Aloha, Salam, Shalom, Sat Sri Akal, Namaste, Hola! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Samia Bano and I am your Happiness Expert and author of the book, “Make Change Fun and Easy: How to Create Inner Peace to World Peace in 3 Simple Steps”.

I've been doing live broadcasts for almost a month now, and I am so happy to be connecting with you again this week. Today, we are going to talk about how to be happy in the face of adversity. For the last several weeks we were talking about how to be calm and relaxed in the face of adversity - and hey, that's pretty good! Most people find it difficult to be calm or relaxed in the face of adversity. So even if all you're able to do right now is be calm and relaxed in the face of adversity, then you're doing great!

You know the saying, “If you're not growing you're dying.” - I have come to believe in this very strongly. And so I'm always looking for ways that I can keep growing in whatever aspect of my life, because if I'm not growing, I'm dying. I don't want to be dying, therefore I'm very committed to growing. Now, if you've already learned to be calm and relaxed in the face of adversity …How do you grow from that point?

Well, how about learning to be actually happy, to be actually joyful in the face of adversity? That's definitely a step up, that's definitely you continuing to grow in your ability and your capacity to face adversity!

So how do you do that? How can you actually be happy in the face of adversity? Actually it's not going to be very complicated and if you've been following along with what I have been sharing with you in the last few weeks about how to be calm and relaxed. You will recognize what I'm going to share with you today as a very logical next step.

Okay, so in the previous weeks we talked about the idea of practicing patience when you find yourself in a position of hardship. I shared my interpretation with you that being patient really means learning to be calm and relaxed. And the way you achieve that sense of calmness and being able to relax even in the face of adversity is - if you are a believer. A person of faith who believes in a God, a divine aspect to this universe, and you believe that the God or this divine spirit is of a nature that is compassionate and caring and that loves you. Well, you can ground yourself in that faith, and that trust, in that knowing. And you see, that allows you to recognize that even in this moment, when you might be feeling some sense of hardship, some sense of adversity, that divine presence is still very much there with you and taking care of you, loving you. And so you just have to sort of open yourself up to that “Divine Presence”, that “Divine Guidance” and when you do that you're able to relax and be calm because you know that you are in God's refuge now, and that really allows you to be calm and relaxed.

If you don't believe in this kind of a “Divine Being” or a “Divine Presence”, then I encouraged you to find evidence around you that you actually live in a friendly universe - because there's something that I quoted from Albert Einstein, where he said,

“You know one of the most important decisions that you will make in your life is whether you live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe”.

Last week, I gave an example of how I found evidence that I'm living in a friendly universe. So, if you missed that from last week please go ahead and watch that broadcast. When you come back to this one and watch it again it'll make even more sense, okay? Cool!

Yes! So you learn to be calm and relaxed by recognizing you're already in God's refuge now and/or by reminding yourself that you live in a friendly universe that's on your side, that's there to take care of you, and that allows you to be calm and relaxed.

But then if you really think about it, once you recognize that, you have something to be really grateful for … true or true?! I mean, the fact that you're in God's refuge right now, the fact that you live in a friendly universe, that is something really amazing and that is something you can be really grateful for. And so the moment you begin to tap into your gratitude attitude ... voila! You see, right there you have hit the key to achieving happiness no matter what your circumstances are. Because Science, research in Positive Psychology, has proven that tapping into your gratitude attitude is the fastest way to feeling happy in any situation. This is a scientifically proven fact!

Okay, so now you have already tapped into one realization or one bit of awareness that is starting to help you think and tap into that gratitude attitude. Now challenge yourself to think of even more things. Expand your awareness of what else you have to be grateful for.

I will admit that most of us unfortunately are not trained to live life with a gratitude attitude. Most of us, unfortunately, spend most of our lives very much in a mindset of complaining, judging, blaming, shaming and we experience that in our life way, way more often. And we practice these attitudes of judging, shaming, blaming, judging, way more often than we practice gratitude in our lives. It's actually really sad, but it is what it is.

So, unfortunately for most people, when they really need to tap into their gratitude attitude, it’s because they're in a difficult situation, facing some hardship, dealing with adversity, and they really need to tap into their gratitude attitude so they can begin to feel happy, they can begin to feel more in control of their wellness and so forth... And they have a really difficult time identifying things that they have to be grateful for in their lives. A lot of people will actually be feeling very accomplished to come up with even three to five things that they can be grateful for in the moment. And for people who are feeling really down in the dumps, people who are struggling with depression for example, they may not even be able to identify a single thing they have to be grateful for.

But that doesn't mean that you don't in fact have things to be grateful for. It really is a practice that you have to engage in diligently, to learn how to find these things in your life. So the more you practice tapping into your gratitude attitude when everything is good in your life and you are actually feeling happy and in control of your wellness ... then the easier it will become for you to also tap into your gratitude attitude when you are actually dealing with adversity or finding yourself in a place of hardship.

There's no escape from having to practice this as a skill, and it's something you need to do every day of your life as much as you can. And anything you can do to remind yourself to engage in this practice … please, please do that, okay? Now there's a lot of tips that I share with my clients when we are happily coaching together about this. I will give you one tip that I find really helpful. And this actually is a lesson that I learned from studying the Quran which is the Holy Scripture of the Muslims. And in case you didn't realize it already, yes I am a Muslim. I take great inspiration, and I learned a lot from the Quran about how to be happy, how to be peaceful.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is found in a specific chapter in the Quran and it's called “The Compassionate”. In Arabic, it's called “Surah Al-Rahman”. In this chapter, God basically highlights a lot of different amazing aspects of creation that we all benefit from and therefore have to be thankful for. So think about, for example, the fact that there are oceans that provide us not only with water but with all kinds of nutrients. There's fish and other things that you can eat, and other amazing benefits that you can experience and benefit from every day of your life, every moment of your life, just because the oceans exist. Even if you're thinking about an example at a very commercial level, just think about how much abundance is created in the world in terms of commercial gain and activity because we have oceans, right?

And that's just one thing that God has created that brings so many blessings, so many amazing benefits to our life. We also have trees, we have birds, we have the stars and the sky, the sun, the moon, you name it! There are infinite numbers of things that God has created in this universe that are continually providing some benefit to us, allowing us to exist and experience our lives as we do. And so even if you are finding it really difficult in your life to identify something very specific to your life that you can be grateful for - well, why not widen your scope of thinking? Start by appreciating the existence of these things, that every single human being has access to and is enjoying and able to enjoy the benefits off. Start with what is universally available to all humans and then hopefully that will begin to trigger your gratitude attitude more and more and more... And you will be able to identify more and more things that are more specific to your life, that you can be grateful for. So yes! Start with these universal blessings that we all have not only access to but that we are all benefiting from every day of our lives, every moment of our lives. That’s my tip!

Now I want to share with you a quick story as I wrap up for today. I was studying with one of my teachers who shared this with me, and I’m so sorry I do not remember the names of the specific people who are involved in this story, but it's an absolutely true story. And you know what I do remember is this really amazing important lesson and I hope you will too. There's this whole field of Happiness Science, it's called Positive Psychology. It's the Science of Happiness and there's a lot of research that's ongoing in this field. And it's all focused on studying what's right with people, what actually allows people to be happy, to live with great wellness and contentment in their lives. There was a group of researchers who actually decided to go all around the world and try to find the happiest people that they could find. Basically, wherever they would go, they would start asking people, who's the happiest person you know? And then they would go meet with those people who were identified by others as being the most happy in their circles. They interviewed them, and over the course of their research, they figured out some of the common things between all of these people in terms of different aspects of their thinking and lifestyle and so forth.

There's this one lady that they found when they traveled to Vietnam. They were out researching in the countryside in Vietnam. They were referred to this one lady who lived in a hut made of hay or something like that… some very impermanent material. It turned out that she was actually disabled, she couldn't even walk. She was restrained to her bed. She didn't even have an electric wheelchair or anything else that she could use to move around. She was basically in bed the whole whole time. And when you visited her home, you saw that she had little to no possessions. She just basically had a bed and a little chest with a few possessions, and that was about it. Everyone in her family had died in the war that happened in Vietnam. And just think about this lady's situation. She has severe disabilities, and can't even get out of bed on her own. She is living in poverty by any standards… she has barely any material wealth at all. And yet, everyone in her village, in that area, referred the researchers to her as the happiest person that they knew.

The researchers went to this lady and they asked her what makes you so happy? You're in this difficult situation, and yet you're known as the happiest person everyone knows. How is it that you're able to be so happy? And she said …

“What do I have to be unhappy about? You know I'm so blessed. You know my every need is taken care of. There's so many people who love me so much. There's so many people from the village who come to see me every day, they stay with me, they talk to me, they help me with whatever I need help with. They bring me food. I have all my needs taken care of. I have this wonderful window in my hut, and through it I can see the beautiful sky and the trees and listen to the birds”.

She just found so many things to be grateful for in her life. She focused on all the things that she had to be grateful for in her life and that made her the happiest person. So if she in her situation could find so much to be happy about, so much to be grateful for, surely you and I can also find lots of amazing things in our lives to be grateful for. And thereby, we too can move to this amazing place where we are actually able to be happy even in the face of adversity. In this lady's case, she didn't even see her situation as being a situation of adversity. She was so tapped into her gratitude attitude!

And that is what I want for me, and that is what I want for you!

So please practice your gratitude attitude every day. And do trust that with practice you will get better and better at it and be able to actually learn to practice being happy even in the face of adversity, or not even have any adversity left in your life because you just don't see life like that anymore.

Lastly, I will share with you just one quick quote from Oprah Winfrey. It has been my tradition in these live broadcasts to share an inspirational quote that inspires the content of my talk. Oprah Winfrey said …

“What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life you create more of it”.

All right! Salam, Shalom, Aloha, Sat Sri Akal, Namaste, and Hola! I will see you next time!