3 steps to happiness

What if I told you your whole life has been training you to be unhappy?

See if this makes sense to you.

Since you were born, every commercial and advertisement you have seen, plus social pressure has mandated the following formula (which I believe to be not only wrong but has brought us to the mess we are in)

1. DO something in your life that will make you as much money as possible so you can…

2. HAVE lots of stuff. (cars, houses, clothes, friends etc) because when you have this stuff you will look like those people in the commercials and advertisements and you will…

3. BE somebody! You will BE happy, and have a great body, life, relationship, whatever.

What this has done is drive us into serious, debilitating debt, greed, jealousy etc. It has driven us away from the value system this country was built upon.

Here is the true formula to follow…

1. BE who you are. Invest the time to learn about you – and be joyful in exactly who that is. Under no circumstances attempt to be somebody else. It never works.

2. DO what you love to do. Not only are you investing your whole life into this – you are responsible for accomplishing things in this world only you can do – so do them!

3. HAVE what you need. The universe has always supplied what we need. It will continue to do so. Especially if you are being who you are and doing what you love!

Disagree or agree? And how are will you accomplish this?

Why Change Your Life?

This is a video I did when was giving away my ebook years ago.

I’ll still send it you… send me an email.

BTW – the self improvement site is no longer published…

The story of Be – Do – Have.

Change My Life Now!

Just in case you are not aware of this – I have been writing articles, blog posts, and copy for websites for a long time.

I looked up last week (metaphysically speaking) and realized I have spread myself very thin while attempting to maintain several different idea and projects at once.

What has happened is I now have too many blogs to maintain, with too many different things to focus on.

This must be changed. The more I learn about self development and online marketing (which are my two main focuses) the more I think they can be combined into one area. Then of course we have a horse farm as well. Don’t know how that will fit but we’ll figure it out!

My goal is to do just that. I need one place to talk about both.

It will be very interesting to see just how this plays out because as of now I have not a clue how to go about it!

Happiness First? Or Money First?

self improvement

Amazing Life Lesson #11

Money does not equal happiness

 

More than 80% of the responses to our survey on self-improvement-lounge.com indicated that lack of (or insufficient) money was the biggest challenge faced today.

This is a scenario many face, and one I have struggled with before. Let’s look at this from a different point of view.

Many of my coaching clients initially believed the biggest roadblock to happiness was lack of money. So did I.

The answer to the biggest roadblock to more money is not enough happiness. Again…the biggest roadblock to more money is not enough happiness.

This answer hurts – and makes the problem even bigger for many! But in reality this answer creates amazing opportunities in your life!

I hear it all the time: "How can I be happy when I am struggling to pay the bills?"

And quite simply the solution is "choose to be happy".

Remember the half full/half empty glass scenario. Which do you normally choose? Bright or dark? Up or down? Good or bad? Depressed or happy?

A very simple test is to frown and try to smile. Then smile in the mirror and try to be depressed.. …You can’t do it.

So why do we not choose to be happy? And what does money have to do with happiness?

Next time…

Coach Miami

Finding Happiness When Times Aren’t So Good…

My friend David in Atlanta has been going through an absolutely horrible divorce for the last couple of years. I have watched him deal with issues I would not wish on any one (like not seeing his 5 kids in over a year).

He wrote this to me after his (almost) final court date – and I thought so much of it I asked permission to reprint here for you…

What he doesn’t say in this article is that he learned this from me! But that aside – congratulations Dave!

 


A number of people have recently been surprised at by response when they ask how I’m doing.  I am wonderful; great; fantastic; fabulous… but they all expect me to say “hanging in there” as if only basically coping. 

The forensic psychologist at my divorce case asked me how I was… and when I said “wonderful” he asked “why” in the most confused manner.  My response, “you can try to fight a roller coaster or just ride and enjoy it… either way the coaster is doing what it wants to; they only difference is what you take away from the experience” floored him… “great way of looking at it” with a big smile.

So here is my observation:

When something really bad has occurred in ones life, many people seem to think they can only count themselves happy if they experience a greater-magnitude event in the positive… if you had been in a concentration camp, then winning the lottery might offset the bad with overall good… and you could say you were sum total, happy.  These people seem to keep a running tally of happiness; basically counting the number-of-good versus number-of-bad of some reverse-yet-equal-magnitude happenings… a streak of awful events can be overcome by a greater number of similar-offset pleasant events… finding a dollar offsets losing one; having a girlfriend offsets having lost one; praise from your current employer offsets having been fired at your previous one; on and on.

Here’s an alternate way of looking at happiness “scoring”… the balance sheet.  In business, one common form of performance evaluation is a snapshot of here-and-now, called a balance sheet… simplified, it means “what are the checking account balance and the credit card debt right now”.  Nothing is said of “how you got in this state”, only that you are in the state right now… and you are sum total positive if your banks balance exceeds your debt level.  Obviously, the past plays a role in what your current state is, but the events themselves don’t matter, only the lasting effect to that moment… so if you had a million dollar debt a year ago and fought yourself back to a mere thousand dollar debt today, all that shows is the thousand, not the million or where it went; if you had a million dollar balance and spent all but a thousand, all that shows is the thousand, not the million or where it went. 

Well, you can do this with your life too… “how good do you feel today versus how bad do you feel today?”  Note that your past plays into this “somehow”, but the parts that you have forgotten, and the parts you have learned to cope with, and the parts that you put aside… they no longer make you feel bad today… so as long as you feel better than that smaller, remaining amount (today), you can call yourself “happy”.  It is like there’s a half-life to the radioactivity that is your past… and the only part you need to overcome on any day is the part that remains to that day.  Note how different this is… you are happy once the “half-life decayed, partial bad that remains” is overcome with good… you do not have to experience a “big good” that equals and offsets a “big bad”, nor do you need a number of these events to bring your score to zero or better… you only need to do something “happy enough” to offset the “lingering pain” in your life; a much easier obstacle to overcome.  And the better you get at putting “things that were” and “things that you cannot control” aside, the smaller the amount of “residual bad feeling” is that you need to out-do with “good” to be happy… the overall magnitude and/or number-of-occurrences of the bad events no longer dictate “what must occur for you to call it a good day”.

Just something to think about.