September 12, 2014 by Sara Weston

Be Empirical About Your Energy and Moods

yellow flwr-pola Notice which people, situations or activities energize or drain you. Notice how you feel before interactions and then how you feel afterwards. Take note of the patterns so you can become consciously aware of the situations and activities that give you energy or that drain you. By being truly aware of what is draining and what is empowering, we can make better decisions about how and where we spend our time.

Tip excerpted from the book How to Be Happy NOW…Even if Things Aren’t Going Your Way, available on Amazon, Amazon UK and Amazon DE. © 2013 – 2014 Sara Weston. A FREE excerpt of the book is available here.

August 27, 2014 by Sara Weston

Stop Caring What Other People Think of You

MedGalWalking People perceiving you as rich, beautiful, lucky, tough or smart will not make you happy, yet you wouldn’t know this if you observed how much time and energy people spend trying to get other people to think they are those things. If people think you have got it made, it won’t make you happy. Just look at celebrities—many people admire them and think they have it made, but clearly it doesn’t make them happy. In fact, given the number of divorces and trips to rehab, you could posit they are one of the least happy segments of the population. So stop being concerned with what other people think of you, it’s a waste of your energy and keeps you from having a quiet mind.

July 22, 2014 by Sara Weston

Buy the Lottery Ticket

orange candy-pola Do you know the lottery ticket story? I like the version Elizabeth Gilbert tells in Eat, Pray, Love:

“There’s a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, ‘Dear saint—please, please, please…give me the grace to win the lottery.’ This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue comes to life, looks down at a begging man and says in weary disgust, ‘My son—please, please, please…buy a ticket.'”

Point being, ya gotta buy a ticket in order for the universe to help you win the lottery. Meaning you have to create structures that allow the energy of the universe to come through and help you. For instance, if you are looking for a job, you have to work on your resume and make it impeccable, then strategically distribute it and meet with agencies, contacts, etc. You have to lay the ground work which will allow the universe to provide you with the perfect job. No one is going to call you out of the blue and offer you a job if they don’t even know you exist! Similarly, if you are looking for a new place to live, the universe will provide the perfect place for your circumstances, but again you have to do the ground work—you have to look at the ads and go visit places. If you ask, the universe will definitely help you out, but you have to do your part to make it manifest.

Partial excerpt from the book How to Be Happy NOW…Even if Things Aren’t Going Your Way, available on Amazon, Amazon UK and Amazon DE. © 2013 – 2014 Sara Weston. A FREE excerpt of the book is available here.

July 8, 2014 by Sara Weston

Small Happiness Tip: Hassle the Details!

A tremendous amount of energy and trouble is saved when you pay your bills on time, get directions before you leave for a new location, review important documents/ statements in a timely manner, etc. It may not make you enlightened, but it will sure make your day-to-day life easier.

May 30, 2014 by Sara Weston

Don’t waste time waiting for someone to save you.

Pink Flwrs You have probably heard the expression that life is what happens to you while you’re waiting for your ship to come in. If you’re looking for someone to sweep into your life and save you from your unhappiness, you are simply postponing your happiness. No one else can make you happy. Certainly there are people that are fun to be around, and there are people who have money that makes some things in life more comfortable, but expecting another person to be the source of your happiness keeps you from doing the work that will bring energy and happiness into your life right now. You’ll be happier if you quit waiting for that ship to come in and just take control of what you need to do to feel happy. Don’t take a back seat role in your own life!

Excerpted from the book How to Be Happy NOW…Even if Things Aren’t Going Your Way, available on Amazon, Amazon UK and Amazon DE. © 2013 – 2014 Sara Weston. A FREE excerpt of the book is available here.

May 11, 2014 by Sara Weston

Drop the desire/aversion approach to life.

Most people spend an enormous amount of energy trying to attract the things they desire and repel the things they are averse to. The things most people want to attract are relationship, money, success and recognition. The things most people try to keep away are the things they are afraid of or that make them uncomfortable, such as being alone, unloved, in pain, or appearing dumb or unsuccessful. In this desire/aversion approach, the basis of our thoughts and actions revolve around trying to get what we desire and avoid what we are averse to.

The problem with this approach is twofold. First, it’s not a very reliable approach because if your happiness is based on getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want, you’re bound to be unhappy a lot of the time! We can look at our own lives and the people around us and see that the world just doesn’t go our way a lot of the time. And even when we do get what we want, the happiness that it creates can be very transient. The new car (or house, or job, or boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife) that you wanted may turn out to not be what you expected, or after you have had it for a while it’s not as exciting; you get used to it and it no longer thrills you, or you wreck it and that makes you unhappy. In all these cases, the happiness brought on by these things should absolutely be enjoyed, but they should be recognized as undependable sources of lasting happiness.

Second, this desire/aversion approach to happiness consumes an enormous amount of mental energy. All of the strategizing, scheming and avoiding required to bring what you desire and repel what you don’t, creates a busy mind which blocks you from seeing and feeling your innate light. So paradoxically, all the mental activity devoted to getting what you want so you’ll be happy, actually makes you feel less happy.

Dropping the desire/aversion approach to life doesn’t mean you don’t try to achieve things, it just means you don’t look to those achievements for intrinsic, lasting happiness. They are fun, many times worth doing or having, just don’t expect them to be your ultimate source of happiness. And happily, when you stop clinging so tightly to the things you desire, you actually enjoy them more because you’re not so afraid of losing them.

The alternative to this system is to get your happiness from the light of eternity. When you go into the light you can’t help but get a smile on your face. After meditating you can do the most mundane things and be radiantly happy because you feel that light in your being. From this place, when good things happen to you, you can enjoy them and when bad things happen, your boat won’t be so rocked by the world not going your way. After some years of meditation, your happiness will barely be affected by what’s going on in the world. This might sound so strange as to not even be appealing, but I can tell you it’s the best place to be. You’re not unrealistic about what is going on in the world, nor are you spaced out or ungrounded, you are simply getting your happiness from light instead of from things working out in the world.

March 17, 2014 by Sara Weston

Don’t knock others who are successful. The only person you should be competitive with is yourself.

Joshua Tree There is enough success for everyone, so there is no need to knock someone else’s success. You can use other people’s accomplishments to inspire you, but being competitive with others isn’t helpful because it shifts your state of mind to a more primitive one based on fear and territoriality, which isn’t a happy place to live inside your mind. Besides, being competitive with others doesn’t help you win anyway. In fact, you’ll be more “in the zone” and perform better when you just focus on your own work without the distraction of monitoring your competition.

March 5, 2014 by Sara Weston

Meditation Tip: Don’t judge your meditation

MedGal It’s important to not judge your meditation. The only bad meditation is the one you don’t do! The truth is even when you have meditations that don’t feel as “good” or “powerful” as others, the light is still transforming you. It’s still working, even if it doesn’t feel like a good meditation to you. That being said you need to meditate correctly for it to really work, so please check out the post on meditating correctly, if you need a refresher.

For meditation instruction, download the free eBook on How to Meditate.

February 16, 2014 by Sara Weston

Relationships

Protect your important relationships. Take steps to protect the relationships that are most important to you. When you are in a situation where you can say something that you know will hurt the relationship, you simply don’t. I’m not referring to true issues that need to be discussed, but rather the myriad of petty things we say to friends and loved ones to prove that we’re right, our way is more sensible, we have better taste, etc. These petty comments erode our relationships and aren’t worth it when we really care about the relationship.

Likewise, let relationships go when they are no longer appropriate for you. People change over time and in different ways, so that someone you were great friends with at one point may not be a good fit anymore. There’s so much romanticization around the beauty of lasting friendships that we may feel obligated to spend time with people that we don’t really enjoy anymore. Let them go.

January 8, 2014 by Sara Weston

Core Practice: Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the process of watching what is passing through your mind and stopping the thoughts that are draining or unhealthy. Most things only need to be thought through once. The rest of the thinking, the mulling over and obsessing, is not only draining, it actually makes it harder to objectively see what is best. When you keep your mind quiet and don’t play your worries, schemes and dreams over and over again, you create space for inner knowledge to bubble up and be heard.

Mindfulness isn’t limited to stopping negative or repetitive thoughts, it also includes not holding conversations in your mind with people you know. A lot of people talk to other people in their minds, explaining their beliefs and defending their positions. Not only is this a waste of energy, again it prevents your mind from being still. When your mind is still you can more clearly see the pointers in the universe. The universe gives us all kinds of information, but you have to be still to see it. When your mind is going round and round defending your ego, you miss these pointers, not to mention the relaxation and brightness that comes from being still.

The good news is that after practicing mindfulness for a while it becomes automatic, so as negative or repetitive thoughts and inner conversations arise, you naturally stop them and redirect your mind to higher, calmer thoughts or no thoughts at all.

How to Be Happy NOW

…even if things aren't going your way

how to be happy