Happiness Preponderance

Your happiness preponderance, or tendency toward HAPPINESS, regardless of outside events or influences, good or bad, is what we will refer to from now on, as one more time, your HAPPINESS PREPONDERANCE. It is is mainly influenced by your own subconscious and conscious views of yourself and your world, and the mental “cruise control” that you maintain in the absence of outside influences.

It is your neutral point, or the level of HAPPINESS your mind always returns to after the effects of any outside influences have worn off. In other words it is your pre-pondered or predetermined state of happiness that you have chosen for yourself.

For some, the score might be very low and for others very high, but only you can make that determination. This predisposition toward HAPPINESS in the absence of outside influence can be assigned a numeric value, and I’ll ask you to do that shortly. Keep in mind, you have already chosen your HAPPINESS PREPONDERANCE. In order to establish your HAPPINESS PREPONDERANCE value, we must calibrate the happiness scale to your personal definition of true happiness.

HAPPINESS SCALE

The Happiness Scale ranges from -10 to +10, with -10 being the worst, 0 being neutral, and +10 being the happiest possible.

-10------------------------0----------------------+10 miserable-------------neither happy or sad--------overjoyed!

Interpolate the scale and find the number you think corresponds to your average, uninfluenced mood. If you think you are a -10, don’t watch Old Yeller, and holy cow—get away from the window. If you think you are a +10 and are completely bubbling over with HAPPINESS, be very careful, as other humans will be incredibly jealous, and may just want to slap you upside the head. Let’s say you decide you are a +4. That will be the baseline from which you will measure changes to your HAPPINESS PREPONDERANCE itself, as well as how different events affect your ACTUAL, or current HAPPINESS at any given time.

Though outside influences may affect your ACTUAL HAPPINESS temporarily, your PREPONDERANCE comes mainly from within, not from without. In other words, you have unconsciously already decided on your level of happiness which of course means that you control how happy you want to be.

You can use the same scale to determine your ACTUAL HAPPINESS, which, at any given time may be higher or lower than your HAPPINESS PREPONDERANCE, and can be attributed to outside influences to the extent that you let them. If your ACTUAL HAPPINESS is low, you will use tools described in later chapters to raise it. If your ACTUAL HAPPINESS is high, you will also be given tools to hang on to and even recreate that desirable state.

You’ll notice that -10 is the value you’ll place on the lowest recollection of your life up to now, and +10 is the value for the happiest recollection of your life up to now. The scale is based on your previous life experience. Hang on to your hats kids, because you are about to find something out about yourselves that not even you knew!

What was the happiest time or experience of your life, your personal definition of +10? How did it feel? How long did it last? Does thinking about it now make you feel good? Do it. Go back RIGHT NOW to that place and time and remember it as vividly as possible, for at least 5 minutes. I’ll wait…

Well, for whatever time you spent dwelling on your +10, how did you feel? Pretty good eh? So by merely directing your thoughts, you have spent a few happy minutes that might otherwise have been spent, well, blah. Now here’s the kicker. How do you compare that happiest time of your life, your +10, to the happiest you could possibly ever be? I’m talking about the best thing you could dream of actually happening to you. Is there something, anything that could possibly beat your previous +10? Only you know.

Let’s compare your previous +10 to that ultimate happiness defined. If you did finally reach your ultimate, how would you feel compared to your previous +10? Even happier, or about the same? Writer-Boy contends that ultimate HAPPINESS, like your HAPPINESS PREPONDERANCE is something you decide upon ahead of time. Your previous +10 was, at the time, your ultimate HAPPINESS.

What would you do differently as a result of reaching your new ultimate? Cartwheels, back flips, what? Maybe…not. Maybe through your previous +10, your mind has already experienced ultimate happiness, or the happiest you could ever let yourself get, and the feeling may just be the same even if you do reach that new pie in the sky , and that would mean—Yes, you have already experienced ultimate happiness and you didn’t even know it.

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The full version of The Tuff Luv Guide To Happiness from happiness preponderance is available in paperback for $10.95 and in e-book download version for $3.95.