But overall, can you say you’re truly happy? Most of us can’t, but it’s not because we’re still seeking success. Rather, we aren’t happy because we haven’t chosen to be happy.
When we think of being successful, we imagine that happiness is an inevitable side effect. We may envision ourselves with the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect children, the perfect level of income, the perfect home, the perfect car, etc. And we believe that all of that stuff will make us happy.
Nonetheless, that view is skewed. Material objects and other people cannot make us happy – only we can make ourselves happy. And it all begins with a choice to be happy.
You probably don’t believe that, especially if you are experiencing challenges or lack in your life right now. But think about this: why do rich people still experience unhappiness? Why do successful people still experience unhappiness? Because money and success do not automatically create happiness!
Neither do power, status, romance, or material objects. We simply believe they do because we are looking outside of ourselves for the solution to our problems.
Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success. – Henry Ford
Whoever has gold makes the rules. As a matter of fact, they are entitled to making it up as they go along. Do unto others before they do one to you. Before they can anticipate where you’re headed, strike! Always maintain the element of surprise. And remember to stay wicked. You can’t love gold and […]
Life becomes much more interesting once we let go of our quest for perfection and aspire for imperfection instead.
It is good to remember that one of our goals in life is to not be perfect. We often lose track of this aspiration. When we make mistakes, we think that we are failing or not measuring up. But if life is about experimenting, experiencing, and learning, then to be imperfect is a prerequisite. Life becomes much more interesting once we let go of our quest for perfection and aspire for imperfection instead.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t strive to be our best. We simply accept that there is no such thing as perfection — especially in life. All living things are in a ceaseless state of movement. Even as you read this, your hair is growing, your cells are dying and being reborn, and your blood is moving through your veins. Your life changes more than it stays the same. Perfection may happen in a moment, but it will not last because it is an impermanent state. Trying to hold on to perfection or forcing it to happen causes frustration and unhappiness.
In spite of this, many of us are in the habit of trying to be perfect. One way to nudge ourselves out of this tendency is to look at our lives and notice that no one is judging us to see whether or not we are perfect. Sometimes, perfectionism is a holdover from our childhood — an ideal we inherited from a demanding parent. We are adults now, and we can choose to let go of the need to perform for someone else’s approval. Similarly, we can choose to experience the universe as a loving place where we are free to be imperfect. Once we realize this, we can begin to take ourselves less seriously and have more fun. Imperfection is inherent to being human. By embracing your imperfections, you embrace Life becomes much more interesting once we let go of our quest for perfection and aspire for imperfection instead.
Intellectually, we may know that money can’t buy happiness, but some part of us still believes that we’d feel better if we were rich. Yet when we look at wealthy people, we must wonder if they are any happier than the average person. Do wealthy people laugh more, experience more joy, or have greater fulfillment in their lives? Perhaps some do – but how much of it is a direct result of their wealth?
You can probably point to a handful of wealthy people that appear to be completely miserable. Not surprisingly, some people seem to become less satisfied the wealthier they become! Perhaps they were under the misconception that money would solve all their problems, or having a large amount of money brought along its challenges. I’m sure you’ve heard the horror stories about people who win the lottery or come into a large sum of money through an inheritance or other means. Many of them experience a few years of heartache and struggle and end up flat broke again. Money didn’t solve their problems – only made them worse!
Another reason why wealth can make us miserable is that it distracts us from what is truly important for a happy and fulfilling life. We find ourselves focusing more and more on material objects and end up feeling disconnected from our inner selves.
If you are feeling unhappy in your life right now and you’re thinking that money will solve your problems, it’s time for a reality check! I won’t deny that having material abundance can make our lives a little easier. Believe me, I’m all too aware of what it’s like to struggle to pay the bills or to feel like you’re living on the edge of a cliff and the ground is crumbling beneath your feet. I know the terror of worrying whether the electricity will be shut off for nonpayment, or wondering if you’ll be able to afford to buy groceries this week.
I’m not trying to minimize these types of struggles – but I want you to be clear that having a lot of money will not automatically make you feel happy and happy in your life.
Money can alter the quality of life, but only if we have a healthy attitude toward money; otherwise it will just add bigger burdens.
YOUTH IS LOVING WORK: Like what you do. Do what makes you and others happy. Enter your daily work with joy. Adjust it until you do like it. Learn to love work for the happiness it brings. Put joy into your work in the morning and you will find it multiplied into happiness at night. Work is a law of youth. Inaction is decay. Inertia is death. Men and women do not usually lose their positions, they drive their positions away from them. The law of work will not stand personal abuse, any more than the law of beauty will endure brutality. Form an idea of your work, make a mental picture of it, simplify it, orderly it, beautify it, then glorify it. Start the process to the slightest degree and you will get a result. Put a new shock absorber on your disposition. Bring your fine sensibilities to your work, be big morally, be deep mentally, and work with confident expectation. Put rules and systems into your daily task. Exercise your self-control, your self-possession, self-mastery, march up to your task with efficiency backed up by a dominant will. Realize your Supreme Personality in your work. Put the absolute “I AM,” into your purpose of toil. Put dominating decision “I HAVE DECIDED,” into your efforts. Put invincible determination, “I WILL,” into your complex problem. Put irresistible confidence, “I SHALL ACHIEVE,” into your ardent desires. You will then love work. When you come to love work you will not exhaust yourself in it, you will not tire your brain and body with its friction, because you will not work with selfish purposes, but work to enrich the world. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Our outlook and attitude on life, in general, plays a huge part in how happy we are in life and how successful we become. Someone who thinks positively about everything will be more relaxed, calm and smile more than someone who is always looking at the bad side, who lets stress get to them and who constantly wear a frown.
Not only does how you think and feel affect you, it also affects those around you, in short, our mood affects our day. Developing and keeping a positive outlook is essential if you wish to lead a positive and fulfilling life.
There are many ways in which you can develop a more positive outlook and begin to change how you think and feel about many situations that you encounter in day-to-day living. Changing your attitude and not slipping back into negative thinking will take time but eventually, the new outlook will become second nature. The five main key points to remember when changing your outlook are
Turn your way of thinking into positive thinking and practice on a daily basis thinking positively. You should set your mind on completing one task at a time and think only of a positive outcome and how good you will feel when you have completed the task. Never give in to doubt and let yourself believe that you have taken too much on and just keep going.
Don’t let your conversations turn negative when in a conversation it is easy to let others discourage you, particularly if they have a negative outlook on life. Don’t be tempted to fall back into your old ways, turn negative talk into positive and look for the good in everything and any situation.
Look for the positive in those around you and point it out, this way you can encourage a positive attitude all around you.
Whatever you are doing in your day-to-day life always look for the good in it, although it might be a boring task which you usually hate doing and one which leaves you feeling negative, try to find something about it that turns it into a more positive situation.
Never let yourself become distracted or hoodwinked into going back to negativity, it takes time to change the way you feel and thinks, and if you have been down on yourself and the world for a long time then your new outlook will take a while to register and stay around.
You will find over time that many areas of your life can be changed just by changing your outlook from a negative one to a more positive one. You will find that your self-esteem improves, you become more popular, you feel happier and are more confident than before, you can the tasks you once hated without them causing you stress and anxiety, and your relationships improve. These are just a few of the areas where you can self-improve and gain a more positive outlook and thus lead a more positive life.
When we’re walking through a difficulty, we have a choice to consider it joy or consider hardship. If we consider it a hardship, we begin to complain and lose any joy we have.
But when we consider that our Almighty God has allowed us to face the trial, we know that He can use it to bring something good into our life.
Our decision then becomes to discover the good, not the bad, and to joyfully endure the trial. We don’t find joy in the trial or pain. We find joy in the God who is the source of all strength, the God who is in control of it all!
Deep down in every heart is an unquenchable desire for happiness. The advanced soul desires happiness just as much as the pleasure-seeking worldling, the difference between them is simply that the former, through knowledge and experience, do not search for happiness, knowing that it can never be found by direct seeking, but finds it through service and love to others and in victory over self; while the latter seeks happiness, like a will-o’-the-wisp, in every form of pleasure, and finds it not.
Man is never satisfied with his life: he is for ever seeking something that is better. Until he learns wisdom, he looks for it in pleasure, in sense gratification of various kinds, in wealth, luxury and possession. The less evolved a man is the more convinced he is that happiness can be gained in these ways, and the lower are his desires. For instance, those who form what is called the underworld of our cities, seek happiness in vice and debauchery. Those who are more evolved seek pleasure in more refined things, hoping to find happiness in intellectual pursuits, friendships, and in pure human loves. These more evolved types get much more pleasure through the senses than do those who are more elemental, but they are capable also of greater and more acute suffering. They can derive great pleasure from a picture gallery, whereas a savage would see nothing interesting at all: they can also suffer from things which a savage would not be capable of feeling. Yet, in spite of this developed refinement and ability to derive pleasure from art, science, literature, etc., happiness is still as far off as ever. All attempts at finding happiness lead finally to “emptiness.” There is no satisfaction, either in wealth and all that it can command, getting on in life, or in fame and power. They allure at first and promise happiness, but they fail us, and finally are seen to be but vanity and vexation of spirit.
This desire for prosperity is good, for it leads us through innumerable experiences so that the soul can realize, by practical experience, the emptiness of all self-seeking, and thus learn wisdom. After running the whole gamut of experience the soul learns at last that happiness is not something that can be found by seeking it, but is an inward mental state.
Although work, well done, brings a quiet sense of satisfaction, and success in one’s career may also be a source of gratification for a short time, yet even these cannot satisfy the deep longing of the soul.
Happiness, however, is to be found in service. Not if we seek happiness in service, and serve in order to be happy, but if we serve others for the sake of serving we find the only happiness that will endure and satisfy.
One has only to observe the lives of those who are always selfishly seeking and grabbing, who are hard in their dealings, and always “looking after number one,” in order to see how impossible it is for self-seekers to be happy. It does not matter whether they acquire riches or remain poor—they are equally unhappy. In contrast to this, you have only to go out of your way to do a kind and perfectly disinterested action and experience the glow of sheer happiness that it brings, in order to realize that you are dealing with a law of life that is as sure and unalterable as the law of gravitation.
There must be a purpose in life, and this must have for its object the betterment of the lives of others, either few or many. The law of service must be obeyed, otherwise there can be no happiness. This may fill some readers with dismay, for they may be employed in an occupation that apparently does no good to anybody. They may feel that if they were engaged in some noble enterprise for the uplift of humanity, then they could truly serve, but in their present occupation this is impossible. To think thus is very natural, yet the truth is we can all obey the law of service, and can begin now, in our present occupation, no matter what it may be. We have only to do our daily work, not as a task which must be “got through,” in order to bring us a living, or because it is expected of us that we should work, but as an offering of love to life and the world, in order to come into harmony with the great law of service. Our ideas of values with regard to occupations are altogether erroneous, from the “inner wisdom” point of view. The scrubbing of a doorstep, if faithfully done in a true spirit of service, is of as much value and real importance as the writing of a deathless poem, or dying for one’s country. We can never truthfully say that one act of service is of greater value, or is more important than another. All that the higher law looks at is the motive. Therefore, if your motive is right, you can be engaged in the humblest and, apparently, most useless occupation, and yet be happy because you satisfy the law of service.
Another road to happiness is the conquest of the lower nature, the overcoming of weaknesses, the climbing to higher and better things. There is intense happiness in realizing daily that old habits are being overthrown, weak points in the character built up, and an ever-increasing state of liberty and freedom entered into. Thank God, we do not have to remain as we once were, but can progress upwards, indefinitely, for there is no limit to our upward climb.
But there is a state that is far higher than happiness, and this is JOY. Happiness comes through service and overcoming, but joy comes only to one who realizes his oneness with his Divine Source. The reality is ineffable joy. Behind this world of shadows is the real, spiritual world of splendour and delight. When the soul, after its immense journey through matter, time and space, at last finds its way back to its Divine Source, it becomes aware of this intense joy, too great to be described in words. It not only realizes that the reality is joy, and the universe filled, not with groans or sighing, but with the sweet, quiet laughter of freed souls! it also is filled itself with this ineffable joy.
What has all this got to do with practical, everyday life, it may be asked? Everything, for the one who possesses this quiet joy can never be defeated in life’s battles. He has something within him that can never be quenched and which will lead him from victory to victory.
