grateful and happy

Happiness is really my true goal in life and I have a great new tool to help me -gratefulness.

I have written about happiness before and thought so much about pursuing happiness or finding happiness that it sometimes seemed like something outside myself that I strived to acheive like winning an award.

I have recently read some different thoughts on happiness that I found useful. The zen philosophy is that we must experience both happiness and misery in order to fully appreciate happiness . I have also read that happiness is always within us and that all we need to do is self accualization to find peace and contentment. I believe both of these ideas have merit .For a while in the evening I spent time thinking of three things that happened during the day that made me happy. Recently I started thinking of things I was grateful for.This idea works in the morning and or anytime during the day to give me a mental pick-me-up or happiness boost.
Periodically I think about so many things I have in life to be grateful for. This attitude always lifts my spirit brings happiness and amazes me at what a blessed life I live. I am so grateful for my wonderful family my good health and beautiful home. These thoughts give me internal power and strength to pursue my dreams. I was also born with many great gifts to be grateful for. The love of learning, love of music, art,literature, history and so many other interests. Being grateful has become a useful paneca for the stresses that come with everyday existence. Now I make a deeper more comitted effort to improving my attitudes and daily habbits . The result is a quantitatively better fuller happier life.

Hope some of these thoughts will inspire to happiness.