Welcome.
Thank you for being here and for choosing to make yourself a priority today.
This is your Mandala Card of the Day.
A gentle pause to breathe,
Reflect,
And explore.
Before we begin,
I invite you to have a journal or blank page nearby,
Along with a pen.
This session includes time for journaling and reflection.
For now,
Allow yourself to simply arrive.
There's nothing to fix,
Nothing to figure out,
Nothing to solve or plan or get right.
Just be here in this moment.
Connect with your breath.
And settle fully into this time together.
Gently close your eyes if that feels comfortable If you prefer to keep them open,
Allow your gaze to soften,
Resting it somewhere low and unfocused in front of you.
Allow your shoulders to drop and relax.
Let your jaw soften.
Let your hands rest wherever they feel most at ease.
Take a slow breath in through your nose,
Counting softly to four.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four.
And gently exhale through your mouth for a count of six.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five,
Six.
With that exhale,
Let go of whatever you were carrying before you arrived here.
Again,
Inhale slowly and steadily,
1,
2,
3,
4.
And exhale fully and completely.
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6.
With each exhale,
Imagine releasing any tension in your body that you no longer need to carry.
Let it soften and dissolve with each long breath out.
One more time,
Breathe in steady and calm,
Filling your lungs completely.
And breathing out long and soft.
Releasing everything.
Now allow your breath to return to its own natural rhythm.
Simply notice the gentle rise and fall.
The quiet,
Steady presence of a body that is always here,
Always supporting you.
Notice the space you have created.
Notice that you are here,
Present,
Supported,
And aware.
And from this grounded,
Open place,
We'll move into today's reflection.
The theme for today is happiness.
Take a moment to simply let that word land,
Happiness.
Notice what arises as you hear it.
Notice whether it feels close or distant.
Familiar or just out of reach?
Notice if there's a part of you that wonders whether you're allowed to simply feel happy right now,
As things are,
Without anything needing to change first.
That question is worth sitting with.
Because it gets to the heart of something that most of us carry without quite knowing it.
We tend to treat happiness as conditional.
As something that will arrive when circumstances cooperate,
When the work is done,
When the difficulty has passed,
When we finally have become a version of ourselves that we've been working towards.
We put happiness on a waiting list and tell ourselves we'll collect it later.
But happiness doesn't work that way.
And the science behind it is both fascinating and genuinely liberating.
In the late 1980s,
Researchers studying identical twins,
Including twins that had been raised in completely different environments,
Discovered something unexpected.
Despite vastly different life circumstances.
Identical twins consistently showed similar levels of happiness.
This led psychologists to propose what became known as the happiness set point.
The idea that each of us has a baseline level of well-being to which we tend to return.
Regardless of what happens to us.
Lottery winners,
The research found,
Returned to roughly their previous happiness levels within a year of their windfall.
People who experienced significant setbacks showed the same resilience,
Returning over time to their baseline.
This finding was initially interpreted as discouraging.
If our happiness is largely fixed,
Why bother?
But the research didn't stop there.
Psychologist Sonja Lembrunski and her colleagues went further,
And what they found changes everything.
While a portion of our happiness is indeed influenced by our set point,
Our natural temperament and baseline A significant portion is shaped by something entirely within our control.
Our intentional activity.
The deliberate choices we make about where we place our attention,
How we engage our days,
And whether we notice and receive what is already good.
In other words,
Your happiness set point is not your happiness ceiling.
It's not the cap.
It is the floor you return to,
Not the height you are capable of reaching.
And the practices that raise us above the floor are not grand or complicated.
They're small,
Deliberate,
Repeated.
Is the small daily choices to notice what is good rather than only notice what is lacking.
To pause at the pleasant moment rather than rushing through it.
To savor the warmth of a cup,
The sound of the rain,
The feeling of sunlight on the skin.
Not as self-indulgence,
But as genuine research-backed practice of building a happier life.
Happiness is often quieter than we expect.
It doesn't arrive as fanfare or a milestone.
More often it's woven through the texture of ordinary days.
The way light falls across a room at a certain hour.
A genuine laugh that catches you by surprise.
A kind message from someone who thought of you.
A song that finds you in exactly the right moment.
These are not small pleasures to be dismissed or postponed into conditions when we're deserving of them.
They are the actual substance of a happy life.
The daily accumulating evidence that goodness is present.
If we're present enough to receive it.
Happiness does not require perfection.
It does not require circumstances to be different from what they are.
It requires only attention,
The deliberate gentle choice to look for what is good,
To pause when you find it,
And to let it land fully rather than moving immediately to the next thing.
Dr.
Rick Hansen is a neuroscientist whose research on the brain's negativity bias has been groundbreaking.
It offers a beautiful,
Simple practice.
When something good happens,
However small,
However brief.
Stay with it for 20 or 30 seconds.
Let it register in your body,
Not just your mind.
Taking a moment to savor the experience and to name why it's good and why it matters.
That activity,
That brief pause,
Can change the neural architecture of your brain over time.
It trains your attention towards what is good.
It builds your capacity to see what is positive here and now.
The sparks are already there.
They always have been.
Your happiness set point is not your destiny.
It is your starting point.
And every small intentional moment of noticing,
Savoring,
And appreciating moves you gently forward one beautiful moment at a time.
Today,
Give yourself permission to welcome happiness in.
Not later.
Now when everything is done.
Now as things are.
In this breath.
In this moment.
Stay with that for a breath or two.
Now I invite you to turn inward and explore this theme more deeply through journaling.
Your journal prompt today is what small moment today or recently brought me even a hint of happiness.
And what would it look like to give myself permission to feel genuinely happy?
Not later when circumstances improve,
But now as things are.
You might also want to explore where have you been postponing your happiness,
Or what would it mean to stop waiting?
What's a small,
Deliberate practice you could add to your day to raise your own happiness above its natural set point?
Allow your thoughts to flow without any retrenchment.
Simply let whatever wants to be expressed come onto the page.
It is time to bring your journaling to a close.
I'm going to share an affirmation.
And I encourage you to repeat it out loud or in your mind.
Letting the words settle within your body.
I allow happiness into my life.
I allow happiness into my life.
I do not need to earn it.
I am allowed to feel it now.
I do not need to earn it.
I am allowed to feel it now.
I notice the beauty of small moments and let it land.
I notice the beauty of small moments and let it land.
Joy is available to me today in this breath,
In this moment.
Joy is available to me today,
In this breath,
In this moment.
Even the smallest spark can light my world.
Even the smallest spark can light my world.
Take a breath in.
Breathing in long and slow and fully.
And release it completely.
Notice how you feel.
More settled?
More open,
Perhaps a little lighter than when you arrived.
Thank you for giving yourself this time today.
For choosing in the middle of everything to pause and return to yourself and to open yourself to the possibility of more happiness,
Greater joy.
If you would like to build on this.
I invite you to join me in my audio course,
Return to Joy.
It is a 10-day audio course that combines EFT tapping,
Science-backed reflection,
And guided journaling.
Moving through themes of noticing,
Gratitude,
Release,
Presence,
Self-compassion,
And intentional living.
Each day builds on the last.
Each session goes a little deeper.
I made it because I believe that reconnecting with genuine embodied joy is one of the most meaningful things we can do.
If this sounds like something you're ready for,
You can find it on my profile.
Thank you for joining me today.
It has been a gift connecting with you.
And I invite you to come back tomorrow.
For a new Mandela Card of the Day practice.
So you can continue to go deeper in these themes.
Many blessings throughout your day.
Peace.
