I have been an achiever all my life. I have let my grades and my job define who I am and how valuable I am to the world. I have also let it be the main source of my happiness. Until recently.

Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” He also said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” The brilliant physicist knew that life doesn't happen “out there.” Life — and happiness — is an inside job.

I am not sure at what age or by what circumstance Einstein came to understand this truth. As for me, it took 40 years and the perceived loss of my self to gain this awareness.

When my dream business, Purple Turtle Press, and its two publications for women in business, went belly up, I thought I had come to the end of me. I was more than mortified. For months I didn't want to leave the house for fear someone would see me–someone who knew I had failed. I dreaded going to the bank; even a trip to the grocery store filled me with anxiety. I avoided being anywhere where people who read my publications might be. I questioned who I was and why it even mattered anymore. What good was I now?

After a long stew, I thought about my children. They need me. And I need me to be in a better place for them. I want to be a positive model, not a negative one. So I decided to get back to living.

I decided to be happy.

It may sound strange, but at that point I really didn't know how to become happy. I did know how to learn. So I began like any good student and started doing some research. I investigated failure. I studied happiness and happy people. I read and read and read. And then I began practicing. Every day.

One of my sources suggested starting a gratitude journal, listing five things to be grateful for each day. There were days I sat and thought for twenty minutes before finding five things to be grateful for. Often I had to fall back on the obvious: a roof over my head, my family, my health, my family's health, food in the kitchen… Eventually gratitude came easier, and I was writing about being thankful for the feeling of the morning breeze on my face, a hot cup of coffee to start my day, finding blooming clematis in a neighbor's yard.

After a while it occurred to me that the more I looked for things to be thankful for, the more I found–things I knew were there all along, I just hadn't noticed them. We often have soft breezes dancing around us in spring. That blooming clematis has come back every year for the eight years I've lived in this neighborhood. And every single day I have at least one cup of coffee; and it's always hot. How could I have been blind to these little gifts one day, and pleasantly aware of them just weeks later?

I shared this discovery with a friend in a random conversation and told him it reminded me of a car game I played as a child. When we'd be in the car for long drives we used to play the I Spy game. Mom or dad would say, “I spy something brown,” and my sister and I would frantically search our surroundings calling out all the brown things we could see. A really good game of I Spy could keep us happy and complaint-free for hours.

What if, I wondered, I started a good old-fashioned game of I Spy Joy with myself. What if I intentionally looked for happiness, every day? How much more of it would I find? By shifting my mental focus from thoughts of failure, replaying the agonizing, humiliating days and weeks of closing up my beloved business, to a committed quest for joy; what changes might occur in my life? Would it, could it, cause me to like myself again?

The answer is yes.

When we are happy the whole world changes. In moments of joy there is no hate, there's love; there is no criticism, there's praise; there is no intolerance, there's acceptance. What we see outside of ourselves, we feel inside somewhere, however deep and hidden, or we wouldn't be able to see it.

Watching a child laugh, a happy couple dance, or a friend doing something she loves triggers the joy that's already in us somewhere. With every felt joy our ability to find and experience happiness grows. In turn, every time we intentionally look for joy, we are far more likely to find it. It's a wonderful circle that spirals outward and spreads. The more moments we spend in joy, the more we feel love, kindness and acceptance — for ourselves and the world around us. What's more, all those feelings are contagious. By being happy, loving, kind and accepting we bring out those qualities in others. And another wonderful, spiraling circle ensues.

Joy is in us. It lives and it spreads. All we have to do is look for it, because we often find what we're looking for. I spy joy. How about you?

Michele McKeag Larsen is on a mission to spread joy, optimism and inspiration. She blogs about her own continual journey toward joy at ISpyJoy.com.