I woke up feeling happy this morning.

Yes, it was partly because my first conscious thought was, “I have the day off  today!” However, it was also because I chose to be happy–

despite the fact that my cat woke me up sharpening her dagger claws on my hip,

despite the puppy pee I had to clean up from my foster puppy, and

despite the fact that I burned my breakfast. . . twice, because I have “shiny thing syndrome” and kept getting distracted.

We all have the ability to be happy.

You may have seen a television commercial featuring a mother who is beaming over the fact that her son is using his straw to blow bubbles in his chocolate milk, causing it to overflow the glass and spill on the table. When I first saw this commercial, I thought, “What a joke, I’d be ticked off if my kid did that.” In fact, the first several times I saw the commercial I made negative, inappropriate comments about that mother.

However, looking at the commercial again this morning, in my already established state of happiness, I chose to see it differently. The mother wasn’t happy about the spill, but about the fact that older son was bringing joy to his baby brother, who was joyfully laughing at the bubbles. Of course, this is a scripted commercial, but it reminded me that we can look at a situation and see it negatively, and therefore feel angry, upset, or frustrated, or we can look at the same situation positively and find humor and happiness.

Happiness is a choice.

Since we can choose our own thoughts, which are where happiness originates, we can choose to be happy. Below is a short documentary film entitled, “Seeking Happiness”. The filmmaker, Ariel Lepito, made the film as part of her senior mastery project last year. This insightful film is one I continue to watch to remind me that happiness can be found in many places, if we just choose to look for it.

Enjoy! (BTW, Julia and Sophia are my nieces and Ariel is their cousin!)