Happiness Starts with You

I’m a happy person. Okay, like everyone I have my moments but generally I’m happy. Why is this so? I believe because I choose to be. I know other people like me, my mother for instance. (Yes, perhaps that’s where I get the happiness trait). They are the people who smile at strangers and who openly laugh out loud. They aren’t the people wearing frowns and stamping their feet. Being upbeat helps you achieve so much more than being a woe-is-me-type person.
I smile a lot and I think it’s become a habit. Particularly when I was younger (in my twenty-something days) people would come up and smile back and ask why I’m always smiling. Why not? It’s better than frowning. Frowning hurts and the wrinkles certainly won’t be as appealing as laughter lines.
Anyhow this got me thinking about making myself even happier so I wanted to think up twelve things (12 instead of 10 because I like divisions of 6 – please don’t ask me why).
Here are my twelve things that recently made me smile:

• My youngest son texting me that he was proud of something he’d done.

• My dog not wanting to go outside to wee in the rain and watching her trying to hold on (sook).

• My mum speaking on the phone without a hint of asthma in her voice.

• The sun setting like orange and red ribbons over the lake behind my house and the trees casting shadows on the shimmering water.

• Hearing a favourite song (Rob Thomas of course) on the radio as I drove to work.

• Watching a young father gazing at his son with tenderness as they sit eating dinner together at a local surf club.

• My oldest son’s grin when he relayed the news that Qld Fire Service accepted his application.

• Watching my son and his girlfriend hold hands.

• Seeing the ducks on the pond gliding past and causing little ripples in their wake and their ducklings slipstreaming behind them.

• Seeing a book I’ve marketed start to sell and hearing how happy the author is.

• Seeing my husband’s face when he realises he is on the top of the footy tipping table (it’s kinda like a smirk though).

• Believing I see my father’s face in the cotton-wool clouds in a cyan-blue sky.

Now, how about you write down twelve of your own. I hope this inspires you to write today, but most of all I hope it encourages you to see the little things that can make you happy.
Smile.