Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week
Choose Happiness
My purpose in writing this book is to help you arrange your mind so that you choose happiness each and every day. Whatever challenges you may face, whatever circumstances are weighing you down, you can choose yoru response. How you live your life is totally up to you. It's not dependent on your circumstances. It's dependent on your choices.
Abraham Lincoln said, "Most people are as happy as they've decided to be." Honest Abe would have enjoyed a recent study that found happiness increases 10 percent on Fridays. Why is that? People are excited about the coming weekend, so they decide to be happier. They make up their minds on Fridays to enjoy their lives more.
I challenge you to let every day be a Friday. Give yourself permission to be happy every day. Not just on the weekends. Not just when you have a special event. Not just when you're on vacation.
If you have the right mindset, you can be just as happy on Monday as you are on Friday. The Scripture doesn't say, "Friday is the day the Lord has made." It says, "This is the day the Lord has made" (Psalm 118:24 NKJV; emphasis added).
This means Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and every other day of the week. You can be happy even when it's raining, when you have to work late, or when you have to do the dishes.
Why don't you make up your mind to be happy every day?
You've heard the saying "TGIF. Thank God it's Friday." For you and me it also should be, "TGIM. Thank God it's Monday."
"TGIW. Thank God it's Wednesday."
"TGIW. Thank God it's Sunday."
Another study said there are more heart attacks on Monday than on any other day. So many people just decide that Monday is a stressed out day. They suffer the Monday morning blues.
When you wake up on Monday morning, don't accept those negative thoughts that come knocking on your door, saying, It will be a hard day and a long week. Traffic will be bad. I have so much work to do. I just need to make it through the Monday morning blues. Don't buy into those thoughts.
Instead, say, "Thanks, but no thanks. I've already answered the door and almighty God, the Creator of the universe, has sent me a hand delivery of joy. I know this will be a great day!"
Decide that for you, there are no Monday morning blues. Instead, choose the Monday morning dos by saying, "I do have a smile. I do have joy. I do have God's favor. I do have victory."
Yes, I know some days are more difficult than others. But if you program your mind in a positive way, you won't have to drag through certain days just hoping ot get to Friday so you can finally enjoy life.
Faith is always in the present. Your attitude should be: I'm excited to be alive at this moment. I'm excited to be breathing today. I'm excited about my family, my health, and my opportunities. I have plenty of reasons to be happy right now.
This is an excerpt from EVERY DAY A FRIDAY by Joel Osteen. Copyright © 2011 by Joel Osteen. Reprinted by permission of FaithWords. All rights reserved.
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
Introduction
When we first talked about doing this book of Christmas memories, one of my family members said that I’d always liked stocking stuffers and this book is my chance to become one! I hope you’ll find that it is stuffed with stories that inspire you, deepen your faith, make you laugh, and hopefully call to mind your own favorite memories of Christmases past.
Every family seems to have unique ways of celebrating Christmas. But what really hit home as we put this together was just how much Christmas is a celebration of family—God’s family and our own.
God the Father sent His Son to us as the most precious gift of all. Jesus paid a high price to bring the promise of unconditional love, unending hope, and eternal life to every person who believes in Him. Once we’d gathered our favorite Christmas stories for this book and looked them over, we realized that without our planning it, each chapter contains those same themes of unconditional love, unending hope, and eternal life.
Faith in God provides us with those three gifts, and being part of a family helps us nourish them and pass them on from one generation to the next. Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.
Our Father’s Gift
We enjoyed the usual Christmas traditions growing up, but like most families, we had our own unique holiday rituals. The Osteen kids, all five of us, slept under and around the Christmas tree on the night before Christmas, telling stories and laughing and trying to guess what gifts we might be getting until we’d finally fall asleep. Still, we celebrated Christmas Day a bit differently from many families. For us it was really a big birthday party because my father and mother emphasized the holiday’s Christian origins as the birthday of baby Jesus, God’s perfect present to us. If ever there were a gift that keeps on giving, it was this one.
We did exchange Christmas gifts like most families. We laughed and carried on through huge dinners of turkey and all the fixings. One thing we didn’t do, though, was eggnog. Instead, real early Christmas morning while our parents were still nestled all snug in their bed, the Osteen boys and girls climbed out of our sleeping bags and made home brew—coffee, that is. I probably should explain to you first off that caffeine runs in our family’s blood. We were a coffee-drinking bunch before Starbucks ever ground its first bean. Every one of us started drinking it at a young age because of our dad, a pastor who started each day with a Bible in one hand and a mug of strong coffee in the other.
From CHRISTMAS SPIRIT by Joel Osteen. Copyright © 2010 by Joel Osteen. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
