It’s impossible to monitor every thought we have. Researchers tell us that we have about sixty thousand thoughts a day. Can you imagine how exhausted you’d feel trying to control all sixty thousand of those thoughts? Fortunately there’s an easier way and it’s our feelings. Our feelings let us know what we’re thinking.
Marci ShimoffWhen people are deeply happy they bring a sense of purpose with them wherever they go, whatever circumstances they are in. So if they're changing the oil in the car, they bring a sense of joyful purpose even to that.
Marci ShimoffThe second doorway has to do with vitality. It's about feeling alive, vital, and feeling the life-force flow through us. This doorway is also known as the creativity center and it houses a great sense of aliveness in it.
Marci ShimoffWhen you're Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don't need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.
Marci ShimoffIn an experiment by Dr. Robert Emmons at the University of California–Davis, people who kept a ‘gratitude journal,’ a weekly record of things they felt grateful for, enjoyed better physical health, were more optimistic, exercised more regularly, and described themselves as happier than a control group who didn’t keep journals.
Marci ShimoffI've come to see that I have two choices in how I approach change: I can either resist change or be open to what's ahead and feel the peace that "all is well in the universe." When I lean into the latter, I feel excited about the future.
Marci ShimoffMany people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the home, they want the great business. They want all of these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having those things, certainly doesn't guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. And that's when all those outer things come. They don't come from going after them first to get the happiness, it's backwards; you go for the sense of inner joy, of inner peace, of inner vision first and then all of the other things from the outside appear.
Marci Shimoff