Focusing on Happiness Is Child’s Play

Happiness is a worthy goal and one I highly recommend. Contrary to all the dire predictions of those who want to control your behavior for their own benefit, concentrating on making yourself happy will not end civilization as we know it. Being happy actually makes you more generous to others. When you’re not feeling deprived, you have more to give.

Happiness is within your reach if you learn how to focus.

I love to be around small children because they are the best teachers of the Law of Attraction (you get what you focus on.) Have you noticed that children are completely devoted to their own happiness? They almost always get exactly what they want because they are focused. Boy, are they focused! Anyone with a clear focus—even a tiny child—will prevail every single time over someone whose focus is split. This is what you are witnessing in a supermarket when a mother relents and buys her squalling child a lollipop she was told she couldn’t have just moments before.

Imagine how great your life would be if you applied the single-minded devotion of a child (without the squalling, please) to your own desires!

Something else about children is that they will risk annoying others to get something that will make them happy. As adults, we judge that to be wrong because somewhere along the line, we started to take responsibility for how others feel. How many important things have you given up in your life because of how it might make someone else feel?

Unlike adults, children haven’t decided that they are responsible for the feelings of others, which is good because they are not. Once you start taking responsibility for how others feel, you’re on a slippery slope. As my teacher Esther Hicks says, “You cannot stand on your head in enough different ways to make everyone happy.” Children don’t even try and I say, hooray for them!

A small child demonstrates how our inner guidance system works. We are all born with an Inner Guide. Some call it intuition, others soul, even others call it “gut instinct.” Whatever you call it, it is as single-mindedly devoted to your happiness as that small child’s Inner Guide is to hers. The difference is that the child heeds her Guide and you ignore yours.

If you watch what happens when something stands in the way of a child’s happiness, you’ll begin to understand the way an Inner Guide works.

When a small child senses (and it’s her Guide that alerts her) that something is wrong, she’ll get a little cranky. If it doesn’t get taken care of, she’ll get crankier. If it gets to the point where it’s so uncomfortable that she cannot bear it another moment, she will throw a fit.

Her outward behavior is what happens to you internally when you begin to focus on something your Inner Guide knows is a hindrance to your happiness.

First, you experience some emotional discomfort—you’re a little cranky or “off.” This discomfort is your Inner Guide starting to pull away from you because it doesn’t want to go where you’re going. If you persist on the same track, the discomfort will grow even into stress, trepidation, or anxiety. Now your Inner Guide is actively resisting the path you are on. If you STILL won’t pay attention and you continue to focus on what your Inner Guide knows is going to make you deeply unhappy, it “vacates the premises.” That awful feeling of empty despair is what it feels like when you are completely separated from your highest good. At this point, you also “throw a fit,” but you probably internalize it, which is very unhealthy.

Begin today to train yourself to be more child-like. Instead of tolerating discomfort, do something about it! Your parents aren’t around to tend to your needs so it’s all up to you. The more devoted you become to your own happiness, the more the Law of Attraction will bring to you circumstances that will ensure it.

And civilization as we know it could use more happy circumstances!

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