Are you as happy as you would like to be?
Everyone is responsible for their own joy.
The other day I expressed my concern for the folks who are lonely. Well I also get concerned about friends I know who always seem to be down in the dumps. I honestly believe that the best things these people can do is to get so happy that they don’t have time to dwell on their problems or maladies.
It is amazing how focusing on happiness helps to speed up the healing process. I know I have had plenty of experience depending on it for my recoveries.
Unfortunately too many of us wait for happiness to find us rather than actively pursuing its benefits. I am offering you today an abridged piece written by Henrik Edberg to help you search if you need more happiness than you already have.
How to Find Happiness: 7 Timeless Tips from the Last 2500 Years
What do you want? A great job? A fulfilling relationship? Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious boat? Or just to get along better with yourself? Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to find happiness.
One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years. Here are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you´ll find them helpful.
You choose.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation you act. And all of this becomes your life. You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative way. And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find and create in your life.
Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet. – James Oppenheim
You only have now. And now. And now. Yesterday is a memory and you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right now. So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow. Otherwise you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right now.
Don’t forget to be grateful.
We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. – Frederick Keonig
One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour mood into a more positive one is to be grateful. A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or a song. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street.
Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a win/win solution. You feel great because you are grateful about your world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they feel appreciated.
Help someone else find happiness.
Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it. – Bernard Meltzer
This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I’ve found about happiness. And it might sound empty but it works very well. When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping them with something – you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like helping/sharing it with someone else. And so the two – or more – of you keep spreading the happiness.
Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires.
If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires. – Epicurus
If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires that you may not really want or need that much anyway you’ll probably start to feel less stressed and worried.
Do what you like to do.
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. – Albert Schweitzer
A pretty obvious one. But it’s still easy to trap yourself into doing what you don’t want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do right now. But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up. You have a choice.
Or at least do something.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. – Benjamin Disraeli
One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back and do nothing. Seldom show up. Paralyze yourself through over analysis. It’s not always easy to take action, it can be scary and hard and difficult. But if you don’t take action you’ll be missing out on a lot. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness.
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There are souls in this world who have the gift of finding joy everywhere and leaving it behind them when they go.
Faber
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In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
~~~
Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.
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One Sunday a young child was “acting up” during the morning worship hour. The parents did their best to maintain some sense of order in the pew but were losing the battle. Finally, the father picked the little fellow up and walked sternly up the aisle on his way out. Just before reaching the safety of the foyer, the little one called loudly to the congregation, “Pray for me! Pray for me!”
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I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done already.
~~~
Taking his seat in his chambers, the judge faced the opposing lawyers. “So,” he said, “I have been presented, by both of you, with a bribe.” Both lawyers squirmed uncomfortably. “You, attorney Leon, gave me $15,000. And you, attorney Campos, gave me $10,000.”
The judge reached into his pocket and pulled out a check. He handed it to Leon. “Now then, I’m returning $5,000, and we’re going to decide this case solely on its merits!”
~~~
A couple are lying in bed. He said: “I am going to make you the happiest woman in the world.”
She said: “I’m sure going to miss you!”
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A Dutchman in Amsterdam felt that he needed to confess, so he went to his Priest.
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. During WWll, I hid a Jewish man in my attic.”
“Well,” answered the Priest, “That’s no a sin.”
“But I made him pay me 20 gulden for each week he stayed.”
“I admit that wasn’t good, but you did it for a good cause.”
“Oh thank you Father; that eases my mind. Father, I have one more question.”
“What is it son.”
“Do I now have to tell him the war is over?”
~~~
When you finally allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it, you will find you dance with everything.
Emanuel
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Stay well, do good work, and have fun.
Ray Mitchell
Indianapolis, Indiana
Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.
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