“Just in case you ever feel its absence…know happiness always returns.”

In my new book, Choosing the Life You Were Born to Live, I talk about the path to finding joy in your life. The Ancient Egyptians believed that when we die and are at the gates of heaven, we are asked two questions:

Have you found joy in your life?
Has your life brought joy to others?

I am a firm advocate in the belief that you cannot give what you do not have. If you are not happy (joyful) how can you possibly bring joy to others? If the gas tank on your car is empty, your car cannot take you anywhere, right? The same is true for you. If you are “empty,” you have nothing to give. So how do you “fill your tank?”

Stephen Covey has a great list of “12 things happy people do differently” that has been circulating on Facebook recently. I thought I would share it with you today as a reminder of some action steps you can take to be in a state of joy. (I embellished these a little with my own thoughts.)

1. Express gratitude – be thankful for what you have in your life instead of always focusing on what you do not have.
2. Cultivate optimism – your perception is your reality. Think optimistically and your world will follow.
3. Avoid comparing yourself to others – when you compare yourself to others, the nature of the human mind is that you will always be sure to come up short. The only person who you should be comparing yourself to is yourself in the past. Are you moving forward?
4. Practice random acts of kindness – help someone anonymously today.
5. Nurture social relationships – the nature of your relationships with others tells you a lot about the relationship you currently have with yourself. Our relationships are the things that matter most to us in the end. Make them worth it.
6. Develop strategies for coping – know what you need to do to stay centered. What are those things you do that make you feel better when your external world is in chaos?
7. Learn to forgive – open your heart and forgive others and yourself. Forgiveness is admitting that we are all alike in some way, shape and form.
8. Increase flow experiences – in other words, know your strengths. Do those things that “flow” and come easiest to you.
9. Savor life’s joys – stay in the present moment. Life is about the journey, not the end point.
10. Commit to your intentions – know what you want and commit to getting it. Direct your life in the direction YOU want instead of your life and external circumstances directing you.
11. Practice spirituality – recognize that life is bigger than you are and that there is a higher plan. Get in touch with your higher self and the potential that is deep inside. You know your gifts…practice them!
12. Take care of your body – your body houses the soul. It is your temple. Care for it, honor it and respect it.

Your happiness is your responsibility…no one else’s.

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” ~Aristotle

Smiling,
Chris

Chris Sopa is founder and owner of Chris Sopa International, Inc. You can learn more about her at www.ChrisSopa.com. Find her at Facebook.com/ChrisSopaInternational, Twitter @ChrisSopa, LinkedIn, and Google+.

“Choosing the Life You Were Born to Live:  How Changing Your Thoughts Will Change Your Life” by Chris Sopa published by Balboa Press.

Click here to purchase your copy.

I was blessed to spend the entire weekend with 30 amazing women at the 2^nd annual Goddess Conference at the Peaceful Spirit Enrichment Center owned and operated by Melanie Dunlap (an amazing “new” female).  As I sat among these fabulously gifted and beautiful women, I began to think about the similarities between all of us.  What makes us so unique?  Why do we seem “different” than the average woman?

The feminine energy is in a time of becoming empowered once again.  Women are stepping into more leadership positions, more women are becoming entrepreneurs than ever and women are changing the old paradigm of what “being a woman” means in this new age.

What constitutes this “new feminine” energy?  I decided to find out.  I watched, listened and asked several women this weekend what they thought made us all alike.  This is what I gathered about the “new feminine.”

The “new feminine” is:

• Self-aware – she watches herself constantly.  What she does, what she says, where she goes, how she reacts and picks up her patterns of behavior.  She keeps what is working and discards what is not.
• A Queen – the queen archetype knows what she wants and makes it so.  She rules her roost but with compassion and is always balanced with her King (feminine and masculine energy).
• Congruent in mind, body and spirit – she is balanced in all 3 areas and when she is off-balance, she knows it and makes the proper adjustments.
• Connected to all things – she understands that everything is connected by energy and whatever she thinks and feels affects everyone.
• Independent – most “new feminine’s” currently find themselves not in a relationship or questioning the one they are currently in.  They find peace in learning how to take care of themselves and are looking for a “soul partner’ not a date.
• Open to all types of relationships – she is also open to re-defining the paradigms around relationships.  She re-writes the rules and has relationships that honor her and her energy.  She is very comfortable in her sexuality.
• Speaks her truth – she is not afraid what others think of her and speaks her truth when necessary and needed.
• Strong – she can never be talked into something she does not want to do.
• Empowered – her reality comes from within and she is never dictated by what others say or do around her.  Her power comes from that center inside of her.
• Nurturing and Compassionate – if she could, she would wrap her arms around the whole world to protect it and take away everyone’s pain.
• Spiritual and Psychic – she is in touch with her spiritual gifts, allows guidance to flow through her and trusts the Universe to take care of her every need.
• In Love with Herself – she loves herself tremendously, loves her own company and reminds herself daily how much joy she brings to her own life and that of others.  This love flows out to all she meets.

“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”  ~ Katharine Hepburn

To all of my “AZ Goddesses” – Love you all!

Chris

Chris Sopa is founder and owner of Chris Sopa International, Inc. You can learn more about her at www.ChrisSopa.com. Find her at Facebook.com/ChrisSopaInternational, Twitter @ChrisSopa, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Click here to Purchase your copy of “Choosing the Life You Were Born to Live:  How Changing Your Thoughts will Change Your Life“

Dear Chris,

Before you head down there to your new life on Earth, I wanted to give you a heads up about a few things that will take place in the life you are about to be born into.  There are two versions, and whichever one you choose to give your attention to will be the one that is real for you.

Illusion:

You are born into a lower income family as the middle child and grow up in Cleveland, Ohio.  Your childhood is fairly uneventful, given you witnessed and experienced some not so wonderful things growing up which severely affect your self-esteem as an adult.

You will be bullied all through elementary school and middle school due to being smart and the “teacher’s pet” but end up “finding your own” in high school by burying yourself in your books and doing extremely well in school.  You go off to college, majoring in pre-medicine, only to end up pregnant in your senior year, unable to attend medical school.  You do finish your degree, graduate and get married the week after you graduate being 6 months pregnant.  You move to Columbus, Ohio with your new husband and proceed to have 2 daughters by the time you are 23 years old.  You enjoy being a stay-at-home Mom for a few years but somehow lose yourself in the middle of caring for everyone else and end up deathly ill by the age of 32.  You recover, start your own business and feel as if you are finally on your path, only to discover you are unhappy in your marriage and proceed to get divorced at age 38.

After your divorce, you date several men and come to find that your “radar” is broken and you seem to only attract angry, abusive men who lie, cheat and use you for either sex or money.  You then decide at age 42 to remain single for the rest of your life because it is not worth the pain of being used and hurt again.

You feel as if the only area of your life you are successful in is your business but seem to always be struggling with money due to the fact that you feel the need to “loan” everyone who is in need your money, time or sanity, leaving you with nothing left for yourself.  Your daughters grow up to be beautiful smart girls but very opposite.  Both end up doing great in school, with one going off to college and the other having to overcome a low self-esteem and addiction issue and becoming pregnant at a young age, leaving you feeling like you failed as a Mom somewhere down the road.

Due to an urge to move out west that will not seem to go away, you throw in the towel in 2012 and risk everything to move your life to Arizona.  You feel elated by this move only to return to your old home in Baltimore for a visit to continued chaos, friends who have changed and moved on and a heavy feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore.

Reality

Every event in the “Illusion” version of your life still occurs, except your perception is different.  You choose to believe that all of the events that happened to you in childhood and in your life happened for a reason.  You use those events that may have crippled someone else’s self-esteem, into events that build your own.  You see that both of your parents did the best that they could based on their situation and what happened to them in their own lives.

Although the events that occur from the ages of 8-38 are extremely difficult and trying, you pull up your boot straps and like a champ get through each one with your head held high, believing that as long as you keep moving forward and focusing on the good in life you will persevere in the end.  And even though you never end up going to medical school, you use every work and school experience you had to build an internationally successful speaking business which not only helps millions of people transform their own lives, but creates boundless abundance for yourself and family.

Your daughters end up wildly successful, following in your footsteps in using their God-given gifts and life experiences to help others persevere through challenging times in their lives.  And even though you may still feel as if your “radar” is broken with men, you continue through life confidently believing that your “knight in shining armor” is out there and one day will ride in on his white horse and be more than you ever dreamed.

You continue to live the rest of your life traveling the world with your base being in Arizona and one day realize that every event that happens in your life in the present is created by the thoughts that you allowed to race through your mind in the past.  You live the rest of your life choosing to question your thoughts, think of the things and events that make you feel good about yourself, protect your energy by being careful with whom and where you take yourself and you know deep down in your soul that when you get to the end of this movie called “Chris Sopa” that you will have no regrets and have lived the life you were born to live.

“We but mirror the world.  All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body.  If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.  As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him.  This is the Divine mystery supreme.  A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness.  We need not wait to see what others do.“  ~Gandhi

Now THAT’S an awesome dream!!! 😉

Chris

Chris Sopa is founder and owner of Chris Sopa International, Inc. You can learn more about her at www.ChrisSopa.com. Find her at Facebook.com/ChrisSopaInternational, Twitter @ChrisSopa, LinkedIn, and Google+.