The Winning Edge

Happiness comes from the inside, 5 ways to be happy right now! December 31, 2008

What does it take to be happy?

This is question that many many people find themselves asking, and as we ramble through this journey called life we may need a little help to keep that smile on our face and that spring in our step. More than once I have asked myself what it takes to be happy and in all my searching I have found a few distinct truths that come alive and as simple as they may seem offer an opportunity to be happy with yourself all the time, even when the chips are down.

Here are 5 simple ways to get happy right now, and to stay that way, these aren’t pump you up sorts of techniques, but they are real things you can do to change how you feel and make you feel much happier;

1-Do something nice for someone else
This is one of the fastest most effective ways to get happy fast, go out and do something kind for someone else, it can be as simple as giving a compliment or taking someone to lunch, or even stopping your car and helping that person on the side of the road. Service to others helps us remember that there are people everywhere have a need for something that you have got, and feeling needed is important to so many people.

2- Change your posture
This may seem a little ridiculous at first, but this has been one of the best ways for me to go from stress to happiness quickly, sit up straight, take a deep breath in and put a big old goofy smile on your face, you can literally feel the tension that is in your chest melt away, and it is replaced with a sense of well being and dare I say confidence that you can get through anything.

3- Read a good book, or even a few pages of something positive
If you are a religious person, turn to whatever religious text helps you to see things in a good way, two of my favorite passages come from The Bible, one is found in Proverbs 16:20 and reads “…whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he.” And the other is found in Psalms 46:10 and says “Be still and know that I am God” These 2 short sayings help me know that I have a greater purpose, and that I am meant to be happy, not miserable. If you are not a believer in any religious texts I would suggest finding something that brings you peace of mind.

4- Tell someone that you love them
Now this may fall into the service category, but I think it merits its own section, think of someone you love, someone that you haven’t told in a while that you love them. Give them a call, write them a letter, or go visit them and say the words “I Love You.” The key point is to say those exact words, don’t try and say anything else, just simply “I Love You.” It’s a little uncomfortable for a lot of people at first, but it will warm your heart immediately and help you feel happy.

5- Remember that happiness is first
This may seem the strange part, but often people will put qualifiers in front of what will make them feel happy, people will say things like, “when I get that promotion, I’ll be happy” or “when I find my soul mate, Then I’ll be happy” but that is not how it works at all. Happiness starts inside of you and then radiates out to the things that you do, a bold statement I often make to people is, “there is nothing in the world outside of you that can make you happy or sad.” All that I mean by that is that you choose each moment of each day how you will respond to your life, and certainly you have the ability to choose happiness of all the negative emotions you often find yourself burdened down with. You have the ability to choose happiness and peace instead of anguish, it’s a very simple concept that can seem very difficult, but give it a try, just try to choose happiness.

We are not powerless, we have the ability to master all of our emotions and that includes choosing happiness, you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain, why not give happiness a try?

Lemons and lemonade December 12, 2008

Some thoughts that occured to me while working on a chapter outline.

Lemons and Lemonade

There are a great number of people out there who seem to just walk around feeling badly about everything around them, yet offering nothing to help solve the problem, most of us recognize these folks as complainers, and when faced with a complainer we do the obvious thing, we humor them, pat them on the back, give them a shoulder to cry on, and breathe a huge sigh of relief when they are done sucking our energy! We may even complain to others about how much we are bothered by the complaining, which is in of itself its own contradiction, but we should talk about that another time.

The bottom line is that bad stuff happens to people every day, the sun rises and bad stuff happens, the sun sets, and bad stuff happens. It’s better if we just accept that it is going to happen, we can’t stop it, but we can do something about it. Many people ask why suffering has to exist, and I have a somewhat simple answer, suffering exists to raise the collective awareness of our society. Human suffering is one of the greatest motivators out there, without it we would not have any quality of life, dare I say that the invention of the wheel as a tool was done because somebody was sick of dragging their food home, and sick of seeing everyone around them suffering in that way, so they found a new way. Hunger, poverty, abuse, murder, the list goes on and on, but these things exist so that we as society can make steps to rise above them, and we cannot rise above them by stomping on them, we must rise above them by raising the collective awareness of society.

The point I am getting to is that most people choose not to do so, there’s a saying that “when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade” yet most often when life hands us lemons we take them and we hang on to them, making sure that along the way we do not drop a single lemon, so instead of raising our awareness and rising above the troubles that we have in our lives, and doing something useful with those lemons we become “lemon collectors” we take every hard time and bad experience and hang on to it as though our lives depended on it, so we go through life, not drinking lemonade, but collecting lemons, and subconsciously that just brings more and more lemons into our lives, and one of the biggest reasons this happens is that not only do we become lemon collectors, we get together at parties and compare our lemons, and it seems that the person with the oldest most rotten the lemon wins! So you see people comparing their life lemons and getting some sense of sick pride when they are able to pull out of their pocket some 30 year old lemon that they have been carrying all their life, and seeing the crowds vanquished by their rotten lemon. My thought is that if you are running around, trying to “out-lemon” everyone, you are just going to run into more and more lemons.

Some people who are even on their way to winning get sucked into the game. Because if they haven’t collected enough lemons they don’t feel like they belong, so they go out and grab some lemons, and sometimes even borrow other people lemons just to fit in. This robs the world of a great many noble souls who could have done greater things if we as society did not suck them into being “lemon collectors”.

The answer is a simple one, let go of your lemons. Just let them go, if there are recent lemons well then by all means make yourself a nice tall glass of lemonade and drink it to celebrate letting all those old rotten lemons go. You may say I don’t understand, you may even say, “how can I let these lemons go after what happened to me?” My question to you is this, is your life really better as a result of carrying around that pain/hatred/anger/sadness? What have those lemons ever done to serve you? Is it easier to carry around a pile of moldy lemons, or to just carry around a glass of lemonade?

Just a few thoughts as you go through life, next time you are at a gathering and somebody talks about how awful something is, maybe, instead of just nodding your head gravely and agreeing, maybe you could try and steer the conversation towards the possibility of what we as society can do to help in whatever way, if someone complains about the homeless, you could suggest getting together and doing a blanket collection, or a fundraiser for a local shelter, see what happens as the conversation goes from one of helplessness to one of hope and the ability to maybe make a small impact, I guarantee that you will have a much better time at the gathering if you try and help raise the consciousness of those around you, just by suggesting that the small group could make some difference.

Take care,

Keith

“The first and great commandment is: Don’t let them scare you.”
-Elmer Davis

Well Hello December 8, 2008

I am currently in the process of writing a book, and figured I would put it out here for folks to see, feel free to comment as I put individual chapter summaries up and also when completed the full chapters, don’t be shy and let me know what you think.

The purpose of the book is to help everyone to understand that happiness is an inside job, and that success is different than many the self help guru’s would have you believe, success is not tied directly to your income, but it is tied to how you respond to the world around you.

So take care and I will update this as I go along.

Much Love,

Keith