is and she’ll probably be that way tomorrow… but hopefully she won’t call you tomorrow. 

Stuff is changeable, and yet we let it dictate our mood. Good Stuff makes us happy. Less than Good Stuff makes us grumpy. This is what I’ve been noticing as I choose to be happy. That I
sacrifice my choice, my right to feel as I want to feel, to flotsam and
jetsam of Stuff.

But what if Stuff couldn’t make us feel other than how we choose to feel? What if we decided that Stuff wasn’t going to dictate our mood? 

So, if I have a gig (like I did last Friday) and I perform the song “But Beautiful” and it’s gorgeous… until that last note that faltered at the end of a phrase… and I’m videotaping the whole thing… and I desperately want that video to be great… and now it’s not because of that one note… can I be happy? Or just disappointed?

The truth is, I truly am disappointed. I wanted that video to be perfect. But yes, I can still choose to be happy. I can let go of my disappointment. I can think, “Oh, well. There’s always next time,” and move on to enjoying my life. Or I can let the fact that it’s not perfect this time rob me of my happiness. It really is a choice. It’s just a hard choice. Because our habit, my habit, is to let what’s happening dictate my mood. AND, somewhere deep down in my psyche, in my belief system, I believe that IF I feel badly about that one sour note, I’m less likely to create that same situation again.

So, this is how my Happiness Project is progressing. I’m working on it, folks. I’m still working on it. 

By the way, you may have read the post about my blog being stolen? Well, it wasn’t stolen. It was hacked. Which is Bad Stuff. But as a result, I found a new blog master who fixed the whole problem. Which is Good Stuff. See. It changes. So, why not choose to feel happy through it all?