Happiness requires a single change of focus. From wanting to control everything and everybody around you to focusing on how you think and feel. To want to control the world around you is selfish and self-centered. To become aware that you can only control yourself is self-development.

Your feelings are a response to how you choose to react to the the world around you. Let others around you be responsible for their own behavior. You are only responsible for your own. You may believe that doing what you think others expect of you will bring you happiness. Living by other peoples standards can only bring frustration. You will never be able to please everyone. People think in terms of themselves every bit as much as you do yourself. You should no more give over control of yourself than you would expect to control others.

Too often, in everyday life, we focus on how we feel people are treating us. We are so busy responding to how people are behaving around us that we are unaware that it is our thoughts that affect how we feel. Our minds have been trained to look for a cause for each effect. We convince ourselves that how we feel is caused by what is happening around us, when in fact we have chosen to associate that response with that event. There is not necessarily a one to one relationship.

Too often we believe that others behavior is directed at us. If the boss doesn't acknowledge our smile, he must be unhappy with something we did. We try to explain others behavior in terms of ourselves. We look for simple cause and effect explanations. What we expect to find in life is of our own choosing. Look for people driving white cars and you will soon be unaware of all the other colours. What you expect, what you focus on, you will find.

So change your focus. Every moment that you live is a new one. Have you ever lived this moment before? To live in the moment is to constantly be living on the edge waiting for the next moment of this adventure to reveal itself.

Approach life with a sense of fun and adventure. Look for the something new to experience rather than focus on the sameness. It amazes me how friends return to the same place for a holiday each year. They go expecting that the holiday will go exactly as the first time they went. Then they are disappointed when it does not.

Happiness is not something you will bathe in every day of your life. If it was, how quickly you would become accustomed to it. On the one hand, what you become accustomed to becomes boring. On the other hand an occasional sense of accomplishment, a sense of euphoria, can make your day.

And when happiness seems to be hard to find, then look back on the good experiences as a pick-me-up to your day. Choose to relive those good experiences to overcome daily stress.

Happiness is about self acceptance. To accept yourself is to bring your entire being, all your thoughts into the moment. Life is happening now! If you are constantly struggling with what happened to you yesterday, you can hardly be aware of what you are experiencing now.

You will never get as close to someone else as to yourself. You will never have the opportunity to understand someone else more than you can understand yourself.

Focus on controlling yourself and you will be in control of your life.

Many years of writing and reading for self development.