Slowly sneaking happiness

I'm reading The Happiness Project again. Actually, now I'm really into it I don't believe I actually finished it last time I started it. This time I am totally engrossed. I'm writing notes and thinking about everything I'm reading. It's coming into a time where I am beginning to think of my theme word for the upcoming new year so with all the notes I'm taking an idea is beginning to form. I love really getting into a book and working out what the authors visions and suggestions mean to me. How can I apply the principles suggested in my everyday life. What does Happiness mean to Leisa as opposed to Gretchen Rubin?

Regardless though, happiness seems to be sneaking up on me again. Not that it ever left mind you, but I've found myself getting overwhelmed by the sheer busy-ness of life again and had forgotten to pause and reflect on how good life actually is. Over the course of last week I had opportunity to sit and listen to some beautiful, creative people who have so much passion for their craft that it just fanned the flames of creativity and possibility in me and my world once again opened up into a whole new realm of possibility.

I'm constantly reminded every day from this voice within that attitude really does dictate how one sees the world. On days where my attitude sucks then the world sucks.  I notice all the people staring, things just don't seem to go well and I walk around like a sad sack with a scowl on my face. On the days where I am actually looking for the goodness, then it is goodness that I find. I can feel the lightness of being. And is it my imagination that things go well?

Sometimes I get very overwhelmed by the big picture. Recently we signed the lease on a new rental property. I was incredibly excited about it until we got the keys and did a walk through of the property on our own. Is there such thing as renters remorse? Well, if there is, I had it. Taking our time to walk through the property gave us opportunity to see everything wrong with it - the missing door knobs,  the badly plastered holes in walls and doors, the chipped boards, cracked tiles, dirty floors, missing fence palings and weeds. What on earth had made me believe that I could possibly live here? I want clean! I want neat! I want perfect!

Between you, me and the gate post,  I started to become pretty depressed by it all.

But then I started spending some time at the property on my own. I put on some music and started scrubbing. I've scrubbed down walls and slowly started going through the place, getting acquainted with it and looking at all the things I could do with it; seeing the unseen, planning possibilities. As marks started coming off the walls and I started to build a picture of a garden free of weeds and full of healthy vegetable plants I felt the hope and excitement rising.

This could be good! Happiness is slowly sneaking up on me.

A friend recently posted a quote on Facebook that said:

"Happiness begins with the decision to no longer feel sad." - Steven Aitchison

I don't know if I subscribe to that thought. I do believe that happiness can be a decision, but I don't think happiness is the absence of sadness. I am aware of a sadness within that stays with me always. It is a sadness born from many things that I can never change; things that I wish never happened and things that I wish were different. But they can never be different, and I have accepted that and moved forward. I choose happiness. I choose to seek it everywhere...and I find it everywhere. Sometimes it sneaks up on me, even when I least expect it.