Have you developed habits of happiness?

“First we make our habits, then our habits make us”

Dennis Waitley

When a thought, feeling, word and behavior have become an automatic response to a particular stimulus, we have a habit. That’s right. A habit is not just a behavior but includes and derives from an entire neural network of associated data.

Having a ‘good’ or useful habit can create great efficiencies in our lives. For instance, imagine if you didn’t have the habit of brushing your teeth at a certain time each day. Instead, you brushed it whenever you remembered or whenever you felt like it.

Your brain would be directing part of its energy/attention to activating the trigger for you to brush your teeth while you go about your other activities. In other words, your brain would not have the benefit of dedicated attention to a task at hand because it is trying to remind you to brush your teeth or trying to help you make a decision about when to brush your teeth. Energy is dispersed and that makes you less efficient than you could otherwise be.

Or say you did not have the habit of placing your house keys in the same place. Every time you need them, you will have to look in several places to find them – an unnecessary waste of time and energy. Not an efficient way of doing things, is it?

In the same way, having habits of happiness increases our mental, emotional and physical/health efficiency. Instead of so much of our energy being wasted on unhappiness which affects us adversely, mentally, emotionally and physically, habits of happiness can keep us efficient and in tune with the highest vibrations of life, which happens to be out natural, unconditioned state! How wonderful that would feel!

So, what are the habits of happiness that are useful to have?

Here are some that I have developed:

Imagining the things that I desire
Feeling the feelings that I desire using my imagination
Choosing my words with care so that I only say what I mean and mean what I say
Choosing my thoughts so that I replace unpleasant and undesirable thoughts with pleasant and desirable ones
Encountering and experiencing my deepest truth/reality and my natural peace and happiness through meditation practice
Recognizing the goodness of all things which is the habit of gratitude
Accepting the perfect nature and order of all things
Exercising my power of creation by Imagining, Intending and Allowing
Exercising to keep the energy flow in my body active and fresh
Replacing judgments with observations only
Listening to understand rather than to refute or to be right