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Archive for the ‘priorities’ Category

Happiness blog

musings, priorities, choices, happiness, self help Add comments
 

Michele Moore of  The Happiness Habit is an interesting blogger.  What do I mean by “interesting”? 

In modern times, this overused and trampled word is a void-filler.  Two people lost for words at a conference will say, “Whadaya think will happen?”  “Dunno.” “Should be interesting.”  “Yup, should be interesting.” “Yup, interesting all right.”

The ancient Chinese had a curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

But when I say “interesting”, I actually mean “interesting”.  (Sorry to disappoint you.)  Her posts are refreshingly controversial and thought provoking.   Here are just a few examples:

It is this last one that most intrigues me, in Is Happiness for Everyone?, we see a mug shot of a smiling Steve Jobs glaring smugly at the title, as if he knows something we don’t.  The question Michele raises is not so much whether happiness is for everyone as much as whether the pursuit of happiness is for everyone.

“For some of us other things are more important than happiness… security, social significance, power, prominence, or perhaps creativity or making a lasting, important, indelible impact or contribution.”

People pursuing power or creativity, for example, are not necessarily unhappy.  The pursuit of these goals might be what makes them happy.  But the pursuit of happiness might not.  For others, the pursuit of happiness is everything.  But there is a catch for those pursuing power, creativity and even happiness; one person might be almost completely satisfied with his life chasing whatever he wants to chase, because his happiness is in the chase.  Another person might follow the exact same path, but be totally miserable, because his happiness is in the “if only” that he will never catch.  If only I had power.  If only I could be a little more creative.  If only I could achieve this, I will be happy. 

If only’s never make a person happy.  Enjoying the journey, the pursuit of power, the drive for creativity, the gathering of happiness; these are the motors that drive our happiness.

Wealth and happiness

priorities, quotes, happiness Add comments
 

Since we touched on that whole can-money-buy-happiness topic yesterday, I though I would share this very wise quote from Bernard Meltzer.

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you
lost all your money.”

Related article (this is an old one of mine) : Money hunting can’t buy happiness.

More happiness quotes.

Spiritual wisdom

priorities, choices, spirituality, happiness Add comments
 

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

Priorities

priorities, choices, happiness, inspiration Add comments
 

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. 


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