The pursuit of happiness is deemed an inalienable right according to the US Declaration of Independence; the document that launched the American Revolution and the reason July 4th is American Independence Day.

How is your pursuit going? Have you managed to catch that elusive butterfly of happiness, or does it remain a perpetual pursuit?

Happiness is actually a choice, Access Consciousness™ has found. Gary Douglas, founder of Access Consciousness™ and best selling author, defines happiness as “the ability to live in the moment with a sense of ease and pleasure and
possibility and no sense that something is impossible, everything is possible.”

Most people do not have happiness as a 24/7 reality, Douglas has found. “It’s something else is going to make them happy. It’s something they have to look for or something they have to find or something they have to buy that’s going to make them happy, not just that they are happy, just for the sake of being happy. Happiness requires the sense of recognition that you always have a different choice.

“You’re the only one that can make you happy,” he continues, stating the obvious. Lots of people have noticed this, but not many have much to offer that would facilitate you in making the choice. Even fewer have noted the consequences of not choosing happiness as thoroughly as Douglas and his business partner and co-author, Dr. Dain Heer.

What’s it costing you to be unhappy? Lots of money, for one thing. Expecting money to show up in your life without being happy in your life is like “having a party with no music, no dancing, no food but expecting people to show up anyway. Money likes to come to the party of happiness,” observes Douglas.

“If you’re not happy with the money you’ve got, if you’re not happy with what’s going on in your life, then you cannot have the generative creative energy that will create everything you desire in life.”

Are you getting the picture? “Happiness is the way out of every limitation you’ve got. Every time you choose to be unhappy you contract yourself and your generative and creative capacity. Happiness is a choice—and no matter what your life situation, it’s possible for you to choose it.” Unhappiness, on the other hand, is a constant state of the rejection of receiving.

Happiness is the natural state of all animals and human beings as well. “Do you ever hear birds saying, ‘I’m having a bad feather day today, I’m not going to sing!’” We actually have to be entrained to be unhappy.

“The first time your parents told you to stop being happy, you started instituting everything that would create unhappiness, and you maintain that level of unhappiness by aligning and agreeing with everyone that tells you can’t be happy.

“Unhappiness is a manufactured reality, a manufactured emotional state,” says Douglas. “You have to choose to be happy in order not to get caught in the manufactured reality of unhappiness that everybody else makes more real than happiness.

Ironically, Douglas observes, parents train their kids to be unhappy by training them to fit into society. “They think their kids won’t be happy unless they fit into society, so they train them to fit in.” Unfortunately for us, that fitting in requires us to be unhappy.

Although unhappiness is not a natural state, it is the predominant emotional state on planet earth. That’s why when you’re sad everyone asks you “What’s wrong?” but when you’re happy, they ask what drug you’re on. In this reality it’s considered wrong to be happy.

If you choose to be the infinite being, the infinite perceiving, knowing, being, and receiving that you as a being are, you cannot choose unhappiness.

Would you like to pursue happiness with a chance to actually be it? Here are a few tips from Douglas and Heer. Start instituting the happiness you can have into your life. Here’s a sneak preview of some of the tools that can make this real for you.

• Smile every time you see people, even if it gives you hemorrhoids to have them in your life.
• Start making your face be happy whether you’re happy inside or not.
• Live in the question; instead of concluding what’s impossible, ask what is possible, for example.
• If you’re not happy, ask “What choices do I have here that would actually expand my agenda and make me happy?”