Some of us (like me) tend to take our mistakes, knead them like dough, roll them out over and over and then lock them in a box in our chest until they rise, doubling or tripling in size.  This does not serve us.  And it doesn’t allow us the inner knowing that we are worthy of happiness and love, just by virtue of our existence.

So you’ve made a few mistakes and have some regrets; so does just about every person on the planet.  The difference between the happy person and unhappy person isn’t that they haven’t made a complete mess of things (again, like me), it’s that they’ve learned how to clean up the mess, forgive themselves for it and move forward. If we look at our missteps as lessons, learn what need to from them and how to do better next time, then we can let them go.

It’s important to realize that every person, including you, is doing the best they can with what they’ve got at the moment. When you doubt yourself, when you’re feeling unworthy, remember this bit of wisdom from Buddha, “You, as much as anyone in the universe, deserve your love and respect.”

You are a unique and miraculous being. You are a universe within a universe.

There is so much more to you than the events or outcomes of a single day—or even a single year.  We live, we learn, we evolve.  And when we can let go of the past as the past, and rise to the fresh start we are given in every moment, we can be happy.

It’s ok.  It really is okay. Let go of yesterday and begin today wiser and with compassion.

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.

While this may seem apparent to some, for those of us climbing out of the dark places inside ourselves the path is not so well lit. At this point in the journey, it is a good idea to seek council from those who have gone before and cleared the way. Depending on who you are and how you learn, you might consult with happy people you know or maybe you find a good therapist. I tend to seek council in books, so step two for me began with reading.

Because my depression began with the loss of my business and subsequent feelings of failure, I researched failing. Did you know it took Thomas Edison more than 2,000 tries to make the light bulb work? Or that Oprah was demoted from her job as an evening news anchor and told she wasn’t fit for television?

It didn’t take long before I realized not only was I not the only one to experience serious set backs, but also, to my pleasant surprise, I was in some really good company. And after all, if one person can bounce back, then we all have that possibility inside us.

Next I started researching and reading books about happiness. I read and read and read. Some books resonated more with me than others. I’d have at least two, and more often three, books going at once. What started as one pile on my nightstand became four. I kept colored pens close at hand so I could underline passages that particularly struck me as meaningful.

As I began collecting the works of authors I connected with, I noticed some recurring themes and paid more attention to the gems that frequented this treasure trove called happiness. Being grateful, not taking things personally, living in the moment, realizing we are never alone—these precious bits of wisdom popped up again and again.

So, I made my choice and then I gathered knowledge to support that choice. Great, you say. That and $4 will buy me a mocha at Starbuck’s. Where do I go from here?

We keep moving forward. On to step three…

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.

I did a lot of work to get where I am. But before the reading and research, before logging months and months of entries in a gratitude journal, before packing a camera in my purse every day in the hopes of capturing joy out in the world, came making up my mind to be happy.

The first step, in everything in life, is making a choice.  We make choices in every moment.  Right now, you are choosing to read this article rather than fold laundry, watch TV, or give the dog a bath.  Right now, because I want to spread joy, optimism and inspiration to millions, I am choosing to write this article rather than wander into the kitchen and fill a little bowl with M&Ms for a late night snack, which would really only bring joy to me.  At least until regret sets in and I begin calorie counting.  The point is, we choose every second. Even when we lay about doing nothing, we are making a choice every moment to continue to lay about, rather than getting up and doing anything else.

We seem to equate choosing with changing. Often when we stay the course we feel as though we’re not making any choices at all, yet we are making choices—we’re just not making different ones.

It has been said that we think 60,000 thoughts every day. And ninety percent of them are the same thoughts we had the day before. With that kind of habitual thinking it’s no wonder choosing different thoughts can be challenging.  What you have to ask yourself is, are you happy now?  And if not, what are you willing to do to be happy?

For me it was a matter of becoming so uncomfortable where I was that more than wanting change, I felt it was necessary. I got to the miserable, prickly place where staying the course I was on was no longer an option.  I didn’t like myself depressed and feeling worthless.  At the moment that realization overtook me, I made a different choice.  I chose to be happy instead—to enjoy my life and be a joyful person.

While we must first have the thought to make the choice, thinking I want to be happy and choosing to be happy are two distinguishable things. I think all kinds of thoughts.  They swim through my mind like the puffy white seeds of a cottonwood tree float through the air in spring.

There is nothing puffy about choice. Choice is decisive, it’s committing, it’s action. It’s taking your hand, reaching out and grabbing hold of one of those puffy white floating thoughts and putting it in a planter with soil and water.

It is through choice that we begin to create our lives.  Through choice we grow and feed and prune our days into the life we want.

Want more joy in your life? Take the first step: choose it.

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.