Inspiration

Yesterday I went to visit a friend of mine, this particular friend is one that I go to visit when I want to feel inspired. He has been a fantastic mentor to me for a good number of years and I always value his opinion, and always walk away from a conversation with him feeling energized and inspired and ready to take on the world.

This friend of mine is a very busy entrepreneur, and it’s hard to schedule time with him but usually for me he just says stop by in the afternoon after four o’clock and I should be free. Yesterday he was working on something for his business partner and he was not free, but I had blocked out a certain amount of time to visit with them in my schedule so I decided I could wait. As I was waiting I was doing some work on my phone (bless the iPhone) and after I finished sending and receiving some correspondence I updated my Facebook status with the following,

“Waiting in line to be inspired.”

As it turned out I was only able to have a short visit with my friend, but I still walked away feeling energized and inspired. But I got to thinking about my status update on Facebook, how frequently do we feel like we’re waiting in line for inspiration? I know that in recent months my real estate job has been so busy that I haven’t been able to focus on some of the things that I like to do the most, one of them being updating this blog, and the other is writing articles on happiness and writing more chapters for the book that I should finish in the next few months. As I look over the last few months it seems that I have been waiting in line for inspiration, I know there are things that I can do and another things that I should do, but sometimes I just end up doing the things that I think I have to do to get by, and wait for the less frequent moments when inspiration strikes me like lightning from the sky. The more time you spend waiting in line for inspiration, the less inspired you really will be.

What we need to do is just go out and live an inspired life, grabbed inspiration by the horns, and never let go.

Yours, in happiness,

Keith

Being “Cool” and/or “Hip”

There’s something to be said about feeling like you belong. Very often the entire point of our lives becomes finding that magic blend of personality and attitude that will allow us to “fit in.” Sometimes this occurs to such a degree that we hide certain aspects of ourselves in order to feel like we belong. I see this pretty frequently, especially playing in a small unknown local band. I’ve been playing guitar and singing in bands since I was 16 and if there’s one thing that happens all the time with bands, appearance become so important that sometimes it overshadows the real point of being in a band, and that’s making music.

I find that there’s a pretty direct correlation between this and life, we are born into the world to do certain things, sometimes we excel at things that those around us might not consider important, or relevant. Often it gets to the point that because of the opinions of other people we stop doing the things that are most important to us. And I think that’s really sad, that we would give up something that is such a part of us in order to fit in. In the same way that there are bands who started playing music for the sake of playing music, and then the music became secondary to the image. We as people shrug off who we really are in order to find acceptance in a certain image.

It does not have to be this way, a life lived in an attempt to impress someone else is a life wasted.I would encourage everyone to let the music of their life play and forget about what other people may think you. A great philosopher once said, “what you think of me, is none of my business.” And we can all benefit from living in this way. Live your life to the fullest extent that you can, and do the things that will bring you the most happiness.

Yours, in happiness,

Keith

Audio from Call Number 02 and news on Call 03!

Hi Everybody,

Thanks so much for the great response to the teleseminar, as I mentioned on the call there was just too much information to get it all in one call so I have added a 3rd call on Tuesday April 21, 2009.

To register for call three and to get free audio of the entire teleseminar go to the teleseminar tab and sign up, I’ll make sure you get access to the downloads and all the information on call 03

Once tyhe call series is over I’ll get back to regular blog posts, there are only so many hours in the day and the content for call number three is going to be the best content we’ve seen yet!

Keith

Call Number 2 is TODAY!

Call number 2 is today! Don’t miss the teleclass today “Being Happiness” I’m really excited about the great and practical stuff that we’ve put together for this call. I spent a long time debating whether or not I could share what I wanted to share over a teleclass, and while I was debating it I was talking with a mentor of mine and discussing how to possibly share some of the important things I’ve discovered in my life and he said something to the effect of, “the best message in the world is useless if it is not shared as widely as possible.”
That thought really struck me and immediately I planned this call, and actually started a podcast as well in addition to the regular blog and incredible things have happened! I’m really excited about sharing this great content with everybody and want to remind you that this call is guaranteed to be 100% pitch free!
If you can’t make it on the call today, go ahead and register and I’ll make sure you get a copy of the audio for the call in MP3 format so you can listen to it at your leisure as soon as it’s available.
Visit http://youarehappiness.com/?page_id=85 to register for the call or for your free recording!
In Happiness,
Keith
P.S. The Call is today April 14th 2009  at 3:00 PM EST/2:00PM CST/1:00 PM MST/12:00 PM PST. I hope you can make it!

The Teleclass Is Today!

Don’t miss the teleclass today “Being Happiness” I’m really excited about the great and practical stuff that we’ve put together for this call. I spent a long time debating whether or not I could share what I wanted to share over a teleclass, and while I was debating it I was talking with a mentor of mine and discussing how to possibly share some of the important things I’ve discovered in my life and he said something to the effect of, “the best message in the world is useless if it is not shared as widely as possible.”
That thought really struck me and immediately I planned this call, and actually started a podcast as well in addition to the regular blog and incredible things have happened! I’m really excited about sharing this great content with everybody and want to remind you that this call is guaranteed to be 100% pitch free!
If you can’t make it on the call today, go ahead and register and I’ll make sure you get a copy of the audio for the call in MP3 format so you can listen to it at your leisure as soon as it’s available.
Visit http://youarehappiness.com/?page_id=85 to register for the call or for your free recording!
In Happiness,
Keith
P.S. The Call is today April 14th 2009  at 3:00 PM EST/2:00PM CST/1:00 PM MST/12:00 PM PST. I hope you can make it!

Go Out And Do Something

There is a real power in getting off your backside and going out and getting something done. You see, no great success ever happened without someone somewhere getting up and acting on whatever idea or impulse they had, I have a friend who used to complain a lot that all his great ideas had been stolen, fo example at one point very early in the time of the cell phone he mentioned that if a phone had a small camera built into it you could take pictures of the people stored in your phones address book so you could remember who they are, I thought it was a great idea, and sure enough some years later we had the camera phone. And I will be the first to tell you that my good friend was more than eager to say that someone stole “his” idea. When the truth is that no one stole his idea, at any given moment multiple people around the world are having the same new idea, but the one who acts until they achieve success is the one who gets the lion’s share of the winnings. We know now that having a camera on your phone isn’t even a special feature anymore; it pretty much comes standard on most cell phones, why? Because someone who was blessed with an idea took action. You see no single person is given any single idea for some new innovation, and that is because most people will not take action, so to ensure that whatever the universe is hoping to create multiple people are having this same idea, and it’s not even who has the idea first that wins, it’s the person who acts on the idea that achieves it, the world is full of complainers, but there are only a few doers and if then world had more doers the complainers would slowly become extinct.

Happiness Factor: Detaching From The Outcome

In the Bhagavad-Gita there exists an abundance of incredible information. As I was reading through it this morning I was struck by a passage that encapsulates so beautifully another way in which we can encounter peace. In Chapter 2 Krishna says to Arjuna, “Perform your duty equipoised, O Arjuna, abandoning all attachment to success or failure…” This short phrase is so very telling in both its depth and simplicity in that the only way to truly be fulfilled is through detaching yourself from the outcome of the activity in which you are engaged and perform that activity simply out of love.

One of the main causes for many people being unhappy is that they are dissatisfied with the condition in which they find themselves, they are unhappy with their job, or their relationships, or their physical appearance, the list can go on and on for centuries. The central theme is that people find themselves dissatisfied with the outcome they have achieved, but to me the root of the problem is that they have set up a certain expectation for themselves, and if that expectation is not met most people choose to go down a self destructive path. This is how most people end up being defined as “failures.” An interesting thing to note is that you are never a failure until you label yourself as such, if someone else labels you a failure it means nothing! But that is something we will get into another day.

But if we just set about at life, and live each moment as though it were the only moment we have (which it is), and put all of our very best energy into doing whatever it is that we are doing at that moment without concentrating on what will happen when it’s complete, or who will or will not be impressed by what we have accomplished we will find a whole new avenue of gratification opening up, we find that our abilities reach far beyond whatever our prior limitations were and discover whole new heights to which we can soar.

Oft times when we attempt to detach ourselves from the outcome we expect that in detaching ourselves from the outcome that the most favorable outcome will magically appear at all times, and when it doesn’t happen that way we become upset and fall back into old patterns of thinking. In reality we never left those old patterns of thought behind, we were attempting to detach only to try and achieve a particular result, but that’s not detachment, that’s delusion.

When we truly detach from the outcome we find that it does not matter what the result is, if we are going through life with enjoyment, and love, and satisfaction in what we do (trust me, you can be satisfied in what you currently do, in at least some way) we then discover that life is its own reward, and that it may not be that we will inherit all the riches of the world, or we may not inherit the perfect job, but when we live life to the fullest every day, without expecting anything in return we increase the amount of peace in our lives, I’m not saying resign yourself to your current position and stay there, not at all. I am saying when you have no attachment to the outcome you are not disappointed, you accept what has happened and move forward with your planned objectives instead of letting yourself become stopped by unfavorable circumstances.

Essentially we are looking again for peace, and as the Gita says, “how can there be any happiness without peace?”

Be peaceful, live your life to the fullest every day and separate yourself from the outcome, this is a surefire way to move ahead in your own self development.

Quick Thought While Watching The Superbowl

I was just watching the Superbowl with my family and for me, a person who doesn’t really follow professional sports, events like this are less about watching a team play, and more about spending some time with people I love. So really I don’t care at all who wins. And I think that makes the experience more enjoyable for me, this may not be true for other people but I find that the more peace I have in my life the better I feel.

And it got me to thinking about those things that we cannot control and how we often let them run our lives, nothing I do or say will affect the outcome of the Superbowl, yet a different choice as to how I approach it could really ruin my week. There are things we each encounter every day that we cannot control the outcome but we can can control how we respond to the outcome, whether somebody does something we find offensive or our team doesn’t win, we can be in absolute control of our response to the outcome. In “The Course In Miracles” there is a very telling phrase which goes something like, “I can choose peace instead of this.”

And in any situation we can indeed choose peace, we can always choose peace.

Keith

Inner Peace and How to Deal With Anger

Inner peace seems to be the goal of any individual and why wouldn’t it be, and when I say “inner peace” I’m not talking about some sort of crazy “live one the top of a mountain and exist on nothing but sunshine and rainbows” sort of thing. I’m simply talking about freeing yourself from that gnawing feeling that most of us carry around in the pit of our stomachs, that intense feeling of “something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is” that we all experience on a daily basis. Most of us will blame it on something external from ourselves; we blame this feeling on a general lack of money, or the inability to spend our time doing what we sincerely want to do. We may even resign ourselves to the fact that we will always have that feeling, and that is part of life and that we should just “suck it up” and go along with the status quo.
I have an interesting point to make on this particular topic, and that point is that any anxious feelings that you have right now are not coming from anything outside of you. Now what do I mean by this? Simply put you choose each second of each day how you will feel, you choose each time you are presented with a situation how you will respond to that situation. Here is the boldest message I have for you when you are sad, angry, hurt, nervous, or any one of a myriad of negative emotions it is because you have chosen that emotion as a response to a particular stimulus. Whenever I share this statement with people it always elicits the same response, “but how can I be happy when (insert negative situation) is happening in my life?” and I always say the same thing, “I never said you had to be happy about it, I just said you didn’t have to be sad/angry/hurt about it.”
I have had people get very angry with me for sharing my thoughts with them on this, especially those who are currently passing through some sort of crisis in life, and there are reasons for that, there’s a popular thought in society today that anger is a healthy thing, that if you don’t let your anger out you will one day explode. But it is in fact much different than that, anger is not a healthy thing, and letting your raw emotion fly as anger is not helpful nor will it ever be so, modern day psychology will disagree with me but the ancient teachings that have been around and proven to work over hundreds and even thousands of years tell us that anger is not good, for example Confucius taught, “when anger rises, think of the consequences” and in Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians we read, “But ye also put off these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy…” (Col 3:8). Now I’m not saying that it’s good to hold the anger inside, I am saying that the existence of anger in you is unnecessary that it is an energy that you willingly take on when you encounter a certain experience, you have the ability to always choose your response, the only reason it feels like you have no control is because you have chosen anger as a response so frequently that it is now a habit, but it is still your choice. The same goes for sadness, nervousness, frustration and any other responses that you currently feel are out of your control.
The good news is you can change that choice, and make a better one; it’s simple, but not always easy. The first thing you have to do is form the habit of asking yourself the following question before you respond to a situation that can potentially make you respond in a negative way. That question is, “Will responding in this way bring more peace to my life?” This step alone may change the way you do everything, because essentially you are doing as Confucius taught, you are thinking “of the consequences.”
The next thing you can do is channel that energy another way. I believe that there is no negative energy that exists that cannot be converted into positive energy. Some of our most beautiful works of music have come from the composer taking what could have been negative energy and channeling that energy into creation of something so sublime that centuries later it is revered as a masterpiece. The suggestion here is to do the same; even something as simple as writing a letter that you will never send can pull that energy in another direction, go running, lift weights, write a poem, write a song, do anything that uses energy in a positive way. The worst possible thing you can do is sit and fester on that negative emotion, as that can only breed more negativity. Go out and do something and you will see that you do not have to respond to a negative situation with a negative response.
And lastly when you feel that uncomfortable feeling rising in your stomach you can make it go away, by doing something. I’m not suggesting that you forget about your responsibilities, just that you approach them with a different response in mind, when things are hard, as they often are you can either make them harder by reacting in your preconditioned way, or you can make them easier by responding with action. There is nothing on this earth that you cannot achieve, nothing!

Happiness First, Then Success

There are millions of people out there with essentially the same thought process, and that thought is , “If I only had more money than I would be happy.” There is only one problem with this kind of thinking, and that is that thinking this way is complete and utter crap. All it shows is that these people don’t understand money, don’t get me wrong for me at least having more money makes it easier to not be stressed, but it does not bring the happiness, money just magnifies what is already inside you, so if you are looking to money to be the solution to all that ails you, well you will have a rude awakening in the future.

It’s easy to see where this common misconception started, you see a rich person, they have a sweet car, a big house and go to Hawaii every year, you think to yourself, “gosh, I’d like a nice car, an awesome house, and to go to Hawaii every year would be great! Those things would really make me happy.” So then you assume that this particular person in having what you perceive as wealth must be happy, when all too often that person is living paycheck to paycheck the way millions of people do, and they are just as desperate to create long term wealth as you are.

Also you can look around you at people who are rich and unhappy as proof that it’s not the money that brings happiness, money is not the magic bullet, but that said it is a necessity once you’ve taken care of your inside game. Because ultimately money is the medium through which you will be able to achieve the success you so longingly hope for, it’s hard to affect the positive changes that people want to without the aid of a good size bank account, so just remember that the money is to help you fulfill your major purpose in life, and nobody’s purpose is to sit around and live like a hog.

But back to the question of how to change what is inside you so that money can come to you, and when it does it will magnify the wonder and happiness that is already inside you, as opposed to the fear that most people carry around in their chest cavity like it’s some sort of fear storage, let me tell you that as you move forward you may feel an emptiness in that area, because the fear will be gone, and you may not know how to immediately fill that space with happiness, just know that having nothing there is much better than having a bunch of crap there making you crazy.

There is a science to happiness, you see most people look around themselves, see what is happening and then decide to be happy or sad based on what they see. If they see war, and poverty and death they will likely choose sadness, if they see joy and happiness around them then the obvious choice is happiness. The only problem with this is that it is backwards! You can’t look around you and then determine whether or not you will be happy, all you do when you do that is hand your free will to someone else, just like deciding to be rich before you become rich you must decide to be happy before you can really become so.