Choose Happiness

Did you know that happiness is a choice? In fact, happiness is one of the bravest, boldest and most radical acts you can make. It's subversive to choose happiness.

Same thing with health. Last week, I was at a talk by Robert Kenner, the director of Food INC. and he said that the three most revolutionary decisions in your day (and your family's) are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Imagine that - you can choose to be vibrant, healthy, energetic and alive based on your food decisions.

In either of these cases, you are making a choice to be happy and healthy. It's not a result of outside circumstances or genetics.

Often times, we think we have to add something to be happy. Or we see ourselves as the victim of bad genes. The common denominator is that we play the blame game. We're not where we want to be because of something or someone else.

Everything changes when you look within and take ownership of your life. You change your destiny once you realize that happiness, even health, is a choice!

Here's an amazing passage from Mark Murphy's must read book on goal setting called Hard Goals.

"This is why I get cranky when I hear the 'it's all genetic' crowd fatalistically tell us that our lives are predetermined by our DNA (if you don't have the natural talent, oh well, don't waste your energy trying)... I'll tell you what I'm thankful for: I'm thankful that Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, among others didn't buy into any of those crazy arguments. I'm thankful each one of them was willing to push past what's easy in order to achieve some exceptionally difficult goals. Otherwise they wouldn't have founded a country, put a man on the moon, liberated a nation, freed a people, and so on."