A few years ago Barry Neil Kaufman wrote a book called Happiness Is a Choice. It became a best seller and launched him and a powerful, yet simple, set of ideas into public discussion. Happiness, he said, is not something we get from outside of us, but from a potential within us.

As an enthusiastic practitioner of the idea that what we believe determines how we experience life, Kaufman points out that we are often trapped by the way we have learned to respond to life's situations. Yet he insists we have an awesome capacity to challenge and change those beliefs that are constantly leading us to unhappiness and to discover and adopt those beliefs that will turn our daily experience into a heaven on earth.

What Do You Really Want?
This perspective began for him in his college days as he struggled to find purpose in academic knowledge: “When I was in college, I was told to pursue the truth. And I had professors and teachers who told me that they had the truth. But I noticed something—most of them were miserable. And I realized that in my twenties, I was just as miserable as they were, pursuing the truth, believing I knew some of the truth. And suddenly I asked, ‘What kind of life is this going to get me?'

“So I sat down and took a completely different inventory—not about what's good and bad and right and wrong, not what's possible and impossible—but what do I want? What do I want in my life? What I hear most often from people is, “Oh, I want to be happy. I want peace of mind; I want to feel safe and comfortable around people; I want to have a sense of communion with God, that's what I'd really like. ...

“I decided I was now only going to search for happiness, love and God. And the way that I was going to do this was adopt beliefs which take me to happiness, take me to open my heart to love, and take me to a place where I could feel that I was living my life by walking with God.”

Filtering Beliefs
As this transformation redirected the course of his life, Kaufman and his wife Suzi found themselves meeting a great personal challenge: “[Our son] was diagnosed as irreversibly autistic, which means he doesn't relate to people. He spins in circles and flaps his hands. He tested to have a functional IQ of under thirty; therefore, he is severely mentally retarded.

“As the physicians gave us these diagnostic tests and evaluations, they did it with downcast eyes and said, ‘We are so sorry. This is awful and terrible for any family, and we know it's a tragedy. One day you're going to have to consider putting your son in an institution.'”

Create a Different Belief System
“We listened to all this rhetoric; we read all the literature. However, we also understood at that time the power of beliefs, and if I hadn't understood this, I would have adopted everybody's beliefs. So we look at the filter of beliefs which we were being fed and said that they are only somebody's beliefs. And we are aware of loving this child. And, therefore, we really wanted to create different beliefs about him. So we talked about how unique he was and that we weren't in a state of denial, even though it seemed as if he came from Mars.

“Instead, we looked at the gentleness of his eyes, we looked at his amazing ability to stand on his toes and spin boxes on their corners—things I couldn't even mimic or do. So we looked at the same stimuli and saw a wonderful and special opportunity to find our humanity and a sense of divinity in ourselves and in our son. As a result, we experienced hope and joy.

“Our behavioral response then, was to create a program and work with him three and half years, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. And several years ago he graduated with high honors from an Ivy League university.

“The point is that the little boy, who was assessed by most people as bad and terrible, and assessed by us as wonderful and special was none of these things. He was just what folks were making up about him.”

Here is the idea that all life has the potential to be whatever we create it to be. And this creativity lies in the beliefs we choose. That this idea may be a doorway to an entirely new and happier world for all of us is a conviction Kaufman brings to every life situation.
 

This excerpted article originally appeared in Unity Magazine®.