But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful. Psalm 68:3
How happy do you want to be? Even though unpleasant things come into our lives, we can choose the happiness of a peaceful and content heart each day.
A good gardener doesn’t purposefully keep a place for her weeds. But so many of us gardeners get busy with other things and let the weeds overtake our good produce. The good news is that it’s not that hard to eradicate the ‘weeds’ that crowd out our happiness. Just answer the question, “How happy do I want to be?” Consider what you can do with these “weeds”:
Complaining – Make a vow to not complain at all for one week. (Maybe you need to start with one day.) Ask someone to hold you accountable. When you are tempted to complain, take a breath and give thanks for something. Really!
Pursuit of things – It’s fun to have new stuff, but sometimes more is less. Implement a moratorium on buying things. Pay what you need but decide that for one month you’re not going to buy something new just because you can or because it’s on sale. We did this for a month, then for three months, then for a year. We fell off the wagon once or twice, but I can say the absence of those things we might have bought hasn’t made us any less happy. And the savings helped pay the medical bills!
Grudges – Say no to holding grudges. They rob us of joy more than they hurt the other person. To quote Princess Elsa, just “Let it go!” Grudges grow into bitterness, then anger, then hate, and hate corrodes the heart. Learn to forgive; move on.
Negative thinking – Maybe life has nudged you to thinking the glass is always half-empty. But guess what? God gave us a switch in our brain that allows us to consider another perspective. We become what we think about, so turn the negativity switch to OFF. Turn ON the goodness switch. You can do it!
Worrying about the future – Who can change one thing by worrying? Most of the things we worry about never occur! Actually, worry does accomplish one thing: it kills your happiness. Pray. Plan. Practice being content.
Worrying what others think – We ought to not go out of our way to offend others. But people will think what they think. You can control only you. The question we need to ask is, “Will this please God?”
The list goes on to include so much more and yes, there are truly big burdens that weigh heavily on us and rob us of our joy. But if you’ve found one or more ‘weeds’ in this list, focus on eradicating them before trying to tackle the whole patch. Want to be even happier yet? Find a way to make others happy.
So just how happy do you want to be?