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)
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
Filed under Self Improvement and Mastery | Tags: contentment, enthusiasm, forgiveness, get happy now, gratitude, happiness, happy life, inner peace, love, patience, self improvement, self perception | 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)