After a while I started to hate all this advice, all these cliché sayings, because my feelings of unhappiness weren’t because I wasn’t trying. They weren’t because I didn’t have the right attitude or wasn’t thinking the right thoughts. They were so much deeper than that. I’d done so much of that self-help, be-positive, happiness-is-a-choice kind of thing, but despite everything I still didn’t feel all that happy. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

No one else did either, because everything they suggested, even if it helped a little, didn’t ultimately bring me to a place of being happy. Sure, I could feel a little more happy, but it was like rolling a rock uphill most of the time. As soon as I got the rock up the hill, it would roll right back down.

Exhausting.

Maybe you’ve tried all those suggestions and they’re still not working? Or you’re tired of working so hard all the time just to be a little happier? That was totally true for me. I wished I could find someone who could really get it and stop giving me all these surface-level solutions to confusing and complex problems. My unhappiness was not just because I’m not thinking the right thoughts, it was so much more nuanced and complex than that.

I tried the psycho-therapeutic model but it didn’t really fit for me and I didn’t find it all that helpful. I didn’t want to go on drugs and I didn’t want to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. I just wanted to figure out what my real problems were and why I had to work seemingly so much harder than anyone else just to feel happy.

I wished there was someone, some resource, some healer, some psychic, some system or process that could help me understand what was going on with me, and the confusing and challenging emotional and energetic experiences I was having… and not just understand it but give me a solution that could bring me to a new state of being.

I searched and I searched but I came up short, over and over and over again. I got little fragments of information from lots of different places. Once I’d gathered enough information I started to put it together in my own way. Finally, through many years and lots of trial and error I discovered for myself what the missing pieces were.

It was hard and slow-going and sometimes it didn’t seem like I was making any progress at all. It still seemed like I was just pushing that boulder up that hill and it still kept rolling down… though maybe the pushing wasn’t as hard and the rolling down wasn’t as far. Gathering enough information and learning how to use and apply it to myself over time did finally make a lasting and significant difference. Now I know what it means to be happy without trying. Happiness is my natural state of being.

This book is the gathering together of my story and all the insights, tools, and processes that helped me finally find my own happy.

If you’ve wondered for a long time why happiness seems so much harder for you than it does for everybody else, or why you can’t seem to figure it out, this book will offer some of the missing keys and insights that will open the door to creating greater happiness and fulfillment in your life. Each time I offer these keys to others, whether they be friends, clients, or people I encounter in passing, I delight in witnessing the access to greater happiness that it creates.

Happiness may be a choice, but it’s only a choice when you have the capacity to choose it. If you don’t have all the right information or understanding about what’s truly going on for you or what will truly create happiness for you, it can feel like it’s an impossible choice to make.

My hope for you in reading this book is that you will see what you’ve been missing, and instead of feeling pissed off when people tell you to just “think positive,” you will understand what truly creates your happiness, and happiness will be a choice that you can easily make.