I am back, with a vengeance.

It’s been quite some time since I last posted on the website. I apologize for the many many months of absence, I hope that you will all forgive me and continue coming back for updates as I plan on updating the site at least once a week from now on.

The good news is, the reason I haven’t been able to update the site is that business has been booming! For any of those who know me, you know that I’m in real estate and most people in real estate have not been doing well. Things for me have been so busy that I literally had no time.

Been so busy was quite an interesting experience, at times there was so much work to do that I wanted to just give it up, but I couldn’t, I really care for my clients and I wanted to make sure that I was doing the very best job possible for them.

You may be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with happiness?” My experience of this past year has shown me a few things and reiterated a few things to me that I already believed, when I began the site I was almost broke, but I was happy, I was able to sleep well at night and I knew that even if I didn’t have a lot of money that I had other things in my life that bring happiness. Like my family, and good friends, and of course music. Oftentimes we look at our life and we may blame external circumstances for why we feel that, oftentimes we blame the fact that we have no money for our being sad. Sometimes it even seems like there is nothing to be happy about. One thing I found out this past year is that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, I went from having nothing, to having more than I have ever had before in my life. And oddly enough I think back to the final months before business picked up and I realize that those were some of my happiest memories from this year.

And that I guess is the point, sometimes we spend all of our days wishing that things were different, we wish for something else, more money, a different family, may be an entirely different life. But what you have is all you have to work with, and if you spend your life constantly hoping that conditions around you will change, it will likely appear that they never do.

Happiness truly comes from inside you, it doesn’t come from anything outside, it comes from your heart. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, happiness is not something that you attain, it’s something that you are.

Yours In Happiness,

Keith

Are you ready to be happy?

From time to time my 3 year old son Noah asks me to read to him from my “boring book” which is often whatever book I am reading, when he asks me to do this he lays in bed while I read to him by the glow of his nightlight. There’s a strange part of me that thinks he’ll “get” the lessons in the books I read because at least 3 times a week I find myself reading out loud from some great books.
Last night I was reading to Noah from the classic “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. With this book in particular I have found it is of huge benefit to me as I read it out loud. Reading out loud gives e a chance to think even more about the words on the page and I use more of my mind comprehending what has been written. I came across a passage that seemed to jump off the page and slap me in the face. And while “Think and Grow Rich” is principally a book about generating a higher income I thought the lesson of this passage was very applicable across a wide spectrum of life experience, and notably the desire to be happy. The passage says the following;

“There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it.
No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it.”

I thought about how true this is as it applies to happiness and inner peace. So many of us wander around through the day to day wishing that we could have a happier life. But it never really goes any further than that, it remains a wish, and any desire that remains a simple wish is no more effective than if you dropped a coin down a well. I believe there are people out there who wish they could be happy but deep down they don’t feel they are worthy of happiness.

In my own life I have seen this with some of my family members. My siblings and I had the unfortunate experience of losing a brother and several years later losing both of our parents within months of each other. This is not an easy situation to handle, and I must say in the moment I believe we all handled it very well. As the years pass however certain of my siblings have not been able to let go of the melancholy that often accompanies you when you lose a loved one. Sometimes it seems they “catch” themselves being happy and then experience guilt for feeling happy even though they have lost these people that are so important in their lives.
This is exactly the sort of thing that we need to overcome, until you know that you are worthy of happiness, until you know deep down inside that you deserve happiness, you are not going to be able to experience lasting happiness.

Keith

Faith vs. Fate

Faith vs. Fate
I believe that sometimes we get confused about the difference between accepting things as they are and resigning ourselves to how things are. These are two very different ways to look at things but the difference in how you approach reality is sometimes the difference between a peaceful life and a stress filled one.
I call this difference of perception Faith vs. Fate. There exists out in the world all sorts of reasons to choose turmoil; there is no lack to these things they are all around us. The only real control we have is in how we approach all these things.
Often when people start looking to improve themselves they try things for a little while and then give up, much more common however are those that try for a few months even and when things don’t work out they say, “well I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” It’s when you say this that you resign yourself to whatever “fate” has in store for you. I would rather see people approach these sorts of situations with faith. When something doesn’t work out as you intended there is always a lesson to be learned that will help you in your next venture, or even in your next attempt at the same venture.
Faith is asking yourself “what can I change next time that will improve my experience?” Sometimes the answer is that you need to set out in another direction entirely, but most of the time you find that in looking at what didn’t work, we will find out what does work.

Next week we’ll begin a two part free teleseminar called “Being The Miracle, finding your inner happiness regardles of circumstances.” I’ll have more information on this great call tomorrow, but for now, have a beautiful day.

Keith

New Free Audio Program Is Almost Complete!

Just a quick note that I am almost finished with an incredible short audio program about how one simple change in our attitudes can change not only our lives, but the lives of everybody in the world. It’s actually an expanded version of the last blog post and I’m really excited about it. It should be complete later this week, and I’ll have it available on the website for free. Also look for some pretty cool upgrades to the blog and the total website in the next few weeks!

Love In Action,

Keith

Separate or Connected?

In the Tao Te Ching there is a short part of one of the verses that reflects well how the world at large sees itself as separate from everyone else. It says the following;

All the world says,
“I am important;
I am separate from all the world.
I am important because I am separate,
Were I the same, I could never be important.”

This is a very general misconception that we often have as we look at ourselves and the world around us. The temptation is always there to see ourselves as separate from one another, and that the more we distinguish, or separate, ourselves from those around us, the more important we become. This is one of the great reasons behind much of the strife we encounter as we go through life.

Going through your days seeing yourself as separate from each person you encounter only distances you from that person, and until we can see that we are all one, we have little hope of solving the issues that the world now faces. This is at the core of the philosophy that I am sharing, while indeed happiness is found inside of you, it is also found inside each person you come in contact with. When we approach life seeing ourselves as connected to all people there is a very positive energy that comes with. Conversely if we see ourselves as separate from the world then each encounter we have with another individual will negatively impact both ourselves and the other person.

For example when we are driving along the highway, we often by default revert to seeing ourselves as separate from all the other people driving along the same road, and in seeing ourselves as separate we often enter into ridiculous little contest with other motorists, trivial things like pacing just ahead of the car next to you, or driving too close to the bumper of the car ahead of you because you feel he is not going fast enough. This is not something you would do if you were walking down the street, you would feel ridiculous indeed walking closely behind another person because you feel they are not walking fast enough. The reason that we behave differently when walking than we do when driving is because when we are walking we tend to see the other person as an individual, another human walking along, and as we walk along we feel more connected to that person. When we drive it’s a whole different situation. Inside of each car is a person, but while driving most people don’t see the other person, they simply see a vehicle, and when all you see is an object you act with greater indifference to that object.

But the truth is that we are all connected, human life on this planet progresses at a rate relative to how closely humans see themselves as connected to other humans. In what history of western civilization calls the “Dark Ages” we see that human progress slowed to a near halt for centuries, this is because the societal system was based on the acquisition of power over other people, those in power simply saw their “subjects” as objects with which they achieved their own desires, this extended from politics to religion and all avenues in between. In a society based on the gain of dominion over others there is really no room for society at large to progress. This is exactly what happened during this struggle through history.

As soon as ideas started surfacing throughout the world that “all men are created equal” we started to see the collective human consciousness awake as if from a deep sleep and as we progressed further into such great causes as equal rights for women, and ultimately equal rights for all people regardless of their origins we have seen huge strides in the progression of things that add to the general welfare of society, you can follow along and see that as more and more human rights were recognized more and more technological advances were made and with greater speed than ever. The printing press as developed by Johannes Gutenberg in the middle part of the 1400’s remained relatively unchanged until the early part of the 1800’s at which point the automated printing press came into being. We can look at technological advances since that time and be absolutely spellbound at the speed and ease with which technology has impacted our lives.

We now find ourselves at a crossroads, increasingly we are being convinced that we live in a world of “us versus them” whether it be as a result of political strife within our own country or if it is nation against nation, or even someone trying to convince us that we need to hate another group because they think differently than we do. This information is all around us and seems to be getting more and more forceful in its approach. We need to start turning off the voices out there that tell us that we are separate. We need to recognize that simply because we have ideological differences there is no reason that we must be enemies. Possibly the worst attitude to have is that “if you are not with me you are against me.” This is not true, the reality is that we are all together; we are all pieces of a great puzzle that in order to be complete requires all of us. The Dalai Lama is said to have stated that if every child on the planet meditated on compassion for others for just one hour a week that the world could, in a single generation, eradicate all of the societal plagues that torment our society. Can you imagine? One generation has the capability to put an end to worldwide hunger, and sickness, and most importantly war.

Remember to stay connected to those around you, treat everyone with the respect and love that you desire to be treated with. Let’s see if we can help raise the collective consciousness of the entire world, and who knows what kind of great strides will be made if we are able to not focus on our differences, but focus on the common goal. After all I think almost everybody in the world wants the same thing, peace and happiness in their own lives. And we can accomplish this by making sure that we are a source of peace and happiness, and not a source of hate and unrest.

Happiness Factor: Patience

Dr Bernell Christensen once taught me a great lesson when it comes to relationships, and more importantly building relationships. He said “when it comes to resolving conflicts, slow is fast and fast is slow.”

It took me some time to truly understand what he was saying and I think it all came clear when I read a phrase from A Course In Miracles that says, “Infinite patience brings immediate results.” It was an incredible moment when I realized the ramifications of that simple phrase, I like most people had spent my whole life expecting things as soon as humanly possible, even in this day of instant messaging, and email, and all the information in the world floating around in the internet I had developed an attitude of “instant gratification too slow,” and it caused a great deal of unrest in me. When I was able to stop and realize that with patience I could eliminate nearly 90% of all the negative stress I encountered during any given day it made a profound impact on my ability to get things done.

I know it sounds simplistic, but the secret to being more patience and this increasing the amount of peace you feel throughout the day is to change your expectations, or better yet, remove expectation from the equation. But when you really look at it with the eye of scrutiny, doesn’t most of our stress come from having an expectation that is not currently occurring, and as a result we try to push it along and force the result that we expect, all the while increasing negative stress in our lives, it’s kind of like trying to pull on the stem of the budding plant to get it to grow more quickly, all you end up with is the budding plant in your hand, and a good chance the plant will never reach its full potential. And people are no different, we all grow and perform at different rates and trying to change that will do nothing but damage yourself and the person you are trying to change.

I have a good friend who is a very hardcore businessman, if there is a person out there that goes out and makes things happen this is the guy, he is successful and fulfilled by “putting together the deal.” There is nothing wrong with who he is, he is as he naturally is, fast. He has a son in law who is not the same as him, and my friend wanted so badly for his son in law to show the same signs of ambition that he himself has that he hired him as an assistant and proceeded to try and teach his son in law to be more like him, I watched my friend become increasingly unnerved by his son in laws apparent “lack of ambition.” The interesting thing to note was that the son in law was not an un-ambitious person, he just did not get the same pleasure from putting together the deal that my friend does. One day he decided he was going to leave his father in laws business and go into law enforcement, which was the career that he had desired since childhood. Armed with this new mission he quickly became one of the more determined and ambitious people I have seen, and all those qualities his father in law wanted to see came through. The point of this story is that his full potential was always inside of himself, he just needed the right time and soil in which to grow, and as soon as he did that he grew exponentially. I propose that had my friend left his son to pursue his own path from the beginning, he would have witnessed the growth he wanted to see in a much faster manner, but his impatience towards his son in laws development actually stalled the development he desired so much to see.

This is something we all do, and something that we just as easily can let go of. I am not saying that we should become complacent and lazy. I am saying that as we move forward with the goals and ambitions we have in life, we should remember that we achieve those goals only when we are ready to achieve them, and by trying to hurry them along we often delay the accomplishment of those goals. In life, “fast is slow, and slow is fast.”

Filed under Self Improvement and Mastery | Tags: contentment, get happy now, happiness, happy life, inner peace, love, patience, positive reinforcement, self improvement, self perception, smile | Comment (1)

Finding The Loophole

I have written previously about what I consider to be spiritual laws, or in other words, laws that directly involve the growth of your spirit. Examples of these sorts of laws include love, gratitude, forgiveness, and patience. These are all easy enough to understand. I have recently been studying the New Testament, and an interesting trend comes around, and it’s a trend that continues to this day. It’s what I call “finding the loophole.”

For example when Jesus teaches that we should forgive all men, the disciples ask , “but how many times?” they even offer up what they consider to be a large number, seven. They missed the initial lesson and law because generally when we hear that something is required of us we automatically, even before we have “disobeyed” the law, we automatically try and find the loophole, or the situation in which it is unnecessary to live the law. To be truly happy and at peace we need to change the questions we ask, here are 4 spiritual laws that bring us greater happiness, I will write the common response and what might just be a beter question to ask that will bring us greater happiness.

The Law Of Love- “Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself”

Natural Response- “But what if my neighbor offends me?”

Response For Happiness- “How can I find ways to show love for my neighbor regardless of how they treat me?”

The Law Of Gratitude- “Be Grateful In All Things”

Natural Response- “I don’t have much to be grateful for, my life is a mess.”

Response For Happiness- ” I am grateful to be alive, I am grateful for my trials because they strengthen me.”

The Law Of Forgiveness- “Of You It Is Required To Forgive All Men”

Natural Response- “How many times before I can stop forgiving?”

Response For Happiness- “It is through forgiving that we are forgiven. I Accept.”

The Law Of Patience- “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”

Natural Response- “When will it end?”

Response For Happiness- “What can I learn?”

These are all relatively short answers but in the coming weeks I will address each of these laws and how we can go about living them more fully, until then remember that happiness is not something you chase, it is not something outside of you. You are happiness, and happiness is you.

Keith

Happiness Factor- What You See On The Inside, Is Who You Are On The Outside.

Have you ever told a lie? Even just a small misrepresentation of the facts? Maybe even something tiny that you were positive that no one would ever know? Did you feel better or worse after you did it? Chances are you felt like a liar, and I don’t say this to be cruel, it’s just a statement of the most likely outcome. Now some people would say that because you lied you felt like a liar, I say the inverse, because you felt like a liar, you lied.

How exactly does that work? It’s pretty simple, every action we perform begins as a thought, and that thought runs through all of our internal filters to see if it is congruent with our own perception of who we are, if the thought makes it through all the filters we naturally will be able to perform the action. If the thought conflicts with one of our inner values, the performance of the action gets called into question. This all happens in nanoseconds and we are generally unaware that we are even doing it, but essentially if you are a person who smiles at everyone you meet, it’s almost as though you don’t think about it, the thought becomes the action because it passes right through the filters, transversely if you are trying to smile at everyone you meet, but up until this point you have chosen to be a shy person then the action gets called into conflict with who you have defined yourself as being and you hesitate before performing the action. I believe that hesitation is the surest sign that you are contemplating an action that is inconsistent with at least part of your current definition of self.

Often times we have an inner conflict where two of our self defined values conflict, for example, most of the time you are a person who is 100% honest, while at the same time you have defined yourself as someone who needs the approval of others. When presented with the option of lying to gain the approval of others your mind weighs out which value is more important to you and chooses the action that is most consistent with the strongest value. If you go ahead with the lie, it shows that your need for others approval outweighs your own need to perceive yourself as an honest person, also if you choose to tell the truth and risk the disapproval of others, it shows that honesty is more important to you.

This may seem to conflict with the statement I made above that says “because you felt like a liar, you lied,” but further looking into it we can see that in order to lie we have to feel like a liar, so when we perform the action that is consistent with the stronger value we put aside the weaker value and choose not to define ourselves as an honest person, but we choose to define ourselves as a person seeking the approval of others, and in our minds to win the approval of others we feel that we must lie, and so we make the choice to lie, we become a liar, and then perform the act.

This is true of positive things as well, like I mentioned above, if you have defined yourself as a shy person, and you want to be more outgoing, you may choose to smile at each person you make eye contact with, this choice must overpower your own self perception as a shy person so that when the conflict arises as to whether or not you will smile at everyone you make eye contact with you need to see yourself on the inside as an outgoing friendly person, and the stronger you make that image on the inside, the higher the likelihood that you will be able to break through the old self perception and move in the direction that you feel will bring you more happiness.

What you perceive yourself to be on the inside is everything, so essentially any change you want to make in your life must start from inside of you, it’s not that when you achieve the result you will have succeeded, it’s when you see yourself as successful you will achieve the result. Whether it be greater happiness, inner peace, better relationships, or even greater financial prosperity, the first step is to see yourself as having accomplished what you desire, and when you truly see yourself as the person you want to be, your actions begin to fall in line with the self perception that you have created, and as you act consistently with your new values you will undoubtedly achieve those things that you want. You can have everything that you desire, just be the type of person that gets everything they desire.

Keith

Happiness Factor: Being Right Instead Of Happy

In the book of 1 Corinthians 13:11 we read, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” When I was a young child I had a concept that I was quite an intelligent person, this was reinforced by teachers and my parents and to some degree my peers (I would say friends but I was somewhat socially inept). This feeling evolved into a need to always present myself as the “smartest guy in the room,” this ultimately led to a number of debates in which I would attempt to disprove anyone with a differing opinion and convert them to my way of thinking. As anyone who has attempted this has noticed, it doesn’t really work out that way, and usually your “adversary” becomes even firmly more entrenched in their version of what is correct.

As I grew older I found myself becoming a much more socially capable person, but the constant need to be right continued as a pattern in my life, to the degree that I alienated a number of people due to my “cleverness” which was in fact insecurity poorly disguised. It was at this time in my life that I came across a passage that changed how I look at everything. I can’t recall how I found it (or should I say it found me) but it goes along these lines, “you can be happy, or you can be right, but you cannot be both.” It was a very eye opening thing for me, and at that point I decided to “put away childish things” and end this quest that I had to always be right. It was a difficult thing to begin doing, and it remains something that I constantly have to be vigilant about, but the difference in my life was almost immediate, there was a weight lifted off of every conversation, there was much more acceptance from myself as to other people and their opinions, it was remarkable, especially in my relationship with my wife. She didn’t know what to do with me at first; suddenly I was a much more pleasant person and to cap it off I had a measure of peace in my life that I hadn’t had in years, it’s so interesting how quickly everything changed for me at that point.

Giving up the need to be right is one of the first steps I believe that anyone needs to take to find the happiness that is inside you. This does not mean you agree with everything that anybody says but you accept someone’s opinion as that and if you feel it necessary to share your opinion you may consider doing it in a way that stresses that you are just looking to discuss, and not convert. I have found that when there is a discussion going on that involves varying opinions on a topic I feel strongly about if I preface my thoughts with, “Now this is just my opinion.” It opens up the conversation in a way that makes it much easier to converse about the topic at hand. If you find someone is getting retaliatory in a conversation, it is okay to end the conversation before it escalates, just say, “I am interested in sharing ideas, I have no desire to convert you to my way of thinking, if that is your purpose this conversation will have to stop, but if you are okay with a free exchange of ideas without passing judgment by all means let’s continue.” Most people will be baffled at that sort of straight forward talk, but it should either keep the conversation going along smoothly, or stop the conversation before it becomes a battle of who’s right. Just give it a try when sharing your opinion, don’t state everything you believe as though it were fact and the other party is deluded. Just share an opinion and take the time to listen to what the other person is saying. More often than not you will find that you are in at least some degree of agreement which helps everyone involved to feel more comfortable.

Start from the inside

Take a look around you, look out a window if you can. Pay attention to all the things going on around you, look at the cars , the trees, maybe look at your child, who is vying for your attention in an unpleasant way. Look at these things, and read the following statement, “None of what you see is what determines your happiness”

None of it, happiness does not come from the things around you, it does not come from money, or well behaved children, or spare time, or a new boat, happiness does not come from any of these things, but our happiness is often determined by how we feel about these things, which is a whole different story altogether.

You may say, that it’s not true, how can I be happy if this or that is going on in the world? My question to you is, how would you feel if you did not know about it? You see whatever it is would still be happening, but your awareness would be different, so we can see, that the external event is not what makes us happy or unhappy, but it’s how we process that event.

Really stop and think about this, everything that we feel is a result of how we process the world around us, it is not a result of the world around us, when we decide to let the world be the world, and to control our own destiny, then we are able to make great strides, expecting the world to change to match your beliefs will never frustrate the world, but it will frustrate you.

It’s a very simple thing to control our thoughts, it’s not terribly easy, but it is very simple.