385: How to Be Truly Happy in 3 Simple Steps

Hal Elrod: Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and thank you so much for tuning in today. I really appreciate it. And I hope you get what you came for today. And if what you came for is discovering how to be happy, how to be happy, whether that's going from– if you're in a place right now where you haven't been happy in a while and you really want to be happy, I can relate. For me, 2020, I got to a place where I was so depressed that I would tell my wife and even my friends, I don't remember what it feels like to be happy. And it was literal, like I couldn't even remember or go to that place of feeling happy. I didn't remember what it felt like. And that was really scary for me because I thought, what if I never get back there again?

So, if you're in that place or anywhere in that realm, today can really help you, because I've gone from being the most unhappy I've ever been in my life, a year ago, to now being arguably the happiest I've ever been in my life. And it wasn't a change in circumstances that led to that. It was a change in how I approach life, how I view life. It was the three simple steps that I'm going to share with you today that enabled me to go from completely unhappy to the point of being suicidal to now being, what I believe is the way we're meant to live life, just really, really in a state of joy and peace and love and gratitude all wrapped up into a big word, that is happiness.

So, today, if that's interesting for you, and by the way, even if you're not in that place where you're like miserable, but if you're in just a place like, I think a lot of us go through life and we're like, it’s okay, life's kind of mundane, or we're chasing happiness. So, there are different realms on the spectrum of where you might be, but I think today or I hope today, I intend for today to be universally beneficial for you wherever you are on the spectrum of happiness in your life.

Before we get started, I want to, well, I guess we already got started technically, but if you've got a busy schedule, it can be hard to get all your nutrients on the go. And that's why I want to talk for just a minute about today's sponsor, Organifi. So, even if you had the time to juice vegetables or eat massive salads, you might not love the taste of dark leafy greens. And as we all know, a lack of nutrition can lead to low energy, bad moods, and all sorts of long-term issues. That is why Organifi makes it easy to fill your life with more nutrition using delicious superfood blends. Add a scoop to a glass of water to energize and nourish your day with carefully picked adaptogens, fruits, vegetables, medicinal mushrooms, and more. It's one of the easiest healthy choices you can make each and every single day.

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Without further ado, here is How to Be Truly Happy in 3 Simple Steps.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Hello, my friends. Thank you for tuning in today. This is going to be an episode that I hope will make you happy. I hope it will make you happy and not just while you're listening to it, but it will enable you to feel happy, to enjoy your life every day more often than not. And I posted something the other day on social media. And if you don't follow me, by the way, there's a lot that I post on my Instagram and Facebook that I don't email to our community. I just posted on social media, but it's a quote that I came up with a long time ago. And it always gets a lot of people that really either resonate with it or feel challenged by it. And it's simply this. You already have everything you need to be the happiest you could ever be. It's called life. It's called life.

And last night, I was talking to my daughter during our family dinner. We have dinner almost every night as a family. And she's 11 years old, Sophia. We were talking about what enables people to be happy. Like what’s the key to being a happy person? Why is one happy or why would one person be happy while another person's unhappy? And I posed the question to her and to my son, Halston, who's eight, and their answers were something along the lines of, well, if a person has a good life, then they're probably happy. So, that was the general consensus.

And I think for a lot of us, that is kind of the feeling is like, well, yes, life is going well, then I'm happy. Or we look at somebody else who on the surface seems to have just a great life, like, wow, I look at their Facebook feed and man, they're taking trips and they've got a nice house and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, it must be great to be them. And I invited my kids to consider that. I said, look, hypothetically, imagine that there's two different people that can be living the exact same life. They've got the exact same life. They have the exact same house. They live in the same neighborhood. Nobody has the exact same life, but I said hypothetically, imagine two different people have the exact same life. I said, but here's the thing. One of those people could be the happiest person you've ever met, while the other person could be the most miserable, unhappy, and depressed person you've ever met, despite the fact that their lives were exactly the same. I said, how is that possible?

So, let's explore this for a second. Play with me. Let's go along this kind of look at these two lives. So, imagine two different people have the exact same life. They've got the same circumstances. So, both of these individuals have many things in their lives to be grateful for. Both also have many challenges that they are presently facing. Both have endured trauma and hardship throughout their lives, like most of us have. Both are fortunate to have a roof over their head, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, other human beings to experience life alongside, again, like most of us have. And both, though, are also currently facing stressful situations, like most of us are. And lastly, both also have nearly limitless potential for their future. So, any circumstance that they don't like, most likely they have an ability to change it, just like all of us or most of us do.

So, if their lives are identical, how is it possible that their experience of life, one experiencing happiness while the others miserable are so opposing? How is that possible? Well, if you really explore this, it's not only possible, but it's inevitable based on a few factors. And so, we'll explore some of these now. And I want you to consider this for yourself. And I'm going to share kind of the difference between the happy person, if you will, and the unhappy person. And I invite you to kind of step into this and go, which of these describes maybe how you think or how you live most of the time.

So, the happy person spends most of their time focusing on the aspects of their life that they feel good about, very simply, while the unhappy person focuses on the aspects of their life that they feel bad about. The happy person experiences and expresses gratitude for their circumstances, while the unhappy person, despite having the exact same circumstances, complains and is dissatisfied with their circumstances. The happy person is content with what they have, while the unhappy person constantly wants more, is in a constant state of wanting, of scarcity, of not having enough, maybe comparing themselves to other people who have more, and wishing and wanting that they had what those other people have. The happy person accepts life exactly as it is. They accept the unchangeable aspects of life, particularly the past which is definitely unchangeable. You can't go back in time and change it. While the unhappy person constantly resists reality and wishes that life, including the past, were different than it actually is. The happy person finds joy in everything they do, while the unhappy person experiences an array of emotional turmoil, feeling frustrated in one moment, annoyed in the next, angry at times, and just generally unhappy with life as it is. Remember, both of these individuals have essentially identical lives and yet, their experience of life, how they feel each day is completely different.

So, the question I want to ask today or that I want to really explore is how can you be the happy person? How can we be happy? How can we be genuinely happy no matter what, no matter what our circumstances are? Because everything I've described so far is in general, we all have all of those things. We all have things to be grateful for. We all have things to complain about. We all have things that naturally make us feel good. Most of us have endured trauma and hardship in our lives. We all have people to share life with, some that are easier to be around than others, some that are more difficult. We're all facing stressful situations. We all have things that we could live in fear of or worry about for the future. We all share limitless potential for the future, for what we can create. No matter where we are now, we can change our direction in our lives.

So, all of us as human beings, I really just kind of describe the human experience. I mean, in very small part of it, but we all share all of that. So, how can you be a happy person? The good news is that I don't think it's complicated. However, it's also not effortless. So, it's not complicated, but it's not effortless. In fact, I think that one of the obstacles for a lot of people to feel happy is that many of us mistakenly think that it should be effortless. We think that our happiness should be a result of external circumstances. And so, in that, we take this passive approach to being happy where we base it on outside forces such as circumstances or how other people treat us. If we want to be in control of our happiness, though, it requires a conscious commitment to implementing simple things that make it possible. If we can't leave it up to chance, we can't go well. If everything goes according to plan, if everyone meets my expectations, if life turns out the way that I want it to and I achieve all of my goals, then I'll be happy, but if things don't go the way that I want them to, I won't be happy.

I've referenced this chapter in one of my favorite books, The Untethered Soul. In fact, I am rereading it again. It's always out on my shelf, so I'm always picking it up and kind of just, I'll read it before bed. I just open a random page and just read a page. It is like “a Bible” to me. It's a text or a book of wisdom that has really enhanced my life. And so, I continue to revisit it, to continue to enhance my life. And in that book, he has a chapter. I think I haven't read the chapter on a previous podcast episode, and I'm going to butcher it, but I think it's called The Vow of Unconditional Happiness. And in that book, he says, “Do you want to be happy?” And he said when he asked that question to people, it's usually, well, yeah, I want to be happy. If things go according to plan, then I'm happy. And he goes, “Well, no, no, I didn't ask if you want to be happy if things go according to your plan. I ask, do you want to be happy?”

So, his take on it, it's a vow of unconditional happiness, which is when things are going crappy in my life, I'm still committed to being happy. When things are going great, maybe it's easier to be happy, but I'm going to be happy. When things are tragic, I can still be happy. It's this choice. I choose to be happy because I choose to show up in my life in a state of happiness and deal with life as it is. And that's a really crucial, I think, foundation of what I'm talking about today is this vow of unconditional happiness. How can you be a happy person? Because this example I've given, this hypothetical example of two different people with the exact same life, one being the happiest person you've ever met, one being the most miserable person that essentially represents all of us, is which person will you choose to be? Because we all have things to focus on that make us feel bad and sad and angry and depressed and anxious and nervous, and if you spend most of your time focused on those things, then that becomes your reality, but if you spend your time focused on the things that make you feel good, things you have to be grateful for, if you change the rules of the game a little bit to where you can actually be content with what you have.

In fact, I posted this on Twitter today. I'm going to pull it up real quick. This is a quote from Khabib Nurmagomedov, and if you don't know who Khabib Nurmagomedov is, he is the very recent UFC lightweight champion. And he's 29 and he's never lost a match. He's pretty phenomenal. He just retired at age 29 and he's in his prime. I don't know his exact age, but he's like in his early 30s, maybe mid-30s, but he's relatively young. He's never been beaten. He's hardly been challenged. He's incredible. But his father died and he decided that he wanted to retire and just live his life and not be in this constant kind of rat race, if you will, of being a champion. He compared it to a prison. He said it's a prison. I'm always having to wake up, train, rest, train, rest, compete. He said it's just constant. I'm imprisoned in this way of being, in this way of living.

So, I typed out this quote from the interview that I read. It says this, and this, I think, speaks to what we're talking about today. The wealthiest man is the self-sufficient one. If you have just the right amount of everything, you are at peace with your head and thoughts, then you are the wealthiest. Even if you don't have millions, the posh life, if what you have is enough, then you will always be the wealthiest. It's a beautiful example of, if you're conditioned to think that happiness is found in more, happiness is found in something that you don't already have, if you're conditioned to think that happiness is an external job, then you'll always be chasing happiness. You'll always be doing things in order to try to create results or circumstances that make you happy versus realizing that happiness is an inside job. I opened up today's episode with that quote, that philosophy. You already have everything you need to be the happiest you could ever be. It's called life.

So, I'll give you three strategies, philosophies, principles, keys, whatever you want to call these. This is how to be happy from my perspective. See, by the way, I want to be clear. I don't believe there is a cookie cutter formula to being happy. There isn't a one size fits all approach. Your happiness is a very personal thing, the way that you find happiness. For example, a Buddhist monk might define their happiness more as the state of needing nothing, a state of peace, so they might not even use the word happiness. And happiness, it's just a word, as I always say, like use the word or words that resonate with you, that land for you, but again, someone would find their happiness. A Buddhist monk might find their happiness sitting under a tree for 12 hours a day. That might be where they find their sweet spot, their heaven on earth or whatever you want to call it, whereas someone else might find their happiness by waking up every day and going out and serving their community and doing good for others and adding value to other people's lives. So, this example is what I'm sharing between the Buddhist monk and the social worker, the person of service, that there's not one size fits all approach to happiness, but there are timeless principles that either remove the obstacles for being happy, the obstacles to happiness, or they simply enable us, they cause us, they create the circumstances, they create the situation, the paradigm, the mindset that would enable us to be happy.

So, here are the three keys that I personally have found make the biggest difference and enable me to be happy and have enabled me to be happy throughout my, well, not my entire life, because I used to not be aware of these. It's been probably the last 10 years or so that I've kind of discovered these and implemented these and learned through the experience of these because it's one thing to learn something intellectually, but it's a different thing if you experience it. That's when you truly learn it because you actually get to live it. I think the only way to really learn something is to live what you learn. You can't just think about it. That's step one. Think about it, get it intellectually, but then when you put it in practice, that's when you fully immerse yourself and you really get to learn that thing because now, you know it through experience. It'd be like if you were telling someone something and be like, hey, yeah, I read this thing, it sounds really interesting, it sounds really practical, it sounds really good, maybe you should try it versus, hey, I've done this thing for the last 10 years every single day. Here's how it impacts my life. You can do the same thing. So, that's the difference between learning something intellectually and learning it by actually living it.

So, here are three keys to being happy. Number 1, decide how you want to feel. If you're taking notes. I would at least jot these three things down to make sure that you don't– because otherwise you're going to forget them. You're going to forget them, most likely, unless your memory is a lot better than mine. Number 1, though, decide how you want to feel. So, if you want to be happy or if you want to be at peace or if you want to be in life, whatever you want to feel, I'm not telling you how to feel, like I said, happy, that's a word. Happiness, that's a word. You decide how you want to feel, but if you want to be happy, make a commitment to being happy. It's really similar to if you want to be physically healthy, physically, if you want to be healthy, that requires a commitment. Again, it's not effortless. It doesn't just happen. You don't go, oh, I wish I were more healthy, and then it just happened. No, you make a commitment to being physically healthy. And just like being mentally and emotionally healthy, a.k.a. happy, requires commitment.

So, you've got to decide how you want to feel, and then you have to align your thoughts, words and actions with the feeling that you're committed to. So, decide how you want to feel, and then align your thoughts, words. Writing that down, hold on, then align your thoughts, words, and actions with how you want to feel. Just like, again, if you wanted to be physically healthy, you would have to commit to that, and then you would have to align your thoughts, your words, and most importantly, your actions with how you want it, with being physically healthy. You'd have to align your actions in terms of which foods you put into your body. You can't just think about being physically healthy, you actually have to take actions that are in alignment with that. You've got to put healthy foods into your body. You've got to move your body. You've got to be physically active to be physically healthy. So, number 1, decide how you want to feel. And it could look something like this. I would put it into an affirmation that you read every single day or a mantra, and it could be I'm committed to being the happiest I've ever been. It could be that. It could be I'm committed to experiencing joy in each moment or very simply, one of my mantras is just enjoy every moment. Enjoy every moment.

And by the way, if you didn't listen to– I did two episodes in the last few weeks, one was called How to Make Every Moment the Best Moment of Your Life. That was Episode 382. So, if you want to listen to that, and I'd encourage you to listen to it if you haven't yet, this is something if you really want to feel good, if you really want to be happy and enjoy each moment of your life and make every day, like really wake up feeling good, go to bed feeling fulfilled and satisfied, if you want that, and I think most of us, if not all of us do. I think that philosophically, we all just want to feel good. That's why we do what we do. If I make more money, then I'll be significant or I'll be able to buy things or I'll have freedom or I'll be able to pay off my debt, remove those stressors, like all roads lead back to I just want to be happy, I just want to feel good. All roads lead back to I just want to feel good. So, you get to decide how you want to feel. So, mine, enjoy every moment.

Oh, I'm sorry, I was mentioning that if you want to go back and listen to those recent podcast episodes, How to Make Every Moment the Best Moment of Your Life, is at HalElrod.com/382. And then, I followed that up with How to Make Any Day Your Best Day Ever, and that was Episode 383. So, you can listen to it at HalElrod.com/383. But step 1 in how to be happy is decide how you want to feel, and then make a commitment to align your thoughts, your words, and your actions with how you've decided and what you've committed to in terms of how you want to feel.

Number 2, accept the unchangeable. Accept the unchangeable. Remember, I've said this, I've talked about this in past episodes, the source of all of our emotional pain is resisting reality. Resisting your reality, wishing and wanting that things that are out of your control, especially the past, because you can't go back in time and change it, but you also can't change– for example, you can't change the present moment exactly as it is, meaning my desk that I'm looking at right now is brown. What if I hate it? What if I did not like that I had a brown desk, and looking at it every day, I get it, but I can't afford it, but I can't stand this brown desk. That's an example of resisting reality. Wishing something that is out of your– I cannot change the color of this desk in this moment. So either I resist it and wish it were black or blue or lighter brown or whatever, and I create a– it's probably not a lot of emotional pain, it's just a low level of frustration or dissatisfaction, but I can either be totally at peace and grateful and accept this desk exactly as it is. By the way, I love the desk. I'm just using it as an example. But it could be anything, could be I wish I lived in a different city. I wish I wasn't in this marriage. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish things were different that simply aren't different.

And here's the thing, if you go, well, okay, but Hal– this is an important clarification, if you go, Hal, but I can get out of the marriage. I can get out of the marriage. Yeah, you can, but if you're in it now, be at peace with your reality exactly as it is while you are proactive in changing any aspects of your reality that you can change. You see, it's a simultaneous thing where you simultaneously accept life exactly as it is while you are proactive in making any and all changes so that life becomes exactly as you want it to be, but don't resist your reality as it is now while you're changing it because that just creates inner turmoil, frustration, resentment, anger, regret, all of these emotions that for the most part, causes more harm than good. So, accept the unchangeable and begin with your past. Apply unconditional acceptance to your past because you can't go back in time and change it. If you're ever feeling pain over the past, it's always a result of resisting it. Gosh, I wish that didn't happen. I'm so frustrated. I didn't deserve that. That person shouldn't have done that. That person shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done that. Why did I do that? You're creating, through resistance of reality, creating emotional turmoil.

The alternative is, yeah, I shouldn't have done that, but you know what? I can't go back in time and change it. So, I'm going to learn from that. I'm not going to do that again. So, you can extract value from the past, but I'm also not going to wish it were any different because guess what? That's living in a state of delusion to wish something were different that you cannot make different, which includes– until a time machine is invented, unless you're Marty McFly with a DeLorean, you can't go back in time and change the past. So, wishing that you could is futile. It does not change anything. It just keeps you in a state of delusion and typically creates that emotional turmoil that very rarely serves you. And when I say rarely serves you, the times that it does serve you or the way that it can serve you is for you to learn from it and go, oh, yeah, I feel pain when I think about that thing that I did or the way that person treated me or the way that this situation unfolded. What can I learn from that so that I don't experience that pain again?

But do you sense the lightness in my voice? I'm looking at the past. I'm evaluating something that is not or was not as I wanted it to be, but I'm doing it from a place of inviting a lesson, a place of learning, of growing, of evolving, of improving, so that the future that is changeable or the present that I can now choose how I show up. I'm using the past simply to extract value that I can apply to the present moment that will alter the future. So, it's about accepting the unchangeable. Accept life exactly as it is while you make life exactly as you want it to be. Hold on, I'm going to write that one down too. If I'm writing it down, you should probably write it down. Alright. So, what did I say? Accept life exactly as it is while you make life exactly as you want it to be. Alright. There you go. That's it.

So, the first two, again, first two keys to being happy. Number 1, decide how you want to feel, make a commitment to being happy or grateful or joyful or at peace or whatever it is for you. Number 2, accept the unchangeable. I mentioned earlier that to be happy, either there's these principles that either remove obstacles to being happy or simply enable you to be happy. Well, number 1, deciding how you want to feel is really enabling you. That's like step 1 in being happy or feeling anything is making a conscious decision that that's how you want to feel. In terms of accepting the unchangeable, that's really removing the obstacle, the key obstacle to our happiness, which is resistance, resisting reality. If you're putting your energy into wishing something were different that is out of your control, then you are blocking happiness in that moment. And often, we live in a constant state of resistance, wishing and wanting that things were different all the time. I wish this were different. I wish that were different. It's that unhappy person and what they're focusing on. They're focusing on the things that make them unhappy.

And number 3, find joy in everything you do. Find joy in everything you do. I mentioned a few weeks ago, I did that podcast titled How to Make Every Moment the Best Moment of Your Life, How to Make Every Moment the Best Moment of Your Life. And in that podcast, I led you, I led the listener through a best moment meditation. And I think I kind of made it up on the fly, but it's something that I do kind of unconsciously. And ever since I did that podcast, now, I'm really conscious of it, but it went something like this. This is the best moment of my life because I'm looking out the window at beautiful trees right now. And by the way, I'm just telling you what I'm doing.

So, the point was, it's this best moment mantra, this best moment of meditation where you simply decide that every moment of your life is the best moment of your life. Remember the quote that we opened the podcast with today? You already have everything you need to be the happiest you could ever be. It's called life. That's another thing I talked to my daughter about last night is that life exists in the present moment. In fact, life is the present moment. You think about if somebody would ask you, hey, how's life? You would probably kind of like, the eyes would go up into the left and you'd go to the right. You'd go, oh, man, I got this problem, and this is going on, but this good thing did happen the other day, so that was positive. And if you were to answer me that way, I would say, no, no, no, no. I didn't ask how your life situation was because your life and your life situation are two different things, Your life situation, that's your circumstances. That's the events in your life. That's the people. Like, that's the external circumstances. Your life situation is the external aspects of your life, but your life, it’s literally what your consciousness is experiencing in any given moment. That is your life. Your life exists as the present moment and your life is what your consciousness is experiencing in any given moment.

And here's the good news. This is really good news. You get to choose what your consciousness is experiencing in any given moment, and thus, you can choose to experience any given moment as the best moment of your life or the worst moment of your life or just a mundane moment of your life or anything in between. You get to choose. So, the third key here, find joy in everything you do. Actually, I would probably rewrite that now that I'm thinking about it, find joy in every moment, even if you're not doing anything, in fact, I'm going to edit this on my computer. Hold on. Find joy in every moment. So, even if you're not doing anything, yeah, I mentioned earlier, I give the example of the Buddhist monk who finds their happiness in sitting under a tree meditating for 12 hours. I mean, I guess they're doing something. They're meditating, but the essence of meditating is kind of doing nothing. I mean, when you're meditating, you're meditating, you're doing something which is doing nothing, if that makes any sense.

So, the idea is how is life? And I'm asking you that right now, how's life? And I'd love for you to sit with that for a second. Not how was your life situation, meaning I didn't ask you what happened this morning, I didn't ask you how the past week went. I didn't ask you what you're worried about for the future. I asked you, how's life? For me, this is the best moment of my life. Why? Because (A) it's the moment of my life, this is my life right now, and then I could find, I just run through my senses, it's the best moment of my life because I'm talking to you. It's the best moment of my life because I am talking to you. It's the best moment of my life because I'm talking into a microphone. It's the best moment of my life because I'm looking outside at the trees. It's the best moment of my life because I'm touching my leg right now, I'm kind of squeezing my calf. I don't know why, I just sort of squeeze my calf while I'm talking to you. Now, I just smack my leg.

So, here's the thing. What I'm trying to give to you, and when I say give, it's really paying it forward because this is something that's been emerging for me gradually over the last few years, but really, I mean, every day, just every day I get more in touch with this that happiness is a choice. And it's chosen essentially, in each moment. In each moment. Number 1, you decide how you want to feel. If you don't decide that you want to be happy, then you're not going to choose it. Think about that. If you don't decide that you want to be happy, like really commit to it. Like Michael Singer in The Untethered Soul, you make an unconditional vow of happiness, you know what? I'm going to be happy no matter what, even though I'm going to experience difficult people and difficult circumstances and painful events, like, yeah, that's life, but I'm going to find joy in every moment. It's the decision of how you're going to feel.

And then, number 2, what will get in the way of that is when things come up that you didn't expect, you didn't want, that caused you pain, whether it's physical or mental or emotional or it causes someone else pain and that causes you pain because you love that person, what happens is we go into a state of typically unconscious resistance. I wish this were different. I always use the example of traffic, like that to me, is the most relatable example of when we resist reality. You hit traffic and you go, no, damn it, gosh, go faster. I'm running late. Why are you driving? You're driving like an idiot. You're so slow. The speed limit is 45. and you're going 38. What's wrong with you? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Like we're resisting the reality of the traffic in front of us. And thus, we are creating emotional turmoil during those moments of our life, when we have the choice to go, oh, the guy in front of me is going 38 in a 45. I can't change the speed of his car. Why would I suffer over it? Why would I create emotional turmoil over how fast the guy in front of me is driving? I'm going to be late. I can't change it. Why would I create emotional turmoil over something I can't change? That seems kind of silly. If I'm going to be late, why not enjoy every moment in this car, in this traffic, on the way to my appointment that I'm going to be late for? and when that person, that I'm late and they get upset, they're my boss, they're my spouse, they're my daughter or son. And now, I'm late, shoot. And I'm going to experience the wrath of the person that's waiting for me. I will receive that, but I don't need to let the thought of that alter my happiness, alter my experience of life because we get to choose that. We get to choose that. So, accept the unchangeable, and then number 3, again, find joy in every moment.

I don't know about you, but I choose to experience every moment of my life as the best moment of my life for no reason other than I decided I want to feel that way, I decided I wanted to enjoy the moment. And by the way, I don't know that I should use the word every moment because I'm often unconscious about the moment. Stuff happens, and I react or I respond or I get upset or I get angry. So, it's definitely not every moment, but I guess I should say that's what I strive for, that I strive for every moment. And it's getting to the point because I've become so present to this and I meditate on this reality every day. This ability to choose to be happy, to experience joy in every moment of my life, because I'm so present to that. And I've been practicing it like a muscle getting stronger and stronger and stronger. I can honestly say that more often than not, it's my reality. And it's enriched my life so much that that's why I'm talking about this with you, that's why I'm sharing this with you, because I want to pay it forward. Well, I want you to feel however you want to feel, but if happy is one of the words to describe how you'd like to feel, that's why I'm sharing this with you. And I really hope this landed for you today. I hope it did. I hope that you will implement these three keys to being happy that I shared with you.

Yeah, and please leave me a comment. This is episode 385. So, if you would do me a huge favor and just take a minute or two, I would really appreciate it. If you go to HalElrod.com/385, which might be where you've been listening to the episode right now on my website and just leave a quick comment and let me know what landed for you or what you're going to implement or anything at all, or any criticism like Hal, this was lame, this episode was goofy, and it was unrealistic. Like whatever. I want to hear all of your feedback. I really, really do. And if you've never left a review, if you're a regular listening to the podcast, this is one thing that I almost never do, but I should, because I always hear other podcasters do it. Would you go to iTunes? And this will take probably another minute or two, and just leave a quick review for the Achieve Your Goals podcast. I'd really appreciate that. I always hear the podcasters say that it's important, reviews get more people to listen. It gets Apple to show the podcast to more people. I don't know. I've never really studied the data on that, but I'm guessing it's probably true. So, if you would, leave a comment underneath the podcast at HalElrod.com/385 or a quick review on iTunes, I would appreciate either one or both. That's it.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening today. I really, really appreciate you. And I think a part of elevating the consciousness of humanity is elevating our ability to consciously choose how we experience our lives. And I don't know about you, but I like being happy. Enjoy feeling good. And so, today's episode and a big focus of my life right now is how can I experience happiness and joy and just those good feelings most of the time in my life. So, I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. And I will talk to you all next week. Take care.

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