How To Stay Positive And Happy In Life

I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I do. We’re filming this intro after the content. I have to say, I really found it valuable. So I really appreciate it. It’s ok. Somebody is calling because they enjoyed this video so much so be sure to subscribe, like, and comment below if you have any questions or want to share it. It helps the videos do better we’ll admit. But hopefully enjoyed this video. Remember to live on purpose, make a difference, and be the hero. Now I am so excited to have this conversation with you today. This is one of my favorite topics of conversation and while I get led up talking about marketing and productivity, this might be my all-time absolute favorite subject of Happiness.

How can you create a positive and happy life? So, I want to tell you a story it happened to me when I was 7, and I was in my room playing one night and I realized that it was past my bedtime. And I thought about going and finding my mom and my dad and I thought about saying, “hey come with me to bed” and then I thought, “if they don’t care why should I?” And so I just stayed in my room and I played and it took about another 45 minutes for my mom to come into my room, and when she came into my room, she didn’t put me to bed. She handed me a plastic sack. She said, “pack whatever you can. I don’t know when we’re coming back”. And, in my seven-year-old head, I didn’t know exactly what was going on but I did what she said and I packed pair of pants and like seven shirts and a bunch of underpants and all the money to my name which was like fifty cents and my brand-new My Little Pony twins that I had just gotten for my birthday and those hung at the bottom of the bag as we walked past my dad down the stairs and out of the house that night. And as you can imagine, that was the beginning of my parents divorce. But while my parents divorce is not the point of this story, it’s interesting how I’ve often thought of that plastic bag. And in hindsight, I remember thinking I should have asked my mom for a different bag. We had suitcases and my grandfather was a travel agent so we had Pan Am overnight bags in abundance in our house. But with my adult brain I understand that she was going through her own experience and she just thought get it done. Grabbed a couple of plastic sacks and we lived on. Now, it’s amazing while we talk about happiness. How to me, the most important part of this conversation is that I know that if you and I were sitting together, we could probably have and share some interesting, perhaps scary sad and tragic moments that have happened in our own individual lives. And that one story that happened to me when I was 7, was just the beginning of the baggage that I’ve collected over the years. In fact, if you could see it all, there would be bags on every arm, every limb, and emotionally weighed down by the baggage that we all carry every single day. Now I wish my baggage came in an all-weather, all leather, Louis Vuitton suitcase on wheels. That I could carefully carry my baggage with ease, but it doesn’t come that way. Comes in abnormal and misshapen, sometimes with holes baggage. And everywhere we go, not only are we carrying our own, but everyone we interact with, every stranger on the street, every cashier at the store, every person at the office, every client that we deal with, is carrying their own set of baggage even if we can’t see it. So as we have and start this conversation today, I want to acknowledge that I know, that there are circumstances in our lives that if we could choose we would trade and give away. But we can’t. But I truly believe that despite our personal circumstances, despite the tragedies, and trials that have come our way, that we can truly find joy and everyday happiness. So how do we do it? the plastic bag principle teaches us that we can move on regardless of the baggage that we’re carrying. But I also want to teach you the principle of what I call the happiest. We’re all familiar with the pessimist who looks on the bad side and the realist who sees things as they really are and the optimist who looks on the bright side. And as an adult, I knew that being an optimist was the way to be. I was raised by an optimist, my mom despite her own challenges always taught us that you can find ways to be happy every single day. She told us to look on the bright side, she told us to find the good in every single day, and that worked.

But as I became an adult and my challenges got harder, I started to feel like being an optimist wasn’t enough. I went to work to find true happiness. And I found that, there’s one level above the optimist that no one talks about yet and it’s what I call the happiest. The happiest doesn’t just look on the bright side, the happiest is the bright side. I believe that happiness isn’t just a thought or a feeling, but happiness is a practice. It’s something that we get to create every single day. It doesn’t mean that we make our challenges or trials go away it means that even if we’re carrying that baggage around, we can find ways to be truly happy every single day but it’s a practice. And the older I get, the more I realize that it’s not just something you can check a box once. Daily, we have to stay into the things that will help us to find that everyday happiness. So while happiness is a practice, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite happiness practices to help me get through some of the hardest and deepest challenges. First and foremost, I have to say it you have to create a gratitude journal. Now I said have to really, really, seriously. Like, you were being punished or something, but trust me on this. Now if you’re reaching this information with the same level that I reached at the very first time I heard it from Sarah Breathnach and the fantastic book, simple abundance, that I know that for some of us were like, “eh that’s lame. That can’t possibly make you happy” and B, if you knew it was going on in my life you would know I could find nothing to be grateful for right now.

Those were the exact words that I said to Sarah breathnach out loud. She couldn’t hear me for wherever she was in the world, but as I was reading that book and over and over, she talked about creating a gratitude practice, and over and over I was saying, “you’re wrong, there’s nothing to be grateful for”. Because at the time I was in the middle of a marriage that I knew was going south. And nothing has ever made me feel sadder. That being in a relationship that I knew wasn’t going to be fixed. And questioning, and wondering, every single day how I would find happiness either in this marriage, or considering the possibility of what would happen if I had to get divorced. So I was set to prove Sarah Breathnach Maps wrong, and finally after the fifth mention of it I was like, “fine I’m going to keep a gratitude journal and I’m just going to prove to you that not everyone can be grateful”. And while I was raised by the optimist and should never have had this thought in the first place, I needed that experience and I still have that journal and it’s one of my favorite things.

In the beginning, I started writing down simple things like, I’m grateful for my help, and I’m grateful for the roof over my head, and what I didn’t write down was that even though the bathroom is terrible and the sewer just came up in the shower, true story, I’m grateful that I can cook food even though the oven was always broken and you had to pull the door out from socket in order to even be able to put anything in there. And that house in and of itself was a reason to be sad but if I could try to find some gratitude in it, it would get me through. Now I’ll be honest, the first five or six days or even the first week, I was just checking the box. I was just writing things down, I was just writing the simple everyday things that roof overhead, food, clothing, great I have a car, whatever it was. But as time went on and I started to realize that while I might have been going through the greatest tragedy, tragedy that I had experienced to that point that I was also receiving some of the greatest miracles. And that in some big way, I just wasn’t seeing them. I was so focused on what was going wrong that I couldn’t see all the things that were going right and that gratitude journal changed everything. Now, more than 17 years later I still keep a gratitude journal. It’s still part of my daily power up and power down routine, where every night, I write down at least three things that I’m grateful for. Sure from time to time, I’ll go through periods of time where I’ll forget a day or two here and there, or I’ll go on vacation and they’ll take a week for me to get back into the, back into the habit. But once I do, I get rooted in what’s right instead of focusing on what’s wrong and that is a happiness practice that you can put into place every single day. And even when challenges come, look for the good. Look for the good things around you, the people that are around you that are strengthening you, the beautiful weather that you get to experience, fresh air and experiences and you can practice happiness even in the darkest challenges and the darkest trials. Now I want to share with you my second happiness practice that has made all of the difference and that is finding and creating what I call my playlist. Some people will call this a joy list or a happiness list, but what I did is I sat down and I wrote down ten free things and ten things for pay that I could do that made me fundamentally happy. So not everything had to cost, but I went and I wrote down two things that I really loved to do. And this came shortly after I had read Sarah breathnach’s book and she had talked about finding and doing things that you love and enjoy. And so I decided that, I was going to create my own list. And so I started to create this list, and I would find things on it that I could do every single week. Even if it was just taking a walk around the park, going to visit a friend, reading a book that I loved, or even going to the library to get a new book. I also loved great, fun, happy cheerful movies and so I would write down that I could watch fun movies.

I’m sure there were things for pay, maybe going out to a movie, or maybe going to dinner with friends, or maybe going to get a pedicure. And over time. that happiness list has grown and changed. That playlist has helped me. But every time I schedule some time to do things that I enjoy, I don’t regret it. And every time I schedule time to help me find happiness despite my challenges and trials, it reminds me that there is life outside of whatever challenges are there. But what I have also found exists in the happiest principle. That the best practice that you can find is actually being the bright side. While the optimist looks there, the happiest is there. But when you’re finding and creating happiness for others, it’s almost impossible to feel sad yourself. So if right now, you’re thinking, but wait a minute you don’t understand my challenge Michelle. You don’t understand the challenge of the trial that I’m currently going through. I can’t possibly help anyone else. I’m going to issue you the challenge. To find somebody else that you can help. Someone that you can smile at ,or take a meal to. Someone you can just write a note to and in that moment you get outside of your challenge of trial to try to be the happiest for someone else and I have never felt happier than when I’m trying to make someone else happy. So if you’ll find a way that you can increase the happiness in someone else, your own happiness will increase. I promise. So I’d love to hear about how you create happiest challenges in your life. What practices are you going to put in place? these are just some but there are others that can help you navigate everyday challenges and trials so that you can find and create practices of happiness every single day, every single week, every single month. Whatever you’re going through. So I’m so excited. I hope you’ll share with us some of your favorite happiness practices in the comments below. And I hope that you’ll keep in touch as you put some of these things in place. Let us know what’s working for you so that you can find true happiness every day. Thanks so much for watching hero TV today. I really want to thank Michelle McCullough for her wisdom here in finding happiness. I really like the idea of the gratitude journal, Now why is she not here in the video with me? We forgot to film the clothes yesterday. So, I had to close out the video. Be sure to subscribe. I’ve put a lot of details down in the description below. If you click the bell icon, it will give you alert because this is a daily show. Now, very excited about that obviously. Now put your comments and questions below, we always respond. And remember to live on purpose, make a difference, be the hero