We can significantly control our happiness by taking control of our thoughts, stories and feelings. We no longer have to be a prisoner to them.

Marci Shimoff wrote the foreword to my new book Perfect. She is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Happy for No Reason.

In Happy for No Reason, Marci talks about our happiness set-point which is the genetic and learned tendency to remain at a certain level of happiness. (Similar to the weight that we naturally tend to hover around.) Research has shown that we tend to return to a fixed range of happiness unless we make a concerted effort to change it.

The research shows that 50% of our happiness set-point is genetic; 10% is determined by circumstances (such as our level of wealth, marital status, and job); and the other 40% is determined by our habitual thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.

We have over 60,000 thoughts a day; 95% of them are the same ones we had yesterday and 80% are quite negative.

Start observing your thoughts. The observation will create the awareness that will help you start to release those negative patterns.

Thoughts, like stories, are not always accurate and can be changed. Just like the needle on a record player, we slip back into the groove of a familiar track and suddenly we’re playing it repeatedly. If you want a different result, you have to scratch that record until that song can’t play anymore!

Whenever you have a negative thought, interrupt the pattern. Try the following pattern interrupts:

• Immediately say cancel, clear and replace the negative thought with a more empowering statement.
• Put a rubber band on your wrist and gently snap it each time to disrupt your habitual thought patterns. This forces you out of your head and focuses you on the bodily sensation of the sting. It also serves as a gentle reminder that you no longer want to be a prisoner to your negative thoughts.
• The one I like is one I learned from Tony Robbins years ago. I call it zany crazy thing. Do something so absurd that it can’t help but interrupt the negative cycle. For example, have you ever gotten so absorbed in an argument with someone that you are so caught up in proving you are correct? When this happens between me and my husband, one of us will reach over and squeeze the other’s nose. It’s so crazy that we just begin to laugh – it disrupts our pattern and we often can’t remember what we were arguing about.

What are some of the negative patterns or stories that you are ready to let go of?