Happy Life Experience 1:
Envision Where You are Headed in Life. Be Specific to be Successful at Living It.

And it consists of awareness now of what you really want and moving toward it, with the acceptance that there will be bumps and detours along the way.

A happy life: being right here right now, and moving forward.

But so often people let themselves get sucked into black holes: unresolved pain from past relationships and the consequential fear of letting go to love again, for example, or unresolved anger from getting a disease or serious injury and the consequential living for the disease or injury versus living for your self.

Because people allow themselves to get sucked down and backwards, they tend to passively stumble through their days. Instead of making things happen, they let things happen to them.

Of course, when you are driven to make things happen, they are with greater happiness, health, love and peace in mind. When you let things happen to you, so many are driven by other’s interests that are not at all about your happiness and health, or love and peace.

The more specifically you envision the path to your happy life, the more likely you’ll be on that path.

In this life-suffocating mindset, people fall into life-suffocating beliefs: for example, the belief that getting another item checked off the endless to-do list – answering more emails, washing the dishes, selling something on eBay, watching Survivor – is a greater priority than clearing through the emotional issues and taking control of life once again.

Providing real solutions … enabling you to take control of your life back from whoever or whatever else holds the reins … is of course what “intense experiences,” and the free “Live Deep, Be Happier” newsletter, are all about. With all of the above in mind, here is an essential (and enjoyable) experience for a happy life.


Specifically Now, What Do You Really Want?

One of the most powerful and important experiences to have routinely – and right now is the best time to begin gifting yourself with it – is to understand, envision and record the next episode of your life.

What do you really want and need to be happy? Where do you intend to go from the only point you can impact, this point forward, toward living the happy life you deserve?

It is most ideal to have a big-picture view of where you intend your life to go from here. Over the next week, next six months, next five years.

But it is useful and most effective to apply the Japanese concept of Kaizen -- to break things down into their “component parts” -- to steer your journey toward that big-picture vision.

So, for instance, what do you want and envision in terms of your love relationship? Family and friend relationships? For health? Career? Finances? Your passions?

One very strong recommendation: don’t just settle for a vague idea of what you want and where you intend to go. “I am going to be twenty pounds lighter” or “I am going to turn my passion into my career” are not nearly enough.

With only a vague notion of what you want for a happy life, your path to achieving it will only be vague at best.

Envision the specifics of what you want. See the specific steps you will be taking.

And this is very important too: be realistic, be honest with yourself, by anticipating the roadblocks you will likely encounter and seeing the healthy actions you take in response.

To use the example of becoming twenty pounds lighter, a segment of the vision may go like this:

See yourself eating your next meal, and the meals thereafter. Meals high in fresh vegetables and clean, low-fat sources of protein like chicken, fish and beans. See yourself exercising every day starting today; walking a mile outside, or biking, swimming, lifting weights, whatever you choose.

See yourself walking up the stairs versus taking the elevator at work, and parking in the farthest spaces in parking lots versus hunting down the closest space to walk that much more.

And envision the inevitable temptations and life-suffocating excuses, too. See and feel yourself tired or sad and believing you therefore “deserve” that giant hunk of coconut cream pie as medicine for your blues; then see yourself make the choice to bypass that temptation.

See yourself stressed out and worried and therefore believing that digging deeper into that pile of paperwork is more important than your daily exercise; and then see yourself making the choice to bypass that excuse because you know the exercise is as mandatory for a long, healthy and happy life as sleeping.

And of course see your success. See and feel the emotions of looking down at that scale and losing those first five pounds. And the next five. See yourself shopping for jeans that fit because your current jeans are a couple sizes too big.

You get the idea. The more specifically you envision the path to your happy life … what you’ll see, hear, feel, the likely roadblocks you’ll encounter … the more likely you’ll be on that path.

Yes, of course lions and tigers and bears you didn’t expect may leap out to scare you off your happy life course.

But while things happen to us all the time that we didn’t expect, as long as you are conscious there is no such thing as events beyond your control. You always have the control of how you respond to the events.

When you see where you intend to go ... and you anticipate the likely roadblocks including your own emotions ... and you anticipate there will be some unexpected roadblocks as well ... you may have to take some detours to get where you are going. But you will get there.

One More Important Thing

Record it. Locating the specific vision of where you will be going in terms of your relationships, health, finances, career and all the rest in your head and heart through the steps described above is FAR more effective for a happy life than letting life happen to you.

With only a vague notion of what you want for a happy life, your path to achieving it will only be vague at best.

But recording your specific plans for where you will be going make it FAR, FAR more effective. Writing it down by hand has been shown to be most powerful, because in short the act of focusing your thinking and involving your “motor skills” (hand moving, etc.) creates a very strong imprint, or “map,” on your brain.

But if you prefer, you can record your voice or videotape yourself describing in as much detail as possible where you are headed. This too can create a strong imprint on your brain.

Furthermore, when you have it in writing, or audio, or video, you can – and you should – routinely revisit it to help stay on course. And to revise it, as what you want and need is of course a fluid thing throughout your life; on this note, the key again is to stay aware of what you want, and to actively remap the course if you so choose.

You are energy in motion. There is no stopping you. But you have been given the means, in this life, to help guide your course via the gift of your consciousness. You have the choice to guide it toward a happy life, or away from one. You can allow yourself to get pulled into the black hole of your past. Or you can steer your course forward toward your stars.

So what do you want? What are your stars, and do you choose to direct yourself toward them?



ALSO SEE:

The 9 Timeless Secrets of Being Happy: Inspirational Video

Get the New Book Free! The 23 Most Powerful Secrets to be Happy