The Way To Happiness

Archive for September, 2009

The key to happiness is both simple and complex. It is the sum total of more than 2,000 years of philosophy, psychology, speculation, and discussion about the meanings and sources of happiness. From Aristotle in 340 B.C. through to the modern thinkers, speakers, and writers of today, this key to happiness has hardly changed. It is the same for virtually all men and women in every country and all walks of life. The key to happiness is this: Dedicate yourself to the development of your natural talents and abilities by doing what you love to do, and doing it better and better in the service of a cause that is greater than yourself.

This is a big statement and a big commitment. Being happy requires that you define your life in your own terms and then throw your whole heart into living your life to the fullest. In a way, happiness requires that you be perfectly selfish in order to develop yourself to a point where you can be unselfish for the rest of your life.

YOUR HAPPINESS MUST COME FIRST

In Edmond Rostand’s Play Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano is asked why he is so intensely individualistic and unconcerned with the opinions and judgments of others. He replies with these wonderful words: “I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things.”

Your happiness likewise depends upon your ability to please at least yourself in all things. However, most people are reluctant to use their own happiness as the standard by which to judge the events in their lives. This is primarily because we let others define or affect what brings us happiness. And we often believe it is more important to make other people happy than it is to make ourselves happy. This is nonsense.

Human beings are happiness-driven organisms. Everything we do in life is oriented toward maintaining and increasing our level of happiness. We are psychologically constructed so that it is impossible for us to be any other way without making ourselves mentally and emotionally ill. The fact is that you can’t give away to anyone else what you don’t have for yourself. Just as you can’t give money to the poor if you don’t have any, you can’t make someone else happy if you yourself are miserable.

The very best way to assure the happiness of others is to be happy yourself and then to share your happiness with them. Suffering and self-sacrifice merely depress and discourage other people. If you want to make others happy, start by living the kind of life and doing the kinds of things that make you happy.

LET HAPPINESS BE YOUR GUIDE

Make happiness the organizing principle of your life. That is, compare every possible action and decision against your standard of happiness to see whether it would make you happier or unhappier. Soon, you will discover that almost all the problems in your life come from choices that you have made – or are currently making – that do not contribute to your happiness.

There will of course be countless times when you will have to do little things that don’t make you happy in pursuit of your larger happiness. However, as Earl Nightingale said, “Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” You feel really happy only when you are moving, stepby- step, toward the accomplishment of clearly defined goals that you feel will enhance the quality of your happiness.

Since you can’t be truly happy until you are clear about your inherent possibilities, it’s important that you take some time on a regular basis to analyze yourself and identify your strengths and weaknesses. There is an old saying, “Success leaves tracks.” You can look back on your life and identify who you really are and what you should be doing with your life. One of the best ways to do this is to constantly ask yourself this powerful question:

“WHAT ONE GREAT THING WOULD I DARE TO DREAM IF I KNEW I COULD NOT FAIL?rdquo;

Imagine that you are absolutely guaranteed success in the pursuit of a particular goal, big or small, shortterm or long-term. Imagine that you have all the money, all the time, all the education, all the contacts, all the resources, and everything else that you could possibly need to achieve any one big goal in life. What would it be? This is a very important question because when you remove the limitation from your thinking, you often get a very clear idea of exactly what you should be doing with your life. Your greatest dream is an indication of your natural abilities and of what is really important to you.

All successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their fortune could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, goal or purpose. Step-by-step realization of their ideal makes them genuinely happy.

LIFE’S 4 CATEGORIES

Dr. Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning, said that you can divide the thing you do in life into four categories. The first category consists of the things that are hard to learn and hard to do. An example for many people is mathematics. Many of us struggled with math in school and still struggle with bookkeeping, accounting, financial statements, and tax returns as adults. If you find mathematics hard to learn and hard to do, this is the sort of activity for which you are clearly unsuited. No matter how much of it you do, or how good you get at it, you will never achieve any lasting satisfaction or happiness from it.

The next category consists of things that are hard to learn but easy to do. Riding a bicycle, driving a car, and tying your shoes are hard to learn but easy to do once you’ve practiced enough. These are seldom the sort of activities that cause you to feel terrific about yourself when you engage in them. They do not demand your best.

The third category consists of things that are easy to learn but hard to do. Physical labor falls into this category. Digging a ditch with a shovel and chopping wood with an ax are easy to learn but they are hard to do, and never get any easier.

The fourth category is the key. These are things that are easy to learn and easy to do. You seem to have a natural proclivity for them. When you are engaged in this sort of activity, time flies. The things that are easy for you to learn and do are the sort of things that you should be doing with your life. They indicate where your natural talents and abilities lie. Engaging in these activities with your whole heart, and committing yourself to become better and better, will give you all the joy, satisfaction, and happiness you could want in life.

HAPPINESS IS NOT AN ACCIDENT

Everyone has an area of excellence. Everyone has something that he or she can do in an outstanding fashion. It may take weeks, months, or even years for you to develop yourself in that area so that you can really perform in an extraordinary fashion, but you will be strongly attracted to that sort of activity from the beginning. You will enjoy reading about it and talking about it and thinking about it. You will find yourself admiring people who are outstanding in that area. You will look longingly at that field and wonder what it would be like to be in it and to be successful at it. That is very often your heart’s desire. That area of activity where you can become excellent is probably what you were put on this earth to do.

So resolve to persist until you succeed. The first part of courage is the resolve to launch in faith toward your objectives; the second part is your willingness to endure in the face of the inevitable disappointments and setbacks you will encounter on the road.

Happiness is not an accident. Happy people are those who deliberately do the things that invariably lead to happiness. Happy people are those who know what they want and then throw their whole hearts into using their unique talents and abilities to make a contribution to the world in the achievement of their goals.

You are put on this earth with a special purpose, programmed with unique talents and abilities that have not yet been fully tapped and utilized. When you focus all your energies on unlocking your true potential, you can claim your ultimate birthright: happiness

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I am sure that I am not alone in the fact that I have a large army of demons in my head. These demons are always talking to me and trying to advise me about how to react to different situations. For many years I listened and took their advice, these years were not exactly happy ones and I have now come to realise that these demons are not my friends but are actually my enemy.

I had many issues in my life that had a negative affect on my levels of self-esteem. The demons used these issues to get to me and to play their mind games. For this article, I am going to describe my stuttering demons and how I eventually destroyed them. The advice can be used for whatever type of demon you may have.

At the age of four, I developed a stutter which would continue to affect my speech for the next eighteen years of my life. I was aware of what I could and could not say and was also aware of the social situations in which I was more likely to stutter.

If I was asked a question by for example a friend, I would think of the answer but before I would have a chance to say it, a voice would appear. This voice or what I call my demons would advise me not to say that word and to substitute it for a different word.

If I was invited out to say a party, my demons would advise me not to go, as there would be a lot of people there that I did not know. They would remind me that I found it difficult talking to people which I did not know.

At one stage in my life, I decided that I wanted a career change as I was not happy in the role that I was in. My demons reminded me, that to find alternative employment meant going through the whole interview process again. They continued that I had always struggled to talk fluently at interviews, due to the pressure factor.

I would be able to speak quite well when I was drunk and this is when I would have the confidence to talk to the ladies. On several occasions a woman has given me their phone number and I would tell them that I would call them to arrange a night out. The next day though, when sober, the demons would remind me that making a phone call is what I find the hardest form of speech task and to simply not bother.

As previously stated, I used to listen to these demons and suffice it to say I did not go on my first date until I was eighteen years of age.

Things had to and were about to change. After reading many self-help books, I realised what I had been doing wrong. I should not be listening to these demons, in fact what I need to do is the opposite of what they tell me. Steve don’t go to that party, OK then I will. Steve don’t phone that lady up, OK I will, etc.

I am not trying to say that this is easy to do. I am happy to say that I have eradicated my speech demons and am now fluent, however I do still have demons in other areas of my life. There are not nearly as many as there have been in the past and I am slowly hopefully killing them all.

I treat it like a war. There are many battles and I have to say that I do not win them all. I talk to my demons all the time and especially when they win one of these type battles. I tell them that they may have won this particular battle but that I will win the overall war.

You may possibly think that I am a bit of a freak after reading this article. I frankly do not care, I am happier now than I have ever been.

Good luck in your quest to improve your own life.

Nature is one of the greatest sources of happiness. In fact, humans had lived in the lap of nature for millions of years and their stay in modern cities is comparably very very short. Still now majority of them lives in close proximity to nature. In fact, human race is dependent upon nature for its very survival (plants recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen; our food is a product of nature; and we can survive under a very limited range of variables of nature like temperature, etc.)

Nature is all free! It is there for everybody to stand and stare and derive happiness and solace from. It does not distinguish between rich and poor, strong and weak, man and woman. Silvery sun is free, golden moon is free, cool breeze, warm seashore, imposing mountains, smooth flowing rivers, dark and inviting forests, all are free.

It is free, not because it is cheap, but it is rather priceless.

How much would it cost to make only an artificial island with rivers, forests, mountains, and surrounding ocean?

Billion dollars, zillion dollars?

Can one make it? And if one can and afford, will he give it to humanity free to enjoy? Will he not charge some entrance fees? How much?

When we see the moon, we see it in its entirety, no matter how many millions of people are seeing it at the same time. Has God made a separate moon for each of us, or is it only one moon which each of us somehow sees as his own individual moon? And similarly, the sky, the sun, the ocean, rain and sunshine, all are there for us to possess fully. Each can stare at the sky and claim all of it for his or her happiness. It is all his or her.

Nature understands your moods. If you are sad, it is also sad with you. But it does not make you sadder. It does not lead you to further despair. It applies gentle balm to your wounds. It sits besides you like a mother, spouse, brother or sister, or a friend and embraces you, talks to you, listens to you patiently, empathizes with you. Slowly it lifts your spirits, makes you to see your little woes, worries, and wounds in the right perspective of infinite time and space. You smile; you laugh; and you are happy again!

I am sure, you are keeping your money in the bank and this bank balance gives pleasure and happiness. Even when this money is lying idle or tied down in investments. Sometimes it is money just on paper, as, for example, the value of shares and bonds. When you need something, you withdraw the money and exchange it for some pleasure and happiness. Well, all this is good.

Yet do you realize that infinite beauty and happiness is lying around you in the form of nature?

Do you appreciate this fact and draw happiness out of it?

BE HAPPY!

I am writing this article direct from the filming set of a new BBC1 primetime TV series called “Run For Glory.” Run for Glory charts 15 people who have amazingly valiant reasons for wanting to raise money for charity by running the London Marathon.

None of them were runners before this show and they are being trained by UK Olympic gold medallists Steve Cram and Sally Gunnell. I have been filming for one of the Run For Glory shows to help the participants overcome psychological barriers and get in control of their minds with regards to running the marathon and their preparation.

I have found it very interesting to observe the relations between the crew, the producers and the interactions with and in between the participants of the Run for Glory show and how other people really do affect each other and have an impact on each other.

Recently, I wrote about developing rapport without even speaking. Lots of people do this without even being instructed on how to do it. One of the things that I have noticed since I started working within the various fields of personal development is that I am much more aware of other people and how I interact with them.

I have practiced and practiced achieving a really enjoyable sense of rapport with people when I meet them and develop relationships with them. It has been great to observe my own improvements in how I do this and the kind of intuitive and instinctive way that I do this.

When working on the set of this TV show “Run for Glory”, I was chatting to one of the participants who is about to become very famous here in the UK thanks to this show, and they were telling me that at the end of filming each episode of Run for Glory, with everything going really well, they would finish the day feeling drained and verging on being depressed.

I spoke to them for a while and I was not sure about this until I observed all the kinds of interaction that was there in this unusual TV environment filming for Run for Glory ? the participant was getting excellent results, I mean they are doing so amazingly well, so why were they feeling so low?

I suggested that this person might be picking up other people’s issues, thoughts and feelings. I suggested that maybe they needed to protect themselves from the other Run for Glory participants. She used the technique that I then demonstrated to her and subsequently reported back that she felt amazing, so much better than she was before when she was around these people that were stressed, having great demands placed upon them and facing some very challenging situations in their lives.

When you develop rapport with people and get close to them, you can and often do access some of what they are thinking and feeling. This is not the best when the person you are in rapport with is not in a great or a productive state.

It is like a friend of mine who I joke is a “fun vampire.” Sometimes he is so morose and seemingly depressed when we are out socially that he seems to “suck the life and the fun” out of all the people that he encounters! I know you all know someone like that too.

I tend to find this is particularly important when I am running seminars with people that are making a lot of changes in their lives or if I am working therapeutically with individuals; I want to be sure not to take on board too much of their feelings and way of thinking. So I want to show you some ways of protecting yourself too.

The way I suggest of doing this requires your natural ability to use your imagination and visualise. Now, if you believe you have difficulty visualising or using your imagination, trust me when I tell you that you use your imagination every day. Your imagination is what reminds you what your partner or spouse looks like, what colour your front door is and how your childhood bedroom looked. You do not have to visualising in perfect cinema screen pictures in your mind, just do it in a way that is right for you. This method is just as effective if you visualise the things I ask or if you just pretend to visualise them in your mind.

Firstly, get yourself nice and relaxed. Sit still and take some longer, deeper breaths and then allow your breathing to be natural and become rhythmic and easy. Focus on the moment; be aware of how your body feels in that moment.

Secondly, as you get more relaxed, imagine the relaxation spreading through your body. If you want to, give it a colour or a texture or imagine it as a sensation.

Thirdly, imagine the relaxation, or the sensation of stillness moving out of your body, just a few centimetres. Imagine that you are extending it to become a protective shield that is all around you.

Imagine that it acts as a filter, so only you to take on things that are for your better good and understanding and does not allow you to take on anything that is going to affect you detrimentally.

I don’t know if any of you remember adverts for the oat cereal “Ready Brek”? The people used to have a glow about them when they were going to work if they had eaten their Ready Brek. When I first started protecting myself in this wonderful way, I used to imagine that I had a glow around me that acted like emotional armour and any unwanted thoughts or feelings or even comments of others that I did not want to carry around with me, just bounced off my armour.

Finally, when relaxing tell yourself that this protective shield is there working for you even if you are not consciously aware of it. That way you can be sure that you are not carrying anyone else’s vibes around with you and leaves you free to enjoy your experiences for what they really are. Then go ahead and practice this a few times, putting conscious effort into it, imagine making it more powerful with your attention and really getting it strong.

These ideas are just metaphors for protecting yourself, but because your mind and body are one system, they can be extremely effective ways of letting your unconscious know what you want. One of the things that you may begin to notice after you have used this approach a few times and over a prolonged period of time is that you just need to remind yourself of it every now and then, and then it works even better and better. The long term effects of establishing some protection are so very good for you; just as good as finding a good sun screen, that’s for sure. It was so successful with that participant for Run for Glory too.

One of the first things I disocvered when I really looked at the people on the set for Run for Glory was how many people out there make negative or bad suggestions (ie. people who say things which guide attention in less than helpful directions). It is the same in life as on the Run For Glory Set! The number of well-meaning doctors, family members, colleagues and friends that I have heard giving people suggestions for ill health, stress and negativity is truly amazing! If you maintain some good protection for yourself, you can be sure not to allow other peoples negative language, thoughts and feelings to affect you in a way that is not for your better good.

The ability to protect myself from the things going on around me has been instrumental in my latter life, being able to block out most unhelpful messages that come my way leaves a very nice state of well-being and it did so too for the participant in Run for Glory.