Review: Happy For No Reason By Marci Shimoff

Are you happy?

It’s a simple question. Are you happy? And if you hesitated to give a big YES!, this book Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out is for you.

Marci Shimoff is one of the Law of Attraction teachers in the movie / book The Secret. In this book, she explains being happy is the best way to utilize the Law of Attraction because it’s really the feelings, not thoughts, that has the creative power. (The link takes you to my own article on this point.) So be happy and have a wonderful life.

How to be happy

“Sure” you may say, “I want to be happy, but I have problems. . .” Well, that’s the point. You don’t need to wait until all your problems are resolved to be happy.

What I really like about Happy For No Reason is it doesn’t just pay lip service discussing how important happiness is to your mental and physical health or what happiness is to begin with, but it shows the solid steps you can take immediately to be happy. She clarifies there are seven aspects to be happy. Let me introduce them by their chapter titles:

1. Take ownership of your happiness
2. Don’t believe everything you think
3. Let love lead
4. Make your cells happy
5. Plug yourself to spirit
6. Live a life inspired by purpose
7. Cultivate nourishing relationships

I understand it’s not like you must achieve all the seven aspects fully to be happy (this attitude only puts off happiness to the future), but these are areas we can look at to be more fully — us.

Happiness is our natural state of being

Being happy for no reason is our natural state of being. The seven principles help you to unlearn some of the happiness-killer habits, such as over-thinking (“Don’t believe everything you think” and “Let love lead”) or victim mentality (“Take ownership of your happiness”).

The book is an easy read with lots of anecdotes and even cartoons. (Marci Shimoff is also the co-author of some Chicken Soup For The Soul books.) One of my favorite stories is about a woman called Happy Oasis. She traveled to Bangladesh in her youth when there was a serious famine there. One day, she found herself surrounded by people who were dying.

I’ll skip the middle part of the story so that I won’t spoil your fun reading it. But in the end, she finds it is possible to smile even in such a horrific situation. And with that, she finds she can be happy anywhere in the world, regardless of the situation.

Is happiness important to you?

Our soul’s ultimate purpose is to experience this world and find joy in it. In other words to be happy. And the best happiness is the happiness for no reason. Happiness for a reason shall pass, happiness for no reason comes from your core and yours to keep.

My concern is that many people don’t really care about happiness. The book shows a survey of what people value in life and how happy they felt. Those who value monetary and career success over personal happiness are indeed less happier than those who value happiness and relationships. Well, duh, that’s the Law of Attraction working — you get what you pay attention to.

I don’t think we need to choose one or the other, but at the same time, I’m sure that, if you don’t value happiness, you surely won’t find it.

So . . . are you happy? Do you care to be happy?

Cinderella, The Power Of Dreaming Big

Is the recession making you feel like Cinderella before her fairy godmother showed up? Fairy tales often carry important messages. When most people were illiterate, this is how wisdom was passed along, by putting it in interesting and memorable tales. And if you thought Cinderella was just a lucky girl who happened to walk into wealth and happiness by magic, let me show you what she really did. (Photo credit)

The audacity of dreaming big

So there was this poor girl, wearing rags and sleeping on cinders. One evening, there was a big ball that all the girls were invited. She wanted to go, but she had no proper clothing for such an occasion.

Suddenly, her fairly godmother appears.

Now if you were in her situation, and see some magical figure, be it your fairy godmother or a genie, would you dare to say, “I want to go to the ball.”?

I’ve been poor myself, and I know what it’s like. The really sad thing about poverty is not the hunger nor the coldness. Poverty decays the spirit. You start thinking poor.

I remember walking on a cold night to the store (I didn’t have a car) to get some groceries. I guess it was about this time of the year because I remember the pretty holiday lights at the houses as I walked — each house had different decorations and they all looked cheerful. I was in difficult marriage and even though I had a good full-time job, all the money was getting sucked and I was sinking in debt. To me, all those pretty houses seemed to have happy, well-off people.

If a fairy godmother showed up at that time, I think I would have asked for some money. Or a nice warm sweater and new underwear. (I wasn’t wearing shirts with holes — with my full-time job, that wasn’t an option. But underneath, I was wearing socks with holes.) This is how poverty makes us think. I was in such a miserable situation that the only thing I could think of was to get a little relief.

Whereas Cinderella dared to say, “I want to go to the ball.”

She didn’t say that because she figured she could snap up the prince’s attention, marry him, therefore securing lifelong prosperity. That is how it turned out, but at the time when she met her fairy godmother, all she asked was to be able to go to the ball. That special evening of glamour. Notice the innocence and audacity of her request.

What is your big dream?

If your fairy godmother shows up, what are you going to ask for? Do you have the same kind of innocence and audacity Cinderella had, to dare to dream something that is unlikely, even if that dream doesn’t seem to improve your situation in a direct “realistic” way? Or is your thinking limited to the level of your daily life, like asking for a (better) job or some stuffs on the storefront that you cannot afford?

Please note asking for a large amount of money is NOT a big dream. We ask for money when we are too lazy to visualize what we really want, thinking money can buy happiness. It’s actually a very poor dream.

Morale of the story

Cinderella didn’t just get lucky. She had a big dream, and she dared to say it. When you have the vision that inspires you, and when you acknowledge such a big dream, something magical happens. Some people call it the Law of Attraction, some call it the creative power we have within. You don’t need a fairy godmother — you have the creative power within you. It may take a bit longer than the magic wand, but it works, and even better, you can use your innate creative power over and over again in your life.

Since I “got it”, I’ve been encouraging myself to say something like, “I want to go to the ball.” It’s actually quite challenging to match her audacity. Often, my dream look shabby compared to hers, and I have to encourage myself further to dream bigger. And my life has been getting better and better. I even have a thriving business that is growing further.

This is the time of the year when we think of the new beginning in the new year. What is your big dream? Is you spirit high enough to dream big?

Review: The Spontaneous Healing Of Belief By Gregg Braden

I am so glad I found this book The Spontaneous Healing of Belief by Gregg Braden because it gives scientific explanations on so many ideas I’m familiar with, such as the true nature of reality, our creative power over our own lives and on the world, and the Law of Attraction with the power of feelings. The book also serves as a great follow up on Dr Bruce Lipton’s The Biology Of Belief, by discussing what belief can do beyond our individual body.

Reality as simulation game

Gregg Braden cites various scientific studies to show us that this everyday world we live in is a computer simulation, a virtual reality on a giant scale, in the Universal computer. What we call reality is not real, but only a reflection of true reality.

This idea of life as dream (or, I call it “living movie” in the article linked above) is often mentioned in the various spirituality traditions, and it’s so refreshing to see science finally catching up. (By the way, this idea is present in the Bible, too. It says Adam fell a deep sleep — but it doesn’t say he woke up. So, we can interpret this that we are living in Adam’s dream.)

The good news is we are not just living in a simulation but we can reprogram the simulation, too. We are the actors as well as the directors in this living movie. We are the creatures as well as the creators. We are active participants, not just a powerless victims or observers.

How do we reprogram the Universal computer program? By our beliefs. By shattering the old paradigm of false limitations and adopting new beliefs. You know, not just wishing, not just wanting to believe, but believing from the bottom of your heart, with all your feelings.

Gregg Braden shares that our heart emits electric and magnetic energies. On the other hand, it is proven that electric or magnetic energies can change the nature of atoms, the building blocks of this world. So when we believe, when we feel the new possibility with our heart, the electromagnetic energy from the heart can change the atoms in and around us, changing the so-called reality.

The Earth experiment

Gregg Braden also discusses what it may mean that this world we live in is a simulation. A simulation is usually used for training. So are we getting trained to better live in the true reality?

This is basically the same of what I call the Earth experiment. Our Higher Selves (also called oversouls) send individual souls to this world to — experience. There is no judgment really. We are here to learn, and mastery of the learning leads to joy.

If you are experiencing difficulty in life, that just means you are at a great learning point — just as when you are in simulation program and facing difficult situation. You can keep trying in your old malfunctioning manner until you figure a new way that works. (I’m sorry if this statement sounds cynical — it is not. I really mean difficulties are great learning opportunities.)

The Law of Attraction and the Field

So we have the creative power. Gregg Braden explains this process by introducing the idea of the “Field”, also called zero-point field, or The Divine Matrix (which is the title of his book that precedes this one)

What we think and feel, what we believe, we can create — we can manifest. This is the same with the Law of Attraction, but I like Gregg Braden’s way of explanation. I always felt LoA is more about creation and the word “attraction” causes unnecessary misunderstanding. I know it works, and now we have a better way to understand it.

Here is a video clip where he explains all this, giving the skinny of this book “The Spontaneous Healing of Belief”:

Working the miracles of belief

In this book, Gregg Braden also says,

“Through the healing of our beliefs, we discover how — with the grace and ease that comes from experiencing ourselves as part of the world rather than separate from it. When we do so, we become the seed of life’s miracles, as well as the miracles themselves.” (page 207)

Miracles like reversing dis-eases and living just as long as you want. Gregg Braden is smart and doesn’t use the emotionally-charged word “immortality”, but he does talk about super longevity, saying, “The first 100 years are the hardest.”

He talks about redirecting time, space and matter, so I guess immortality is pretty much in his scope.

So how do you want to rewrite your “reality”? What kind of miracles do you want to work on? Now you know how to change your life and the world. Don’t just sit back and complain. That does absolutely no good. Changing your belief, rewriting the computer program, brings change.

“Whatsoever you shall ask, believing, you shall receive.” — Jesus (Matthew 21:22)

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