Self-Help Happiness Blog

Here is a little something from Jagad Guru Chris Butler:

“In his book Small Is Beautiful, noted British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote:

Insights of wisdom … enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and nation against nation, because man’s needs are infinite and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.*  

It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the atma (spirit soul). Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food. To try to satisfy one’s spiritual craving with material things leads to endless consumption, greed, envy, violence, and war. Western people have as much sense gratification as one could ever want, yet they are not satisfied. Why? Because they are spiritually empty.”

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - wisdom in daily life 

© 2007 Science of Identity Foundation

* E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 38

Maclean’s Magazine, November 5 - one of the cover stories is:

Why Men Are Getting Happier (and women more miserable)

The article reviews how the changing roles of women and men in western society are leading to happier men and less happy women.  Just for the record, yes I did choose to stay at home with our kids, no I did not bum around, yes I did build a business from home, and yes both my wife and I share in the joys and stresses of balancing two kids and two careers.

*  Maclean’s is Canada’s national news magazine, and should be available at pretty much any major library in the world.

This was in A Daily Dose of Happiness a couple days ago.  I like it enough to repeat it here…

Here is a game you can play with your family: Academy Awards.  Decide what each person in your household has done that week that is deserving of praise.  Make the announcement.  Everybody applaud.  Have the person make a speech thanking everyone else for helping.  What a way to create a team atmosphere…and if a family is not a team, what is it?

This one just came in by email, and I just had to share:

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)  

“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the
success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult
task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy
in overcoming obstacles.”

Doesn’t that make you feel happy?  Or happier? 

Yikes!  While momentarily distracted by a bird flying over head, I was shocked by the loud “thud!” that wallopped my windshield.  After nearly a quarter of a second (but seeming much longer), it dawned on me where the huge splatter of green goo came from.  I should note that the bird did not hit my roof with his generosity, nor the hood of my car.  Nor the top, bottom, right side or center of my windshield.  He dropped his gift right square in front of my face.

As the awesome sound of the thud reverberated through my mind, it struck me just how pwerfull that birdy-poop was.  And the obvious question also struck me:

“Just how badly would I have been injured if there had not been a windshield?  What if my head had been poopified?”

Hmm.  I wonder if there is a market for anti-bird umbrellas…

Let the breeze blow in. There is nothing quite like fresh air to carry our spirits higher. Our lungs know the difference, and they crave real air - the kind you don’t find indoors. Open the windows.

Inhale.

Ahhh…that feels better.

On a footnote, wind is itself one of the four ancient elements, along with fire, earth and water.  What these four elements have in common is that they all have a therapeudic effect on our spirits. 

Here is a great post on how to deal with criticism.  It gives a 6-step plan that should help those of us who find that challenging.

The post begins:  How do you deal with criticism? Ever noticed how some people are able to take criticism much better then others? Are you one of those people whom goes “off the deep end”, or wish you would have said “THAT!”. You want to be the true criticism master? Have a Teflon shield everything criticism will bounce off on? … 

“There is no key to happiness, only a ladder.”

Saa-aay, was Hector Lara Lahoz reading my book when he said that.  My book uses the analogy of the Great Wall of Misery and building a Stairway To Heaven to climb over it.

The fact is that happiness is what we make of it.  Some people have a little of it, some have a lot.  Every one of us can create more than we have now.  It’s just a matter of climbing that ladder. Make the decision to climb your ladder, or stairway, to happiness today.

See also my happiness self-help book and these additional happiness quotes.

Why do you do what you do?   

I just returned from church.  Yes, it’s almost noon on a Wednesday, but my daughter’s class was singing the opening song, so I played hookie.  I can do this because I am my own boss as an SEO consultant and running a freelance writer agency. 

Which brings me to my original point.  I chose to work for myself and to work from home in order to be avaialble to do the things I want to do most during this phase of life, while my young kids are getting less young at what seems like the speed of light.  That will not be my priority in ten years, but it is now.

Think about your life and your career.  Are they in sync?  If not, maybe you can align them better.