As a bit of an exercise, I want you to look at the picture for about 20 seconds and find everything that’s blue. Take a mental note of it.

I’m sure you found heaps. Without looking around again, did you notice any red in the room? Now have a look again and you’ll notice that there are actually quite a few red items in the picture. You won’t see if it if you’re fixated on something else.

When I wake up on Monday mornings, I am already facing a losing battle. I immediately focus on how tired I am, how cold it is outside, how long the commute is to work and all the crap that I have to do. In a split second, I managed to forget how lucky I am to even have food for breakfast, a reliable means to get to work, or the fact that Vietnamese people can even live in Australia. All things that I take for granted but just thirty years ago, Dad would have given his right arm to be given a chance to earn. There’s a lot of good, even in my worst days, that I miss.

I’m not naive enough to think that we can be happy all the time. We grieve, go through heartbreak and feel anxious. They shouldn’t overshadow the times we smile, laugh and feel joy.

The more often I realise that I’m in charge of my own joy, the less reliant I am on external stimulants. Less reliance on external stimulants and distractions, we all know, is the recipe for success. It’s often thought that the successful people toil away at their goals and that happiness is the by-product of them attaining their goals. In his book, The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Anchor tells us that their success actually relies on them focusing on the positive because:

When we are happy — when our mindset and mood are positive — we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it.

I make a conscious effort to fight the prevailing thought that my life is bad by realising that my thinking that makes it a self fulfilling prophecy. I try to remember all the great things I have going on and use that as momentum to keep going.