The words we use say so much about how we view ourselves and our world. For example, how many of us are always “searching” for happiness? How many of us just “hope to find it” someday?
On the other hand, how many of us are experts at “making ourselves miserable?” How often do we convict ourselves of the crime of being “our own worst enemy” when it comes to achieving those things that bring us joy?
Recent studies have shown that the truth about happiness lies somewhere in the middle; that we ultimately have to create happiness in our lives rather than simply find it. Both the inside and the outside matter but, in the end, it’s what we believe about happiness that ultimately determines the level of joy and contentment we feel from day to day.
Happiness is as much a process and a set of beliefs inside of us, as it is “stuff” outside of us.
These are 4 principles that can help you in your journey to find the happiness that is all around you, and that lies within you as well.
(1) When you have what you need, more of it won’t necessarily make you happier.
We all have certain basic needs for food, shelter and safety. We have to meet these needs first before anything else that is meaningful can take place. Once that happens, however, more stuff doesn’t necessarily mean more happiness.
Studies have shown that we humans don’t agree about the type of objective things that can be measured, like wealth, possessions, life expectancy, or social status, that will make us all happy. These things vary from person to person, culture to culture, and country to country. This is called the absence of an “objective measure for well being.” Continue reading
Life’s lessons can be learned in many different environments. As a former member of the U.S. Army’s elite counter terrorism unit, known as the “Delta” force, LTC Peter Blaber learned these lessons where the margin for error was virtually non-existent, and the cost of failure was often deadly.
It seems like challenge and difficulty can be found around every corner these days, especially when we believe that “hard times” are all that there is that awaits us. We struggle, we worry, we get angry, and we feel like it’s certainly not “us” that has the power to shape our life; it’s always some nameless, faceless “it” or “them!”
Winning Conversations: 5 Principles to Help You to Say it More Effectively and Hear it More Clearly
The Englishman philosopher and statesman George Savile (1633 – 1695) once wrote that “the master of patience is the master of everything else.” As do all skills that we can learn to master, however, patience must be first studied and understood, and then practiced often before it becomes an enduring characteristic of our personality.
What do we know about the power our thoughts have to impact the quality of our life? Simple. “As a person thinks, so shall they be.” (Proverbs 23:7)
It’s been estimated that we have about 50,000 thoughts a day. This is our “self talk.” It’s the soundtrack in our heads that we’re sometimes aware of, and sometimes, not so much. We make sense of ourselves and our world by the stories we repeat in our heads, over and over again.
It goes without saying that life is challenging. Some challenges we seek; some find us all by themselves. Dealing with them effectively determines the quality of our life.
One of the most maddening experiences in life is trying to watch TV when somebody else has the remote. You just start to focus on a channel and “BAM,” you’re looking at something different. Focus again, “BAM,” away we go to another show. 
Mark Twain once wrote, “Courage isn’t the absence of fear, but its mastery.” All of us strive to act with courage, with honor, and with integrity. Yet we often judge ourselves harshly for those moments when we needed courage and found it lacking.