Hi friends. I thought it would be nice to share with you some­thing I received in my email inbox not too long ago from Ger­ald O’Donnell.

These are three things you should start doing every sin­gle day to increase your level of hap­pi­ness NOW.

These three exer­cises are intended to be done at home on a daily and ongo­ing basis. They will open up a new level of aware­ness and pre­pare you for advanced per­sonal and spir­i­tual devel­op­ment.

Exer­cise 1: A New Way of Being

This first exer­cise is a plea­sur­able and pow­er­ful life-changing tool. The effects of daily stress asso­ci­ated with mate­ri­al­is­tic obses­sion (and its by-products: anx­i­ety, iso­la­tion, frus­tra­tion, fear, anger and depres­sion) can be dis­solved by this tech­nique. It is at the same time sim­ple and very pro­found. It increases greatly the vibra­tory rate of your non-physical Higher Self. Its premise is “smile at the world and the world will smile back at you.”

As you go about your daily activ­i­ties, from the moment you get up in the morn­ing up to the the time that you go back to sleep, con­stantly imag­ine that you are smil­ing inwardly at your outer real­ity as you go about your daily activ­i­ties. Imag­ine that you are smil­ing from the deeper recesses of your mind, orig­i­nat­ing from within your heart area, and that you are pro­ject­ing that hap­pi­ness and smile out­ward through your eyes and expres­sion. No mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances are. You will find increas­ingly that your eyes will be smil­ing and so will your mouth, that will often curl up to a slight smile.

At the same time imag­ine that your heart con­stantly expresses a great inward smile filled with pure joy of being alive, no mat­ter what.

After 2 weeks or so, you will notice an incred­i­ble amount of changes, not only in the way you inter­act with the ‘out­side’ world, but also in how the ‘world’ acts and projects real­ity toward you. Your fears will begin to abate and an inner feel­ing of peace and love will emerge. Notice how peo­ple seek your pres­ence and ‘Inner Love.’

Exer­cise 2: The Witness

Set aside 5 min­utes at first (keep increas­ing by 2–3 min­utes every other day until you reach 20 min­utes) and close your eyes. Turn your atten­tion inward and, from being a ‘think­ing’ human being, start view­ing your thoughts as an inde­pen­dent observer in a detached remote man­ner, as if your thoughts were ‘things’ or a spec­ta­cle to watch. Watch the train of your thoughts and images, the suc­ces­sion of often unre­lated thoughts that appear to you. Don’t ana­lyze any­thing.

Learn to switch from the per­cep­tion of being ‘in’ your thoughts to with­draw­ing from them and becom­ing the detached totally pas­sive observer of them. Get the feel­ing for the men­tal shift that occurs when doing so. Go within the thoughts and then with­draw to a more detached level. After a while of repeat­ing this exer­cise you will notice that your thoughts become more iso­lated and that your inner mind starts tak­ing a break.

Now, here is the next part of the exer­cise. As you watch your train of thought (images or just con­cepts), pick up one par­tic­u­lar thought that you find inter­est­ing and “plunge into it” with full con­cen­tra­tion. Remain focused on that thought to the exclu­sion of oth­ers for as long as pos­si­ble. If other thoughts inter­fere, do not push them away, but watch them pass by as if they were for­eign ‘things’ in your con­scious­ness. At first you might only be able to do this for maybe 1 minute or less. Slowly increase it up to 7 minutes.

The last part of the exer­cise con­sists of blank­ing your thoughts out. This is done by decid­ing to con­cen­trate on per­cep­tu­ally dark noth­ing­ness. If a thought comes in, imag­ine throw­ing white light on it. Imag­ine that the light dis­solves that thought and that the screen then goes back to noth­ing­ness. Try to main­tain that state up to 5 min­utes. Start with 1–2 minutes.

Exer­cise 3: The Movies

This exer­cise is the “going in and out of movies” exer­cise. All you need to do is to choose a good sus­pense­ful motion pic­ture and go watch it, prefer­ably on a big screen. Try it also with hilar­i­ous comedies.

First, allow your­self to get immersed in the cap­ti­vat­ing story. As you for­get about your iden­tity and start becom­ing ‘within’ the plot of the scene, sud­denly with­draw your aware­ness from the big screen (you may for the first time want to look a bit around you in the dark in order to remem­ber ‘who you are’) and become the observer of real­ity again. Slowly recon­nect to the plot, but this time, allow your­self to remain with the aware­ness of being your­self watch­ing, as a spec­ta­tor (observer), the real­ity pro­jected in the movie. Keep this dual aware­ness for a moment and then let go and plunge within the movie action, for­get­ting your real inner self again. And then repeat the exer­cise over and over.

Keep on doing this men­tal with­drawal and then plung­ing in again, until you get to know inti­mately the feel­ing of with­draw­ing from ‘real­ity’ (aware of inner self) and div­ing back in it (aware of outer real­ity). Easy isn’t it? This sim­ple exer­cise is very powerful.

As you get the knack of it try the same sys­tem as you go about your daily life. Use the same “men­tal trick” when engaged in your daily activ­i­ties, espe­cially the very ones that cap­ti­vate you and are often asso­ci­ated with fear and stress. Soon, you will become aware at all times of being the ‘observer’ (inner self) observ­ing the observed (real­ity and outer self) and become quite detached about it, enjoy­ing your ‘movie’ in a much more relaxed and calm atmosphere.

Hope you enjoyed these exer­cises. Try them out, and let me know your feedback.