Choosing Happiness in 2016

Wishing you Happiness, Good Health, Safety and Success in the New Year.

What do those four conditions mean to you? Have you thought about them?

If you live in the developed world and can read this, you may already have all four in place. Perhaps you are healthy, safe and reasonably happy, but would like to be more successful in one or more areas of your life. You have the luxury of being able to work on being more successful. Choosing happiness.

Spare a moment’s reflection on the millions of people on this planet whose safety and health are always under threat, people who we would not consider successful by any measure. People who are living day-to-day, under appalling conditions. People who despite extreme adversity are still happy.

Often happier than many of us with our more than adequate food supplies, trappings of success and perceptions of safety.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not turning into a bleeding-heart-liberal with the start of the New Year. We cannot solve all the world’s problems either individually or as a country. The corrupt and incompetent governments of many countries in those regions bear a huge responsibility for the state of their people.

I am just making the comparison.

In Africa, I lived in societies with far greater income disparity than here in North America.

There were happy people at all levels of income, happy people living in mansions, happy people living in mud huts. Happy people with huge collections of expensive clothes, happy people with 2 shirts, 2 pairs of trousers and 1 pair of sandals made at home from old car tyres. Happy people driving Ferraris, Mercedes and BMWs, even more riding old bicycles and walking.

I wrote about meeting one of the happiest but poorest men I have ever met in this post.

My experiences have convinced me that happiness is a choice not a result.

It is not dependent on money, houses or things, although life is easier with them.

Safety and success can disappear in the blink of an eye, good health can evaporate in a heartbeat. It has all happened to me, I wrote about it here.

You choose whether happiness disappears along with them.

It’s the time when we look ahead, make our plans, set our goals for the next 12 months.

Choosing happiness, to be happy, grateful for what you have no matter what happens to your safety, success, material possessions, health, should be right at the top of that list of goals.

2016 is going to be an interesting year, challenging on many fronts.

Events may threaten our safety, our financial security, the passing of another year may affect our health. Politicians may infuriate us.

But our happiness is our choice.

I wish you a Happy, Healthy, Safe and Successful 2016.

Choose Happiness.

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