I’ve always considered myself to be an optimist, a glass half full kind of person. Yet my family and friends can attest to the fact that I have often been negative about things, believing in worst case scenarios or impossibilities.

I found myself examining this in the past 12 months during the continuation of the pandemic. I felt I had lost my purpose, I wanted to finish up my online mentoring business before it had even really taken off. Everything felt a bit dull and pointless.

Choosing happiness as a conscious state of being is something I never would have thought I could aspire to and practice. I do not have a regular meditation or yoga practice although I know their benefits. However, the one action I started a few months ago was to consciously choose to be happy, despite what is happening in my personal life and in the world outside my own home. It’s all about creating good vibrations.

Rewind to July 2021 when I was taken by a friend to early morning event in a café which was to do with consciousness and business, called Coffee and Consciousness.  A seemingly strange combination of business and consciousness opened me up to seeing possibilities. Change the world through business? It was an unusual thought to me.

Feeling like I had nothing to lose, I threw myself into learning about this model of business which is about harnessing the vibrational forces in the universe which I have always known existed but didn’t see their practical application.

As I started to choose to be happy, my own energy lifted and I started to attract the right people into my life. I felt better able to cope, I was able to fit more into my day as well as take time to rest. I started to really feel happy. It was a self-fulfilling action, the more I practiced choosing happiness, the more I experienced happiness. Small bursts of joy which spread.

My business started to take off. I had strong mentoring support from my new coach and I felt that new ways of helping people was possible. It was all the same information, but delivered from a happier me.

Now as I contemplate life in 2022 I feel more adaptable, more able to relax into the possibilities which present themselves, even if they come disguised as challenges. Despite the pandemic I have made travel arrangements, secured two artist residencies and am excited to have time to research the world again from outside the lens of Australia.

It is one thing to know on an intellectual level that everything is connected, another to have that heart experience. To know that we as humans have the capabilities to change our world as we change our thinking. As Einstein said, to change the world we must see the world anew.

“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.... We must learn to see the world anew.”

I think of this as I prepare to make a new body of work, to experience life through another lens. I’m consciously choosing happiness - it is the start of seeing the world anew.