Ray’s Daily
August 15, 2022
“Happiness doesn’t have to be chased…it merely has to be chosen.”
Mandy Hale
This is going to be a great week for me. Tomorrow is my wife’s birthday, her 90th, even though we have been married 69 years I always remain a few years younger than she is. I am grateful for our years together and all she has done for me and our children.
Later in the week I will be joining friends at local restaurants for food and fellowship, two of my favorite things.
All in all it will be a happy week in part because I always chose happiness. Here is a piece I abridged that offers us the road to a happy life.
How to Be Happy: 8 Ways to Be Happier Today
1. Choose happiness – The most important thing to realize about happiness is that it is not an outcome of current circumstances. Just the opposite, happiness is a choice. Is this easier on some days than others? Absolutely. But if you get caught in the trap of thinking your circumstances need to change before you can be happy, you’ll never, ever get there.
2. Focus on the good – Happiness is about perspective and if you’re looking for reasons to be happy, you’ll probably find them. Happy people focus on positive thoughts.
3. Stop comparing – Be grateful for what you have, appreciate who you are, work hard every day to live your best life, and stop comparing yourself to others.
4. Practice gratitude and generosity – In the world of positive psychology, there are a few themes that emerge every time happiness is studied. Among those recurring themes, we find gratitude and generosity. Choose to be thankful today. And choose to be generous with your time and money. Making them both a discipline in your life will result in a happier today… and tomorrow.
5. Don’t pursue physical possessions – Possessions are necessary for life, but our society has seemed to confuse consumerism with happiness. Marketers work hard to convince us their products are not just needed for life, but that they are essential for happiness.
These excess possessions add stress, worry, and burden onto our lives. Want to become a bit more happy today? Go declutter a closet or drawer and start to challenge consumerism in your life.
6. Be present in your relationships – Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.
7. Develop healthy habits – Spend time outside. Eat healthy. Exercise regularly. Quit smoking. Put down your cell phone. Obsess less. Work hard. Pray often. And get enough sleep.
8. Look outside yourself – The most efficient pathway to lasting happiness and fulfillment is not to look only at your own interests, but also to the interests of others. When we shift our focus off of ourselves, we live lives of greater meaning and greater contribution. When we serve others without concern over what we might receive in return, we experience the beauty of selfless love. The size of our universe (and happiness) begins to expand exponentially.
JOSHUA BECKER
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“Being happy is something that each of us determines, it is not something that we find outside of yourself, it is within us and our choice.”
Catherine Pulsifer
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Mary was having a tough day and had stretched herself out on the couch to do a bit of what she thought to be well-deserved complaining and self-pitying. She moaned to her mom and brother, “Nobody loves me. The whole world hates me!”
Her brother, busily occupied playing a game, hardly looked up at her and passed on this encouraging word: “That’s not true, Mary. Lots of people don’t even know you.”
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The boss said “I didn’t say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you.”
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The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. However, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. Meanwhile, the Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans while the Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Apparently, speaking English is what kills you.
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“There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don’t.”
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This woman’s husband dies and she has only $20,000 to her name. After everything is done at the funeral home and cemetery, she tells her closest friend that she has no money left. The friend says, “How can that be? You told me you still had $20,000 left just a few days before your husband died. How could you be broke?”
The widow says, “Well, the funeral home cost me $5,000. And of course I had to make the obligatory donation to the temple, so that was another $5,000. The rest went for the memorial stone.”
The friend says, “$10,000 for the memorial stone? My goodness, how big was it?”
Extending her left hand, the widow says, “Three carats.”
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Middle age is a time when it takes longer to rest than it does to get tired
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A boss tells his new employee, “I’ll give you 18 bucks an hour starting today, and in three months I’ll raise it to 30 bucks an hour. When would you like to start?”
The employee replies, “How’s three months?”
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“A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.”
H.L. Mencken
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As a young married couple, a husband and a wife lived in a cheap housing complex near the base where he was working. Their chief complaint was that the walls were paper-thin and that they had no privacy. This was painfully obvious when one morning the husband was upstairs and the wife was downstairs on the telephone. She was interrupted by the doorbell and went to greet her neighbor.
“Give this to your husband,” he said thrusting a roll of toilet paper into her hands. “He’s been yelling for it for 15 minutes!”
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“Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.”
Ariana Grande
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Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.
Ray’s Daily has been sent for more than twenty years to people who want to start their day on an upbeat. If you have system overload because of our daily clutter, let me know and I will send you the information via mental telepathy. If you have not been getting our daily you can request to be added by e-mailing me at raykiwsp@comcast.net. Back issues are posted at http://rays-daily,com/ currently there are hundreds of readers from around the world.
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Comments on: "It is going to be a good week" (1)
it will be good for sure