Let me tell you a story about stress and glitter
Many years ago, I was desperately trying to get my career off the ground. I was working as a lawyer, trying to get someone to take a chance on me. It was working in a place where colleagues would run to the toilets crying most days.
I was pretty lucky through most of my time there though. I made lots of money for my employers. So I got away with things that others perhaps wouldn't. Like going out for cigarette breaks with my colleagues every 90 minutes, even though I didn't smoke.
I would do it because it was such a high-stress atmosphere in that office that I would get seriously overwhelmed and needed to decompress. I felt completely at the mercy of what was going on around me.
I was so unhappy.
Like a sponge I would soak up all the emotions around me, feel responsible for the people who were stressed or crying or upset, try and take a stand on behalf of others.
Seriously toxic.
So, colleague and I would go out for her cigarette breaks in the nice weather and sit on the steps outside the office and talk.
We had a code-word in the office. Glitter.
It was our way of saying 'everything is going to be better than this'. It was a way of expressing how emotional you were feeling and how much you were trying to repress. It was reassurance when things weren't going so well.
That's why, when I launched the#HappinessHabitBootcamp earlier this week I referred to unicorn, rainbow, confetti glitter territory.
For me, those are all the markers of happiness. Of joy. Of feeling on top of the world.
They also have sweet-FA to do with most people's day-jobs.
Much like happiness, a lot of the time.
Over the course of my career I discovered something.
That happiness is a choice.
It isn't something that only happens to the lucky ones.
It isn't a bolt of lightning or a lottery ticket.
It doesn't happen TO us, it is created BY us.
And that means that it can be formed as a habit.
(like my colleague's cigarette breaks but so much healthier for you!)
Think about it. When was the last time you spontaneously broke into a smile or laughter. Was it because of something someone else deliberately did to you?
Or was it a state of emotion that was simply triggered by the other person.
Maybe no one else triggered it at all (I can't be the only person who laughs at fleeting thoughts with no one else around!).
So, if you can learn to create happiness for yourself, why don't you do it all the time?
It's because you're out of practice.
A child laughs in delight at bubbles because, at that moment, they are free of worry. They aren't hungry or wet or tired, and they don't have the daily stress and struggle that you and I have.
Somewhere between being that small child who found delight and curiosity and wonder and joy in the simplest of things and was happy, and the person you are today, you stopped flexing your joy-strings and focused on the stress weights instead.
Work to do, deadlines to meet, trains to catch, dinners to cook.
Boring boring boring.
Not confetti
Not unicorns
Not rainbows
Not happiness.
And THAT is why I've launched the Happiness Habit Bootcamp.
It's 30 days to start strengthening your joy and curiosity muscles, to develop a state of happiness as a habit, rather than a rare lightning strike that happens to other people.
Strengthen your happiness and watch the results flow in.
I've also made it a complete no-brainer by offering up the first ten places at HALF PRICE - but there are only a couple of spaces remaining at that price point, then it will revert to the normal full price (which is still crazy-low for 30 solid days of group training, not going to lie).
We start April 1st, are you going to join us?
Take care of yourself
https://searchingforserenity.satoriapp.com/offers/116485-happiness-habit-bootcamp
