You may have noticed that I’ve spent a lot of time in this book encouraging you to take actions that will make you happy. The reason for that is simple: joy is a key method to gaining access to—and fully utilizing—your Genie magic. If being happy isn’t the centerpiece to living a magical life, then what’s the point?
So, now I’m going to tell you something that you might find challenging. Happiness . . . is a choice. Now I know, I know . . . you may have just groaned, grimaced, or rolled your eyes. But really, hear me out.
Our emotional well-being is largely a matter of perception. If we perceive that the things around us are unpleasant or “bad,” then our emotions will respond in kind. We will feel sadness, anxiousness, and even anger. This in turn furthers our perceptions that the world is against us, and we become even more unhappy. It’s a circle.
Likewise, happiness is circular. If we perceive that the Universe really does loves us, if we see the challenging things that happen in our lives as just temporary road markers meant to guide us in a better direction, then it becomes possible to recognize how treasured we are by the Divine. We may need to take a deep breath and whisper a prayer to Heaven for strength, but we don’t have to allow our view of our lives to spiral downward.
To do this takes focus, determination, and, above all, vigilance in remaining aware of the illusion of entrapment that your ego just loves to serve up to you on a spoon. This life is a dreamlike experience full of distractions and endless to-do lists that can keep you from being aware of any particular moment. And yet, the power lies within each moment that you’re choosing to be happy.
THE SIGNAL OF THE ROTTEN TOMATO
I want to share an analogy with you. It’s a very silly analogy, but I really like how it makes the point.
Let’s pretend that you’re in a maze. Imagine one of those big hedge mazes you might see in movies or on college campuses. Let’s also say you’re not quite sure where you are, but you do know it’s not where you want to be.
As you move through the maze, God decides to drop a big, smelly, rotten tomato down from Heaven right in your path. Well! That’s a fine how-do-you-do, right? Doesn’t God know that I’m headed somewhere? Don’t my angels know I don’t have time for this? Am I expected to clean up this mess?! This is utterly unfair—why does nothing in my life ever go the way I want it to?
But you are in a maze. A big one! A gigantic maze called life. You’re always trying to find your way to the center where the prize is, or maybe you’re just seeking a way out.
So what if I told you that the whole purpose of that tomato from Heaven is to help you. What if the rotten tomato is just God sending you the following message:
“Hey. You’re walking in the wrong direction. Where you’re headed won’t make you happy. Turn around and go back the other way. I’ll send more tomatoes as necessary to guide you. Or, if you’ll keep your perceptions positive and trust me, I’ll drop some white angel feathers for you to follow, instead. Your choice. Either way, I love you. And I’m going to get you out of this maze one way or another. No matter how stubborn you are about this, I’m going to find a way to lead you toward joy.”
Now think about this: the Source of everything we know loves you so much that it took the time to throw a rotten tomato your way, just to get you to turn around and head in a happier direction.
How utterly beloved are you? How treasured. How adored!
I’m not saying you have to love rotten tomatoes, nor am I saying you have to love it when things happen that just don’t feel great. But what I am saying is that in any given moment, you can hold up your arms to Heaven and say:
“Okay, okay. I didn’t like that. But I trust you. I know you love me. I get it. I’m not trapped here. No person or thing can keep me from finding a way to make my dreams come true. So bring on the tomatoes, though if it’s all the same to you, I’m officially now placing my order for white feathers, instead. Show me what direction to go.”
If you can just grasp this concept of ultimate love no matter what is happening in your life—if you can embrace this practice of faith—then you’ll have far greater power over your own happiness than you can possibly imagine.
IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT . . .
It has come to my attention over time that people don’t always know it when they’re happy.
I’m not talking about the “Oh, it’s my birthday and I got nice presents today!” kind of happy. I think most of us have that kind of happy fairly well pinned down.
I’m talking about the big picture, standing back, broad brush, high-level-overview kind of happy. I’m talking about that “hindsight is 20/20” kind of happy. It’s not a moment-by-moment gleeful pop-song type of joy, but more of a peaceful multiverse ballad. It’s playing quietly in the background, so you may have gotten so used to it that you have forgotten how lovely the melody is.
Over the years, I’ve had many interactions with clients, friends, and even ghosts from the past who were spending time in the little land of regret. You already know I believe regret to be a wasted emotion that keeps you unable to move forward. Still, I’m by no means immune to it. Regret does occasionally exert its chilly grip over my thoughts, and when it does, I think, Rotten tomatoes. Then I push regret out of my mind.
However, in trying over time to reconcile myself to moments of regret in a way that would serve a purpose, I’ve found that the histories that they often represent are times in my life that I was pretty darned happy. I just wasn’t fully aware of it.
We’re always looking for the next big experience: “The grass is always greener” . . . yada yada, right? If we grow immune to the level of happiness we’re living in, then naturally we start dreaming about how to get to the next level. This can cause us to not only become disgruntled with our current situation, but also bar us from seeing that things are actually pretty darned good right now.
Staying in a state of Genie joy requires regular gratitude assessments. Practice Lesson #18 regularly. Ask yourself: What are you happy for in your life right now? How is your life better today than it was in the past?
I still encourage you to continue to grow and reach for even more joy in your life at all times. However, it’s also critical to be aware of the happiness you have in any given moment as a way to increase your chances at more happiness in the future.
After all, if you’re focused on your happiness, more will come to you. That’s just the way Genie magic works.
JOY REPELLENT
Have you come across people who just can’t seem to be happy, no matter what? I’m sure you have. Perhaps there are even some in your life. They’re often either alarmists or what I call “horriblizers.” No matter what good thing might come into their lives, they manage to allow their minds to run away with horrible scenarios of all the things that might (and probably will) go wrong!
Not too long ago, my dear friend Samantha fell in love. It was magical but also quite unexpected. Frankly, she had given up on finding love and happiness in the city we lived in, so she was on her way out of town.
You know what happened next, right?
Wham! She met someone and fell immediately head over heels in love. I was rather happy about this because I hoped that meant my friend might not leave town after all! However, the more curious reactions came from the naysayers: “Don’t change your plans,” they said. “This is probably just a fling. You should just go ahead and move.” Others told her, “You’re too much of a romantic. You expect too much.” And, of course, there was the quiet snarkiness of rolled eyes.
While chatting with Samantha about all of this, she said to me: “Why can’t these people be happy? It’s like they’re walking around with joy repellent on them!”
In that moment, I thought, Oh my God, that’s it! Joy repellent! Can’t you just imagine a giant spray can with a big yellow frowny face on the front? The label would say Joy-B-Gone! Ads would proclaim it: “The perfect protection against being disappointed, getting your heart broken, or other possible causes of tears.”
Joy repellent is a way of subduing risks. It may make you feel safe, but it also robs you of your reasons for being in this life. We’ve all been hurt at one point or another. Samantha has been hurt many times. (Sometimes I’ve been there and seen it happen.) But, as Samantha pointed out in our conversation, she’d rather feel the joy and excitement of love for just a few minutes and then suffer a possible heartbreak than to never have felt it at all. She was willing to take a leap of faith.
The path to Genie joy is to go after what you want with wild abandon even if you’re afraid—even if there’s risk. Even if the joy could be temporary. You have no way of knowing if the joy will last unless you give it a go!
This world is a playground. Granted, there are times when it’s a pretty freaky playground, but we’re here to create. We’re here to open our arms to experiencing joy, not to inoculate ourselves from it for fear that we might find ourselves hurting later. A magical life comes from having a vision of a happier you and being willing to risk going after it.
So here’s my question for you: Do you have on Joy-B-Gone? Are you avoiding living for fear of hurting? Because, let me tell you this little secret about joy repellent . . . it washes off. You can make a different choice. You can take a leap of faith and chase after your joy.
MIRROR, MIRROR
An argument could be made that nearly everything we encounter in life is a mirror. If we’re always creating our reality, then what else could our reality be but a reflection of our inner life?
Challenges from others can be exasperating, and sometimes the issues are all theirs. But more often than not, I find that whatever is tripping us up is some kind of mirror for the ways in which we’re getting in our own way. Gaining clarity on that often makes the bothersome detail we’d been focused on just sort of fade away.
I don’t always realize it at the time, but during moments of challenge or apprehension, I tend to stop breathing or breathe less deeply. Maybe you can relate to that. When we’re worried or in fear, we tend to hold our breath.
But let’s think about that for a second. If breath is life, and we arrest or lessen our breathing, then we stop living fully. We stop taking in all that life has to offer purely out of fear of what is next to come.
What we have to remember is that there’s no plateau of happiness in life. There’s only the place where we stop climbing the mountain. There’s always a higher joy to reach for. There’s always more that we can be.
To further that metaphor, the climb up the mountain enriches our life. The view becomes more and more spectacular. In many parables, there’s a hermit at the top of the mountain. He is the pinnacle of spiritual knowledge and inner wisdom. If we continue to climb, we get to join him and shine our light for all to see. We become a beacon of encouragement to the world.
I have seen sorrow. I have seen heartbreak. But I’ve never seen any of it not lead to growth. I could tell you sad stories about my past, but what for? There’s nothing in my life looking back that I would change, because I love my life now. Even in the midst of the saddest things that ever happened to me, I believe with all my heart that as long as I’m honest with myself . . . as long as I look truthfully into the “mirror, mirror” of my soul . . . as long as I keep climbing the mountain . . . I will always come to the same conclusion.
Everything that happens is meant to guide me to joy.
EMOTIONAL MEMORY
Memory is a powerful gift. We can use it to bring joy into an otherwise dreary day, or sadly, we can use it to be unkind to ourselves by dwelling on things that made us unhappy. There are two kinds of memory:
Let me give you an example:
I adore Halloween! Seriously, it’s one of those holidays that gets my inner child squealing with glee! And just so there’s no misunderstanding, I do not like scary Halloween. Frankly, I don’t like scary anything. The last time I watched a horror movie, I was a teenager. I learned right then and there that stuff like that just means three weeks of lost sleep and an even longer period of trying to get those images out of my head. I’ll have none of that, thank you very much.
What I love is what a dear friend of mine termed “whimsical Halloween.” I like five-year-old Halloween! During the season, my house is decorated with sparkly, happy jack-o’-lanterns that slowly turn all kinds of different colors. (Yes, glitter-covered jack-o’-lanterns . . . I’m sure you’re shocked.)
I decorate my house so that children will run to it with glee, not approach it with uncertainty. I often dress as Peter Pan, the proverbial child who never grows up. I’m always prepared for hundreds of trick-or-treaters, because that’s what I’m using all that Genie joy to manifest!
Hopefully that description gives you an idea about what I mean by emotional memory. I’m tapping into memories from the past—from my childhood, really—that make my heart just swell with happiness! That’s the power of memory I’m referring to that can empower you to do amazing other things in our day-to-day lives.
One of the things that I caution against is romanticizing the past, but it isn’t always a bad thing. Yes, sometimes seeing the past through rose-colored glasses can get in your way. That’s particularly true if your image of the “good ol’ days” is keeping you from moving forward.
But on the upside, there’s something to be said for looking backward with a positive viewpoint that can heal the past. Sometimes seeing that there were forgotten special moments can really make a difference. If you can look backward and recognize that certain people in your life had better motives than you originally gave them credit for, you can become free of old wounds.
Looking backward and emotional memory are tied to one another. And when used incorrectly, they can do harm. If over time, your view of the past can become “horriblized,” then wounds can deepen. If you’re not careful, you can inflate past wrongdoings beyond what was reality. When you do this, you aren’t hurting anyone but yourself. This turns into a challenge of forgiveness. And by now you know that unforgiveness grows like a cancer within you—not within anyone who may have done you wrong.
When happiness lives in your heart, your ability to use your Genie magic to manifest miraculous things is ramped all the way up! When your heart is filled with sadness, well . . . it can be hard to manifest a sandwich, let alone your fondest hopes and dreams.
So here’s my recommendation . . . get into a regular practice of looking for joy in every part of your life. Remember happiness. Let your heart grow every day!
Lesson #19: Adding Up the Joy!
You’ll need a pocket-size notebook—maybe the one you used back in Genie Academy Lesson #1. In that lesson, you were looking for the negative things you were unaware that you were saying to yourself. In this lesson, you’re going to be looking for the positive things that happen all around you!
Start keeping track of every time something makes you smile. If some small event brings you joy—even for just a brief moment—make a note of it. If you overhear a joke being told that makes you laugh, write it down. Record everything that happens over a few days. For instance, when I see small children playing, it always makes me smile! Someone walking past me with a dog will always make my heart feel happy.
Now it’s time to add up the joy! How many times were you happy each day while you kept a list? Did you notice that as you kept track, the number of times you were happy each day continued to rise? Did it almost become tiresome by the end of the experiment because you had so many things to write down?
If so, you are definitely doing it right!