I met with her for lunch the other day. It was the absolute happiest I have ever seen her.

Strange but true.

It first struck me that I didn’t know that she didn’t like her job that much. Then it hit me that she probably didn’t know that she didn’t like her job that much either.

Your subconscious mind rules. You may think you have your subconscious mid under control with your conscious mind, but you don’t.

My advice, listen. Listen to yourself. You know what you need to focus on. You know what in your life needs improvement.

It may be big and you may not want to face it, but eventually you need to. And things never are as bad in reality as they are in your mind.

Know that God will never give you a problem you cannot solve.

Relax.

Then periodically take one of the items that you need to work on and work on it. You don’t have to burn the whole house down, just take on one thing at a time.

You’ll get through it. And you’ll be like my friend who is happier now than she has been evidently. I never knew this side of her and it’s great. I enjoy her even more than I did before. Bonus for everyone!

I simply don’t think people are being taught this by their parents, and certainly not societal influences.

I’m not sure exactly how deep this rabbit hole is, but here’s a first look at the problem.

I believe people do not know that they have the ability to control their own internal happiness thermostat.

They continuously allow others to affect their happiness level.

Talk radio, TV news, sports scores and recently, politics. Local happenings such as crime, school events that affect ones children and local community growth challenges.

People know that bad things sometimes happen to good people.

And all of this reinforces an unstated occurance in our daily lives - that others have the power to influence whether we’re “happy” or not.

My working theory on this is to acknowledge these events and continue to fight for the causes you believe in. But don’t let perceived losses make you unhappy.

Occasionally I wind up in a funeral home for a friend’s Parent or Grandparent. I have noticed that on my way out and on my way back home, that I notice the birds chirping and the smell of the jasmine or the blue of the sky a little more than I do on a “regular” day.

I know that this is because I realize for the moment that life is short and that every day is a good day. Every day is a gift.

And with that gift comes the obligation to do something important. Even if that’s just appreciating the gift.

Right now I’m managing my disappointment of the outcome of the election. My guy didn’t win.

Ok. But I’m still going to maintain a high level of personal happiness.

I have decided to simply cut back on the consumption of political news. After all, the people have spoken and it doesn’t really matter what the pundits say any more.

In my daily commute, I’m listening to more music, talking a bit more with my carpool buddy for the segment of my commute that I share or just turning the radio off.

I’m investing the time I would have spent in the evening listening to political talking heads and I’m reading. With my kids.

That’s a better outcome for my family and a better outcome for me.

I see people get really wound up about work issues and challenges. I see people get really wound up about things that happen in daily life that frankly, don’t warrant the level of reaction that people give them.

One of my favorite things I teach my sons is to give a small reaction to a small problem and save the large reactions for the large problems.

Challenges to ones personal core beliefs are omnipresent.

Challenges are like food. You are designed by your maker to eat what is needed to properly fuel your body. There is a wide variety of food to choose from. This is simply one of our gifts.

The fact that you can eat too much food and even choose to eat poor quality food is an opportunity to succeed or fail your maker’s intention. You only need a certain amount of food. And your body does well with a better quality food.

Challenges are the same thing.

How many challenges do you wish to take on?

Do you take on too many? Do you continuously feed on challenges that are bigger than yourself?

The phrase “Pick your battles” comes to mind.

Often I see individuals that aren’t managing their happiness level correctly are consuming too many challenges into their brain.

Moderation here is exactly like moderation in any other part of your life.

I’d like to see people watch a reality TV show about people that have improved their general attitude. Just like “Biggest Loser” watches people confront their overeating and underexercising, happiness is similarly improvable.

Where are the superstar “happiness” athletes?

Take on a few challenges and do something with them. Don’t accept every challenge that you stumble upon.

And don’t let outsiders presenting challenges control your level of happiness.

It’s your life. Take responsibility for it.

History has stories of people jumping out of windows during times like these. Heck, even recently a story from the UK outlined how a father and husband financial executive intentionally stepped in front of a train and finished himself off just because of the downward turn in the financial markets.

How stupid.

Get a grip people! It’s just money!

Money is not human. In fact, it is simply a physical representation of a mental concept. It’s just paper. Paper. Almost ordinary paper.

I’m trying to smash through a simple mental game that governments play. That’s all money is.

It’s certainly nothing to get upset about.

God invented sunrises and babies and fresh green grass and love.

Much better than money.

DO NOT TIE YOUR HAPPINESS TO THE DOW!

Challenges are not all bad. They’re just challenges.

We’re living through a financial challenge, that’s all.

You’ll get through it I promise.

You may have more or less money, you may take some time to get back where you were.

Who cares?

Most people’s concept of the value of money is how much “stuff” money can buy.

I can assure you that you can live a happier life if you simply untie your happiness from money altogether.

Strive. Work. Focus. Dream. Face down challenges. Compete. But don’t be unhappy while you’re doing it.

Look up from your work and realize that that beautiful sunrise you’ve been ignoring while you’re face down in a $6 cup of coffee was put there for you to enjoy. Enjoy it.

Observe life around you. Get your head out of the financial news.

Your real friends will still like you even if your portfolio is smaller than it was.

If you’ve trained your family correctly, they’ll be able to see that happiness doesn’t come from “stuff” so they won’t miss not having more new “stuff” for a while. You did teach that to your family, didn’t you?

Take them on a picnic instead of buying some multi-hundred dollar electronic whiz bang thing for their next birthday or holiday. Bring a Frisbee. Leave your Blackberry at home.

Your family will have a better time because they’re with you and they have 100% of your attention.

Action step: Re-read this article. Make a promise to yourself to separate your happiness from the financial news.

You will be amazed that with some simple (notice I didn’t say easy) changes to your thought processes you can actually live a consistently happy existence, no matter what the DOW.

It’s $499 so it ain’t cheap but WOW did it feel good. I don’t usually have any interest in massages, genuine or through various machinery.

Here’s the link. I read 12 reviews on their site and 11 of 12 were 4’s and 5’s out of a possible 5.

Evidently, happiness can be found in mechanical devices.

I can’t wait to get this for my wife. If not her birthday, then probably Christmas. It’s very expensive but since she’s been asking for it or something like it for several years now, I think it’s time.

When I finally pull the trigger and give this to her, I expect to get more pleasure out watching her enjoy it than she will when she uses it.

At least that’s my assessment after my day at the mall.

If you read my earlier post, I had to go to the Apple store to get two iPhones fixed. There was a 2 hour wait to get to talk to a tech. The store was full of people shopping for expensive, exotic hardware from iPhones to super-thin laptops to iPods and more. There was hardly anything in the store less than $300 and the most people were around the $2,000 laptops.

They made me turn my McCain t-shirt inside out to avoid a scene. I just made that last sentence up.

The rest of the story though is real.

The place was mobbed.

The parking lot was full, there was a fairly long line for Annie’s Pretzels of all things in the food court.

People were spending money left and right.

Now I’m not sure that retail therapy is healthy for anyone’s bank account. I’m not exactly Dave Ramsey. All I wanted to do with this post is make the observation that retail therapy is alive and well in Atlanta, Georgia.

At least for this day, I watched thousands of people having a good time.

He recommended that individuals need to simply get someone to “ventilate their concerns” whether that person was a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or even as simple as a good friend. According to Dr. Rosenfeld just talking out your concerns to another human being is theraputic and beneficial.

He recommended that this course of “ventilating one’s concerns” be attempted before any issuance of pharaceuticals.

As a happiness coach I facilitate the growth and achievement of goals for individuals who are looking for improved happiness and want someone to listen and help.

You’ll learn more about yourself doing this and the corresponding Unhappiness Journal than almost anything else you do.

These two tools are the foundation of improving your happiness in your life.

This may not make sense at first, but this is one of the first exercises I recommend my coaching clients complete.

It sounds easy, but it’s definitely more difficult to do than it seems.

It is beneficial to isolate the points during one’s day that make unhappiness flare up.

The difficulty is recognizing all of them by writing them down.

It is often difficult to admit the number of occasions that one is outwardly expressing unhappiness or inwardly just feeling unhappy.

The points and issues that are documented are only a starting place. One must sort through the listed items to ferret out a cause or a symptom.

A commute that generates road rage could be due to a job that one feels stuck in, or perhaps just a tight morning schedule getting kids to school and other morning obligations completed.

Download and use the free Unhappiness Journal worksheet right now. Print these and use them to learn more about your day.

It was still mostly dark when I left. The nearly full moon was still lighting up the sky and I could see clouds and the silhouettes of trees on the hillsides adjacent to my route.

I’ve always wanted a convertible and I now have one. I still smile every time I run with the top down.

Why is that?

It must be a combination of things.

One, I only go through the motions of manually removing the top on really nice days. There is no button on a Jeep, it’s kind of a project. It’s best if I can do it on Friday afternoon and put it back up on Sunday evening so the whole weekend should be nice weather. So one of my observations is that the feeling of experiencing comfortable outdoor weather firsthand makes me happy.

Second, I like having the vertical views that I get when the top is down. How silly is that? When you’re driving a car, who cares if you can see a helicopter, clouds, the upper portion of a larger vehicle next to you in traffic, stars, clouds or the sun? But I do.

It may have something to do with seeing something novel. Perhaps if I drove in a convertible every day it may not be so darn entertaining to me.

Perhaps there is so much stimuli from the wind and the noise that there isn’t any bandwidth for the brain to contemplate heavier topics so the pleasure comes in part from relief of mental burden.

As I write this it’s the beginning of Fall in Atlanta, Georgia where I live. I expect a good number of days with the top down in the next 60 days.

If you’re looking for a quick dose of happiness without meds, alcohol or guilt, I recommend you beg, borrow or steal yourself a ride in a convertible ASAP.

You may have a friend that owns one. Invite that person to a meal at a restaurant. Tell them you’ll buy if they drive and will put the top down for the ride to the restaurant and back.

Some of the car rental places rent them. Look them up on the Internet and go get yourself one for a day.

I’m not fully certain why convertibles bring so much happiness. I don’t always need to know why something works in order to determine that it works. I’ve never seen anything but smiling faces on a driver or passengers in a convertible.

Go drop the top somewhere, somehow… right now.

I bet you’ll come back happier than when you left.