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
Filed under Self Improvement and Mastery | Tags: contentment, enthusiasm, get happy now, happiness, happy life, inner peace, love, positive reinforcement, self improvement, self perception | Comment (0)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)
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
Filed under Self Improvement and Mastery | Tags: contentment, get happy now, happiness, happy life, inner peace, long term success, love, positive reinforcement, self improvement, self perception, values | Comment (0)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.
Filed under Self Improvement and Mastery | Tags: contentment, enthusiasm, get happy now, happiness, happy life, inner peace, long term success, love, positive reinforcement, self improvement | Comment (0)Get Happy Now! How enthusiasm can change your life.
Do you remember when you were just a small child? Of course you do, we all do, but what do you remember the most? For many of us the most vivid memories we have are from the times that we did something that we were excited about, like our first trip to Disneyland, or even the first time our parents took us out to eat. There’s a reason that these memories stand out in such a vibrant way, and that is because our memories are stronger when the emotion we attached to that memory is strong. (this is also the reason that negative memories are so vivid as well, but we can talk about that another time)
So what makes enthusiasm so powerful? Why does it stick with us when so few things do? Enthusiasm is one of the highest levels of euphoria that we know of, when we are enthused about something we are not merely excited, it’s almost as though our whole body tingles with expectation. These are the times when you feel like you can’t wait a minute more. And the best part is when we are enthused about something we are never let down, it may not be exactly what we thought it would be, but the electricity we feel about it carries us through to almost always having a positive result.
How can we use enthusiasm to get happy now? It’s not difficult, we simply tap into our memories of enthusiasm and attach those same feelings to everyday situations, you may not feel as enthusiastic about doing a presentation for work, but maybe you can set up a reward for yourself when the presentation is complete, and get excited about the presentation because the reward awaits you at the end of the experience.
You could also simply just choose to be enthusiastic about life, and be grateful for every day you have, I heard a quote once from somebody that said “a good day is one where I am on 2 feet above the ground instead of lying beneath it.” That too is something we can be excited about today is a day to live life.
Another easy way to use enthusiasm to better our lives is to share it, and the simplest way to share it is through a smile, next time you “accidentally” make eye contact with someone while driving, or walking down the street, or in the grocery store, instead of looking away with embarrassment, flash them a quick smile, it will help you get happy, and it will more than likely get you a smile which means you just helped someone else become happy as well.
Give it a shot you have nothing to lose, infuse your life with some enthusiasm and see what happens.
Filed under Self Improvement and Mastery | Tags: contentment, enthusiasm, get happy now, happiness, happy life, love, peace, positive reinforcement, self improvement, smile | Comment (0)