A curious thing happened the moment they found out about the tumour. Both Jim and Yvonne experienced a sudden shift in their consciousness. The anger that had suffocated their love for so many years disappeared, their disagreements faded away and now seemed insignificant, and their love for one another resurfaced, almost magically, as though it had never left to begin with.

What happened? This couple experienced what is commonly referred to as ‘a change of heart’. No one knows exactly how or when this kind of sudden shift or change will occur, but we do know that they exist and that they are possible.

A sudden shift in consciousness can occur in any area of human life that has to do with how we feel, whether it be relationships, feeling anxious, feeling down, or any other immobilizing emotion. Consider an eight-year-old child who goes to bed every night frightened by the thought of an imagined monster behind the wardrobe door. Suddenly, one day, out of nowhere, she realizes that the monster isn’t real, that it exists only in her own mind. Interesting questions include: Why did the child have this realization on this particular day? What was it that made her realize the monster wasn’t real? The answers to these questions are surprisingly vague. We don’t know for sure, except to say that a new level of understanding surfaced within the consciousness of the child.

Another example of a sudden shift is the person who swears that he is going to stop smoking. Week after week, year after year, he promises he’s going to do it. You, as a friend, have heard the same story many times. Then, one day, for no apparent reason, your friend tells you the very same thing, only this time you know that he means it. Something is different. Something has changed. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know he will never smoke again. And indeed, he never does.

While the particulars of each sudden shift are unique, there are common denominators that seem to exist in all cases. First, the ‘shift’ itself doesn’t necessarily build on what we already know, but instead is seen suddenly, as if out of nowhere. In other words, the amount of information we have on the subject isn’t the critical factor. For example, I was working with a client, George, who had spent his entire life feeling prejudice about people of a specific race. He had a sudden shift in his perspective and realized (in his words), ‘What a fool I have been.’ What made this particular example so intriguing to me was that the two of us had never spoken about his prejudice. I never even knew he had this problem. His realization came about as he was discussing how his own thinking sometimes got in the way of his relationship with his wife. The shift that occurred in his consciousness was achieved without obtaining additional information about ‘the problem’. He had intellectually known for years that all prejudice stems from ignorance, yet he still felt prejudice, until that moment. Something shifted within him while he was thinking about something else.

I had a sudden shift of my own that is equally difficult to explain. I had spent my entire life frightened to death of public speaking. The very thought of speaking to a group made me sweat, and in two instances I actually fainted! Then, one day while eating lunch with some friends at a conference I was attending, I realized there was nothing to fear. I can’t explain exactly why or how I had this insight, only that it happened. To this day, I am very comfortable speaking to groups of any size and do so quite frequently.

Second, sudden shifts are accompanied by a feeling of inspiration, sometimes described as ‘a light feeling’, or ‘a nice feeling’. Yvonne and Jim each described their sudden shift as a ‘feeling of incredible relief’, as though a huge emotional burden had been lifted. Many clients have reported to me similar feelings of being ‘uplifted’ in some powerful way as they experienced an insight that changed the way they looked at life. This feeling is often described as a sense of self-confidence. Later, I will discuss this in a context of your healthy psychological functioning.

Finally, sudden shifts are permanent in nature. When a shift occurs, there doesn’t seem to be any turning back, at least not all the way. For example, it’s hard for me to imagine being frightened by the act of speaking to a group. I can, however, have empathy for those who do, because I remember what it feels like. The idea of Yvonne and Jim hating each other, as they did for so long, seems ridiculous. And my client George chuckles at the thought of disliking someone because of the colour of his skin. This is the nature of insight – it happens, and from that moment forward life looks different.

An interesting and important point about sudden shifts is this: there is no relationship between the ‘feeling better’ aspect of sudden shifts and the external appearance of life getting better. So, for example, a person who experiences a sudden shift in the way she feels about her finances didn’t do so because she had just inherited a large estate or won the football pools. She experienced the shift because she looked at the same set of facts in a new way. Whatever it was that she saw, it affected her enough that money will no longer be a source of inner conflict in her life.

Certainly Yvonne and Jim were no better off. To the contrary, Jim was given a terminal diagnosis. Yet both he and Yvonne felt more love for each other than ever before.

Likewise, the child who had the realization about the imagined monster in her wardrobe wasn’t any better off. The monster was never there to begin with! This is the nature of sudden shifts. They occur through a shift in understanding – not through a change in circumstance.

It’s important to know that commitment to learning the art of happiness is not exactly what it seems to be at first glance. Most people make the mistake of confusing commitment to happiness with the decision to make their life better in some way. Although these two ideas seem related, they are not necessarily so. As you have probably noticed, you can change everything in your life without affecting your level of happiness one single bit. You can earn more money, get yourself out of trouble, meet new friends, get a new job, solve a problem, get a degree, get married, or acquire something you have always wanted, yet still feel unsatisfied. The reason for this is that happiness exists independently of your circumstances; it’s a feeling that you can learn to live in.

The way to get the most out of this book is to approach it with the understanding that it’s possible to learn to be happy without changing anything in your life – except your relationship to your own thinking. The American philosopher Emerson once said, ‘The ancestor to every action is a thought.’ Everything in your life is a function of the way you relate to your thinking. As you think, so shall you be.

Commitment is a powerful tool for change. It takes pressure off you by removing the uncertainty that often accompanies a lack of commitment. Marriage, for example, is a commitment. When a couple gets married there is a reasonable belief that, regardless of what might happen, the commitment will carry the couple through. Prior to marriage, people often feel insecure about losing their partner. The commitment relieves their anxiety and gives them the freedom to ‘let go’ of their concerns; it fosters hope.

Without commitment, success in any venture is difficult. Whether you are dieting, studying for an exam, learning to play tennis, starting a project or deciding to be happy, commitment is an important step.

When you make a commitment to happiness you are in effect saying: ‘There is so much in life that I can’t control – the world, other people and their choices and reactions, accidents, imperfections, suffering, hardships. Yet this is my life and regardless of what happens, I’m going to be happy.’

Whenever you attach conditions to your happiness you won’t experience it. The same mental process that attaches your happiness to a specific outcome will only repeat that pattern once that outcome is obtained. A person who believes that ‘having children’ will make her happy will then create new conditions to be met once the children arrive. She may then believe that she will be happy when the infant stage is over, or the terrible two’s, or when she has enough money to meet her growing family’s needs. Your commitment to happiness itself allows you to let go of all your preconditions. Instead of having conditions, you say to yourself: ‘No matter how difficult it seems, I’m going to practise the mental processes that will lead me to happiness.’

Being happy isn’t always easy. In fact, it can be one of the great challenges in life. True maturity means taking responsibility for our own happiness – right now. It means choosing to concentrate on what we have instead of what we lack.

Commitment is the first step in allowing you to regain the positive feelings that you are looking for. Most of us believe that by solving our problems, or improving our relationships, we will find contentment, but this means that our happiness must be postponed until some future date when those conditions are met. Commitment is a step towards bringing that future to the present.

Happiness is the result of a decision to be happy. You may believe that you will one day arrive at a place called happiness, that one day everything will fall into place and you will be able to say: ‘Great, here I am. I’ve made it to happiness land.’ Obviously, this isn’t going to happen. Regardless of how good your life gets and how many of your dreams come true, you will still have to make the decision to be happy. You will still have to make the commitment. There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way!

The information in this book will act as a navigational tool that will guide you towards happiness. Remember that your goal is to be happy. Make the commitment and use the tools in this book to take you there. So let’s get started!

Thinking works the same way. Because you’re always doing it, it’s easy to forget that it’s happening, and it becomes invisible to you. Unlike breathing, however, forgetting that you are thinking, even for a moment, can cause some serious problems in your life, including unhappiness, even depression. The reason is that your thinking will always come back to you as a feeling. Let me explain: the way you feel right now is the result of your thoughts at this very moment. In a broader sense, the way you feel is always determined by the thoughts you are thinking. Suppose you have the thought as you are reading this material. ‘This is far too simplistic – my problems are far more serious than Dr Carlson could possibly imagine.’ The result of this thought would be that you would be feeling sceptical and pessimistic right now. This is not a coincidence. Before you had these thoughts, you weren’t feeling pessimistic. Your thoughts created your sceptical feeling, the words I have written did not. If the words themselves created feelings, then everyone who read them would feel the same way, which of course they don’t. The relationship between your thinking and how you are feeling is formed so fast (in a tiny fraction of a second) that almost no one realizes it’s occurring. Yet this cause-and-effect relationship between thoughts and feelings is one of the most powerful phenomena you will ever experience as a human being.

Now suppose that as you were reading the morning paper, you came across an article about a little girl who was rescued from a burning building. As you read the story you had the thought, ‘What a relief.’ As soon as you had this inspiring thought you felt an uplifting of your spirits. Again, your emotion was created by your thoughts about the event – not the event itself. If you had thought differently, you would have felt differently. For example, if you had the thought, ‘It’s about time they included a happy story. The papers are always filled with bad news,’ you wouldn’t have felt uplifted but pessimistic. The feelings that accompany the thoughts you are having happen in an instant. This psychological dynamic is true all the time – there are no exceptions. Whenever you have a thought, and believe that thought to be true, you will feel a corresponding emotional response to that thought. Your thoughts always create your emotions. Understanding the significance of this fact is the first step in escaping from unhappiness and depression.

Negative and pessimistic thoughts, regardless of their specific content, are the root cause of all of your negative and self-defeating emotions. In fact, it’s neurologically impossible for you to feel anything without first having a thought – you simply wouldn’t have a reference point. Try feeling guilty without first thinking guilty thoughts. Try feeling angry without thinking about something that makes you angry. You can’t do it. In order to experience an event, you must process that event in your mind thereby interpreting it and giving it meaning and significance. This understanding has enormous implications. It suggests that if you feel unhappy, it’s not your life, your circumstances, your genes, or your true nature that is creating your unhappiness – it’s your thinking. Unhappiness doesn’t, and can’t, exist on its own. Unhappiness is the feeling that accompanies your negative thinking about your life. In the absence of that thinking, the unhappiness can’t exist. There is nothing to hold your negative feelings in place other than your thinking.

I am not saying that there are never physiological components that compound an unhappy or depressed state, or that make a person predisposed to unhappiness or depression. I am saying, however, that without thought there is no fuel to throw on the fire, there is nothing to foster the predisposition or physiological components into a reality.