That’s why we spend so much time, effort, and big bucks pursuing a better job, the right hairstyle and clothing, and the best weight-loss diets. But scientific evidence is telling us what the sages have said for eons–looking outside ourselves is the not the answer, because happiness lies within. When we look elsewhere, whether it’s with a new job, a luxury vacation, or a different hairstyle, we’re looking for happiness in all the wrong places.

Whether we’re married or single, rich or poor, beautiful or not, matters very little when happiness is measured.  Our circumstances account for only a small fraction of our overall happiness, according to numerous studies. We can make more money, move to the city of our dreams, buy a big house or a BMW.  Even a combination of these goodies might only increase our happiness about 10 per cent, after the initial emotional high wears off.

Need more proof?  How about this?  The wealthiest Americans, those who make more than 10 million dollars a year, are only slightly happier than the workers they employ. And married people are only a little happier than singles—25 per cent of married people report being “very happy” compared to 21 per cent of singles who say the same thing.

Does this mean we’re just born happy or sad?  Yes, to some extent.

About 50 percent of our happiness comes from our personal raw material. Our genetics gives us a set-point for happiness, which means we all have a natural happiness baseline to which we’ll return whether we’ve won the lottery or gone through a divorce. This set-point is something like our body weight set-point, which allows some of us to remain skinny without effort and others of us to gain weight without trying. We have a place we’ll return to over and over, as yo-yo dieters can affirm.

It’s the same with happiness. Some of us have high set-points, giving us naturally sunny dispositions. Others of us weren’t endowed with the genetics to happily bounce back after a setback. We tend to settle into a baseline that can be substantially lower than our naturally cheery acquaintances.

But wait, there’s more… A whopping 40 per cent of our happiness potential is unaccounted for by genetics and circumstances. This is very, very good news.

Why?

Because the other 40 per cent of our happiness can be influenced by our intentional activities.  By engaging in scientifically confirmed practices, we can raise our personal joy by a whopping 40 per cent.  By changing our thoughts and behaviors, we can be much, much happier. With effort and intention, we can literally transform our lives significantly for the better.

And happiness can bring us more than, well, just happiness. Happiness comes with a boatload of cool side effects, too, like better social relationships, including more satisfying marriages; more energy, flexibility, and creativity; more productivity, better leadership skills, and greater earning power at work; better physical health, stronger immune systems, greater longevity, and increased resilience during times of hardship. It’s even been scientifically documented that happy people influence a great number of others in their sphere of social contact, helping their families, social relationships, co-workers, neighbors, and even the world at large become happy campers. So there are plenty of good reasons to be happier, if happiness itself isn’t enough incentive for you.

If you’re interested in how you can intentionally improve your life by getting happier, check out Adventures in Joy, an eleven week teleclass I’m offering, starting March 31, based on Martha Beck’s awesome little book, The Joy Diet, 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life. I’ve done this 10 week program before, with a group of about 35 people, and it absolutely works.  The practices that we’ll employ in the classes are consistent with recent findings in positive psychology, confirming exactly what intentional activities contribute to happiness and life satisfaction.

In the teleclass, we’ll explore components of joy and happiness in a weekly class and I’ll support and coach you to find the right combination of ingredients to take full advantage of your optional 40 per cent of happiness. You’ll leave the class with a fully developed, personal happiness plan, that you can use for the rest of your life!

So you don’t have to win the lottery, lose 25 pounds, change your hairstyle, or ditch your unemployed boyfriend to be happier.  Just show up an hour a week, and begin to play with these powerful. ideas, habits and practices.

For further information, or to sign up, click here.

Do you think this focus is affecting anything?  Is it possible that this is the reason why they don’t have a relationship?

It’s not the most enticing offer to another person, is it?  Please come be with me so I don’t have to be alone, so I can have a baby, so I don’t have to work so hard, so I have something to do.  Sound a wee bit needy?

‘Course we never say it straight out like this.  We drop hints.  And if it works, we’re constantly on guard so we don’t get busted, which is a major drag, not to mention exhausting.

I never hear a client who wants a relationship say this:  I’ve created a fabulous life for myself, I love my time alone, I have great relationships, and I can take care of myself and my needs.  I want to enhance all of this by adding an intimate relationship with a loving partner.  I’ll get to experience giving love all the time and that just feels so wonderful.

Who would you rather be in a relationship with?

I’ve been thinking about relationship questions a lot lately because I’m teaming up this month with best-selling author, wise woman, and wickedly funny Martha Beck, as well as Jeannette Maw, a super cool master coach and law of attraction expert.  I was intrigued by how similar our approaches are, even though Jeannette and I speak in very different languages.

Martha, Jeannette, and I are co-teaching a 4-part-teleclass called How to Attract an Extraordinary Relationship.  It’s going to be fun, informative, and you’ll leave with lots of tools and tips for creating the relationship you want.  More details and sign-up here.

If my arms are weak and I don’t pop up into full wheel effortlessly, or at all, it’s fine.  My inability to hold chaturanga becomes almost as interesting as my graceful execution of a fully extended dancer’s pose.  In that accepting, lighthearted environment, I stay calm and strong, moving forward with less and less effort, steadily improving even as I topple, wobble, and flop.

Slowly and surely, I progress physically.  Little by little, my balance and stamina improves, my legs lift higher, my headstands last longer and become more stable.  But the most empowering aspect of this very challenging class is the transformation of my attitude, from one of competition and judgment to a powerful attitude of acceptance.  It’s not about the pose.

This concept will serve us well throughout the rest of the holidays and into the New Year.  It’s not about what happens, it’s about our reaction to what happens.

When, despite your very best efforts, life’s challenges still arise (as they always will), what will your reaction be?  When the weather changes and your eagerly anticipated plans have to change with it, when loved ones let your down, when life just doesn’t cooperate with you, how will you react?  Will you gnash and thrash and struggle? Will you mutter under your breath that it’s too hard, not fair? Will you regretfully scold yourself, tell yourself you should have done better or you should have handled it differently?  Will you give up?

Or can you smile, tell yourself “nice dismount,” and jump back in, renewing your efforts?  Can you remember what you did well, how you showed up and reached out, how well you communicated, how you stayed calm under fire, took a risk, stayed in your truth, took responsibility, and aligned with your values?

And just as important, will you forgive yourself for the times you didn’t.  When you fell out of the pose or didn’t do your best, when you didn’t reach out when you could have, when you were thoughtless or didn’t say the right thing, can you move forward without judgment?  Can you let it go, and simply acknowledge that it’s not about what happened?  Can you remember it’s always about how you respond this time, right now?

During this time of transition to the New Year, and new beginnings, let’s remind ourselves, over and over, it’s not about the pose.  Over and over, we will have the opportunity to answer these questions:  How do you want to react?  How will you choose to respond?

By remembering this simple truth–It’s not about the pose, it’s about our reaction to the pose–we can stay peacefully empowered, eager to jump back in, ready for the next challenge, and fascinated by the wonder of it all.

Thanks for being here this past year, and have a wonderful, fun, and prosperous New Year.

In addition to the legally recognized pleas of guilty and not guilty, the shrewd judges allowed, a third alternative which had absolutely no legal significance but served as a practical and efficient way to keep the heavy docket moving.  Over and over, the court clerk sternly demanded of the defendant, “How do you plead, guilty, not guilty, or guilty with an explanation?”  “Guilty with an explanation” was the overwhelmingly popular choice

The defendant was then given a few minutes to offer his excuses, justifications, and rationalizations for doing what he did.  But he was still guilty, and treated accordingly.

How often we do this in our personal lives.  We behave unreliably, sometimes worse.  We break rules, ignore the twinges of conscience that tug at us, then plead “guilty with an explanation,” stammering out our excuses.  It feels icky and lame, because, in the end, we’re guilty with or without an explanation.

What if we simply admitted it?   “I misled you.  I apologize. I hope you’ll forgive me.”  An apology without an excuse.  Guilty without an explanation.  It’s a risk that takes courage, but, in the end, a far more truthful and satisfying  choice.

What do you really yearn for, what you are just dying to have in your life?  Start with this question:  how will it feel when you have it?  Imagine what it feels like to be totally in love with your life.  You don’t have to know how you got there.  You don’t even have to know exactly what it is.  Just imagine what it feels like when you’re there.

What are you feeling? Excited? Light-hearted? Peaceful? Over the moon?

If you’re not, why not?  What are you telling yourself that’s keeping you from feeling it?  It’s silly to pretend?  You can’t do it?  You might do it wrong?

Could that possibly be the same thinking that’s stopping you from having the life of your dreams?  Better check out that thinking with some truth testing.  And dump the thinking if it’s not true.

The truth is virtually all of our limits are self-concocted.  We tell ourselves that it’ll never happen, we can’t have it, and we wind up feeling like we got punched.  Only we did the punching, right in own gut with our own thinking.  And it sucks the creative juice and fun and the energy right out of us.  We don’t feel like making the effort and we’re blind to juicy opportunities that pop up right under our noses.

When we allow ourselves to feel light, open, energetic, filled with possibility, we set the stage for our dreams to come true.   We’re inspired and everything becomes possible.  Our hearts and our minds open.  We soar. The people, the situations, the opportunities find us and we’re awake and recognize them.  We know they’re there for us, so we gratefully grab them.  We’re experimental, playful, brilliant, bold.  And before long, we’ve got it.  The thing we wanted and a life we love.

Ironically, the journey to the life of our dreams feels as light and open and joyful as the life we want when we get there.  And it’s the only way to get there.

So got that?  Let’s try it again.  What is it that you want?  Now feel it by imagining that you’ve got it right now.  Let yourself tingle with it right down to your toes.  Take a soft breath or two and revel in it.  Then, take it with you.  Invent, dream, create, plan, act: whatever you do, do it with that feeling.

And when the path feels as beautiful as the destination, it’s like having what you want right now.  Amazing, eh?

How much is your ticket worth?  How will you feel when you win?  Get really comfortable and breathe the feeling of total financial freedom right down into your bones.

When I do this exercise with my Fearless About Finances class, many participants can’t imagine having so much money that they will never again worry about it.  Some of them stew about how big the lottery ticket is.  Some panic during this exercise, inextricably bound to their feelings of lack.  Who would I be, they seem to ask, without my identity being completely tied up in money fears and woes?  For these folks, life without financial fear is such an identity shift that they can scarcely dream about it.

Which is the whole point of the exercise.  Those who can break through, who can imagine the feeling state of giving up, forever, worries about money, discover something delicious.  That feeling state is available to us now.  Right in this moment, no matter what size our bank accounts are, no matter how many bills sit on our desks, no matter what the state of the economy is.

Worrying about money (or anything else) does not serve us.  It robs us of our creative juice, our intelligence, and our energy.  It does not bring us resources, financial or otherwise.  It is not a motivating force; it is draining, debilitating.

The feeling state of freedom, however, is energizing, inspiring, motivating, delicious.  And always available, no matter what is going on in the outside world.

Try it.  Let go of your worries about whether new clients will call, your employer will lay you off, your grant will be funded, the stock market will rebound before you retire.  Let go of the part of you that imagines that the wolf is at the door.  Just try it, temporarily.  (You can always re-conjure it up later, if you’d like.)

The Truth is this: both the delights of freedom and the shackles of worry are created inside us.  Right in our heads.  By our thoughts about the world, not from the events in the world.  If you can create worry and distress with your thoughts, you can also create freedom and inspiration with your thoughts.  And with light, free feelings, our hearts and minds and spirits are fully available and free to soar.

So imagine something wonderful, like, say a $35,000,000 winning ticket.  Get into how it feels and really relish it. After all, isn’t that the whole point of wanting a flourishing business, a relationship, a baby, a fabulous career, or whatever else you long for?  The happiness and satisfaction it will bring, right?  Just go there first, in your imagination, with your thoughts. Then feel what it brings and luxuriate in it.  The journey then becomes as extraordinarily fantabulous as the destination.  You won’t even need to buy a ticket.

Does she have an Inner Nag?

Over and over, I’ve been asked the same thing about my recent trip to Africa: what was the best part, the most important thing I learned, my biggest “aha”?  The people, the animals, the landscape, the country, and the African STAR workshop enriched my life in so many ways.  Did one thing stand out?

I puzzled over this, and then it hit me.

The biggest lesson for me was this–I went.  I didn’t take the advice of the whiney chorus of nagging, nay-saying voices in my head intoning “NO-O-O-O. Don’t go.  You shouldn’t do this,” somber as a criminal court judge handing down a life sentence without possibility of parole.

“You don’t have the time,” the clockwatcher crisply noted.  “You don’t have the money,” begged the voice of lack, convinced it’s the only thing between me and a life spent living under a bridge with my worldly belongings in a shopping cart.  “You didn’t plan this far enough in advance,” clucked the practical one as she studied the lists on her clipboard. “The long plane ride will wipe you out,” implored the hand-wringer that thinks danger and injury lurk around every corner.  “Everyone will think it’s foolish/be jealous/won’t like you,” pleaded the approval-junkie that desperately wants to get along well with others.

Is she looking for approval?

I’d heard them all before, cautioning me not to seize other opportunities in my life.  I’ve listened to their advice many times.  This time, I realized they were just the voices of limiting thoughts that weren’t true.   So I thanked them for their efforts.  And I ignored them.

Oh my stomach still did loops when I gave the airline agent my credit card information.  But I knew my feelings were coming from thoughts fueled by my Inner Nags.  So I bought the ticket.

And I had a fantastic trip with absolutely no regrets.  I was enchanted.  I learned.  I grew.  I shared amazing sights and transformative insights with fabulous people.  I had an adventure.  It felt light and airy and magical and free.  And it still does.

He doesn't seem to be worried about his future.

The Buddha taught that you can always know the sea because it always tastes of salt and you can always know enlightenment because it always tastes like freedom.

I can recall so many adventures that I’ve passed up because I chose to believe that chorus of hyper-cautious, sensible voices.  This time I listened to the deeper, wiser voice inside me.  “Go,” it whispered.  “This is an opportunity of a lifetime.  Don’t pass it up.  Go.”

Recognizing and listening to that still, quiet voice of truth is the greatest lesson I learned.   And it’s delicious.  It tastes like freedom.

Among the many lessons in the African bush, the lesson of stillness unfolded again and again. Many times during our game drives, we were invited to get still and notice what was happening around us.  Putting down our cameras and stopping our social chitchat, we sat still and simply did nothing.

I’d never been in a place where there was stillness in every direction, where the sights and sounds of human activity were completely absent, where not even the hum of a distant highway or an occasional overhead airplane broke the silence.  Only the subtle presence of nature surrounded us.

Before long, our Shangaan tracker would quietly gesture to something which we hadn’t immediately comprehended.

Like the beautiful blue heron sitting beside this lake,

impala grazing across the field,

zebras hiding in the grasses,

hippos disguised as boulders,

and elephants emerging from the forest.

The more still we get, the more we see and hear and learn, and the more we connect with the beauty and wonder always around us.  This is the place we can access the wisest parts within us, where we can become the detached, curious observers of ourselves, and where we can always know peace.

Lao Tzu teaches, “Empty your mind of all thoughts, let your heart be at peace  . . . you can deal with whatever life brings you.”

Africa was a powerful reminder.

Each dawn we bundle up and sleepily climb into an open Range Rover.  We pull thick wool blankets across our laps, gratefully tuck our hands around the hot water bottle nestled inside, and head out across a network of dirt trails traversing gently rolling hills and grassy fields.

We pass leafless tree-skeletons

and quiet ponds ringed with vibrant green marshes.

It looks very much like the open lands in the Colorado foothills, with one very significant exception.  Londolozi teems with an incredibly diverse array of animals and birds not found in the wild in North America.  Nyala, kudu, duiker, impala, hare, vulture, eagle, bat, heron, mongoose, monkey, warthog, baboon, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, elephant, water buffalo, hippopotamus, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, hyena, crocodile, duck, stork, lizard, guinea fowl, lilac-breasted roller–the list is endless and in short time, we see them all.

And it’s up close and personal. . . .

We sit motionless, spellbound by the antics of lion cubs pouncing on their macho but indulgent father.

We’re awed by the sublime

And the ridiculous

We’re even charged by this grumpy, one-tusked bull elephant.  Our adrenaline was running so high, I missed the photo op.

He’s probably responsible for snapping the tree limb here, so luckily he only wanted to chase us off.  We happily indulged him.

The full moon is shinier and fuller and more beautiful than ever before when sitting atop a termite mound.

And just as we were getting used to the idea that we really were in Africa, that we really were seeing the African land, the African moon, and that the animals really hadn’t escaped from the zoo, it was time to leave.

Toward the end of the week, a couple of folks in our group voiced their dread of returning to “the real world.”  Which raises a fascinating question—which one is the real world anyway?  Is it the one at home, with careers, relationships, fashion, television, mortgages, the internet, and animals who eat from cans?  Or is it here, in the African bush?

A couple of months ago I made a vision board–my experiment with the concept of influencing reality by regularly viewing inspiring images. I created a collage of African animals, illustrating a deep desire to someday visit the place where humankind first emerged and magnificent animals roam freely.

A few weeks later, I dreamed I was a heroine in a broad, gray-green African veldt, diverting a charging rhino from attacking the small children with me.  Then, I met some wonderful South Africans in Chicago at our coaches’ convention.  And I began to trade Facebook messages with a coach trainee who, unknown to me at the time, is South African.

And just last week, my lunch was served by a lovely South African woman who proudly told me about her beautiful country.

The idea of actually going to Africa in the near future never really occurred to me though.  I could have given you very solid evidence of why and how it would probably never happen.

Just a few days ago, going to Africa existed only in  a mélange of images on my vision board.  And now it’s happening, and at warp speed.  Next Saturday morning, I’ll begin a 26-hour flight to South Africa, to join Martha Beck and a small group of amazing people, many of whom I’ve met either in person or online in just the last month.

Coincidence or synchronicity?  Until I glued those pictures to a slab of foam-core board and propped it up it my bedroom, I knew no South Africans, never had dreamt of Africa, and thought the chances I’d actually get there in my lifetime were wildly improbable.

Today, magic is looking like the rational choice of intelligent people.  I can hardly wait to make my next vision board.  Shall I visit the moon, or stay here on earth to become a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet?

And you?  What are your wildly improbable dreams?  Post them here, make a vision board, and tell everyone you know about your secret desires. Let your imagination run wild, and get excited with the realization that dreams really do come true, and magic just might be the force that makes them happen.

Go ahead and do it! It’s a rational, intelligent act.