Where did the happiness go? It was here one moment, and now it’s gone. Where did it go? How can happiness come and go so easily? Well really, happiness never went anywhere. It’s still right here, even if you’re not feeling it in the moment. Any emotion is available at any time you wish it to be. You can indulge in negative emotions any time you want. You can indulge in happy emotions any time you want. Emotions are just simply biological chemical reactions in your body that react to thoughts.

So if you had happiness for a moment, and now you don’t, usually a thought is what preceded it. A thought is what made it go away… at least, to your attention anyway. But the happiness energy is still right here, and you can re-focus on that, and tap back into it any time you want.

Try this experiment. Just for a moment think of something really unhappy, something that made you feel bad, something someone said to you, something that happened that made you sad. We won’t spend a lot of time on this because I don’t want you to exercise indulging in negative feelings, but I want to show you how the emotional body can go up and down like musical notes, all based on thoughts. So think now for a moment of something unhappy, and notice how your energy drops. Your chemicals literally change. Your physical chemistry actually reacts to the thought and changes your emotional body. Emotions and thoughts… they’re all interwoven, all tangled up together.

Now think of something happy, maybe a joke someone told you yesterday, maybe something your cat did, or your kids; maybe you watched a funny movie. Think of something happy right in this moment, and notice how your energy rises in response to that. Your chemistry literally changes again. This is why emotions and thoughts are so powerful when you put them together. They’re congruent. They’re like a gel that when mixed together create a really powerful fluid.

And you’ll always notice, when an emotion changes, a thought preceded it. You thought something that wasn’t happy, and then the happiness seemed to go away. But notice how quickly you can come right back to the happiness. Just go wwwssshht… right back to happiness just by changing your thoughts. It’s that simple; it’s that easy…. yes, it is.

Sometimes when I find myself in a foul mood, happens now and then; especially us ladies might be a little more susceptible to it sometimes, based on cycles that female bodies go through, although men have their cycles too. However, when you feel the change, when you find yourself in a foul mood, there’s two things to do: one is either change how you feel, by simply changing your thoughts. Change what you’re thinking, and then you won’t be feeling those foul emotions anymore.

Sometimes it’s not so easy, and maybe there is something really terrible happening in the moment. It’s true, sometimes it’s not the greatest of moments. When that’s true, and you just can’t shift the foul weather, the lesson might be “weathering the weather.” This is weather passing through the human condition; little tornados, little storms, little cloudy days.

Sometimes when I wake up and I feel like I’m not in the greatest mood, I think, “Hmmm…. Cloudy weather today. Well, let’s just stay away from society.” That’s one of the keys that spiritual teachers like Gandhi or the Dalai Lama use; they just stay away from society when they’re not feeling too happy. But seriously, when you’re feeling that dark mood or those foul emotions, you can do one of two things: either shift them to immediate changes by changing your thoughts, thus affecting the bio-chemical reaction in your body which is called “the emotional body” or weathering the weather, and realize that it is passing through. It’s the weather that passes through the human condition naturally. It’s natural, it’s OK. You don’t have to be happy all the time. Just knowing that it’s there whenever you want it, that’s the key. Just knowing that you can have it any time you change your thoughts, this is the key.

Doesn’t mean you have to do it, but there’ll be some peace, some relief, knowing that you can shift any time you want. And if you can’t, it just means that you haven’t perfected the shifting process yet. In the meantime, live through the weather and just let it pass. But try not to do any damage to society while it’s happening. You might not want to go and talk to your friends; it just might destroy your relationship. Might just want to stay in bed in your PJ’s and drink tea and read a book. Might be a better way to handle the weather. Don’t go yell at anyone; just let it pass. It will pass. Or shift it with a happy thought!