Don’t Let Happiness Depend on Beauty

Dated: date February 3, 2011 – 3:18 pm

Many of my clients are rich, wealthy, famous, and powerful. It’s interesting, because along with all of that, some of them are very good-looking as well. And what I noticed as I’m working with them is that there’s a danger in being beautiful. And that danger is that you put your source of happiness and well-being in the value being beautiful.

The truth is that no matter how much surgery you get, how many treatments you get, your body is going to deteriorate and your beauty is going to wane. There is a short period in which we all experience that sort of youthful beauty. Many of you get stuck in the place where the drunk money says, “Well, you know, that is my value.”

If you’re thinking “I am happy when I am beautiful, and I am not happy when I am not beautiful.” you’re screwed! That’s because there’s going to be a tremendous amount of your life in which the drunk monkey in your head is going to declare, “You are no longer the beautiful creature that you were before.”

You’re going to have to take on tactics that bring you happiness and fulfillment now without having some external event be in a particular way. In other words, if your circumstances have to be a certain way in order for you to be happy, then you’re in trouble. There’s only one thing we can count on, and that is change.

Everything is going to change. Everything is shifting, so the more valuable thing to do is to take on learning how to be happy now.

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Your Mind is a Source of Your Suffering

Dated: date January 21, 2011 – 12:09 pm

If you pay attention to your mind, you’ll see that it is always judging, assessing, evaluating, quantifying, and categorizing everything. And it’s doing that because it wants to keep you safe. If you listen to all of that talking in your mind, the drunk monkey, you’ll see that what it’s trying to do is figure out what’s going on out there in the world. The drunk monkey wants you to go towards things that are pleasurable, and away from things that will be negative or potentially dangerous.

The problem is that we actually believe that the mind is reality. It’s not. The mind has no idea what reality is. Often, your expectations of reality are broken. Why? Because you premeditated that life would be one way, and it turned out another way. That is the source of most of your suffering.

They key for you is to stop believing what the mind has to say. Start noticing that it has a job, biological function, similar to your bowels. Your bowels are processing waste, and excreting it out of the body. Your mind is observing what’s going on in the world, and identifying potential threats, and moving towards pleasurable things.

That’s the mind’s job. That’s what it’s doing. But that’s not the truth. And if you put all of your reality, all of your life, all of your world into your thoughts, you’re going to be miserable. You need to learn to move beyond your thoughts.

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Happiness is a Skill

Dated: date January 19, 2011 – 11:27 am

To be unhappy, it’s just ignorant. Happiness is a skill. You can learn how to do it. All you need to do is focus on accepting people exactly the way that they are. You also need to accept yourself exactly the way that you are, and accept your situation exactly the way that it is. That’s just a skill.

You’ve got to notice that your mind, the drunk monkey in your head, does not like life being the way that it is. It wants life to be different than it is. And so, you need to learn exactly how to get your mind under control. One great way to do this is to work on appreciation.

So this week, what if you focused on appreciation the whole week? What if next week you focused on acceptance, accepting people, accepting yourself, accepting life, accepting the situation? What if the week after that you focused on gratitude? If you would focus on appreciation and gratitude you will go into an incredible state of happiness. To be unhappy is just ignorant.

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Other People Do Not Cause Your Suffering

Dated: date January 14, 2011 – 4:15 pm

There are no jerks in the world until you show up. Do you get that? People aren’t anything until you label them and give your opinion about what they are. What we don’t like in people is what we’re unwilling to accept about ourselves.

So every time I work with someone, and they start to talk like, “Well, I don’t like this, and I don’t like that. He’s a jerk…” I ask them to start to examine themselves – who they are. Who is the person that is making the complaints? We find out that the person making the complaints actually has those same complaints, in some way, about themselves.

It’s usually an issue about themselves, but they’re unwilling to admit it. There are no jerks in the world until you show up. You’re the one that declares them a jerk, and you can declare them anything you want. Your resistance is what causes you to suffer, and your suffering is caused, ultimately, by your opinion. So why not change your opinion so that you can feel good? You change your opinion, you change your life.

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Focus on the Little Things

Dated: date January 12, 2011 – 1:27 pm

Spending money on other people will make you happier than spending money on yourself. Isn’t that interesting? I was reading an article put out by the University of British Columbia, and Harvard Business school. And they did a study and found out that spending money can make you happy, if you spend it on other people.

I was reading another study that said that spending money can make you happy if you spend money on things that are experiential. So rather than buying that big car, you keep the same car that you have, and you spend your money on little experiences that will make you happy in that moment. Buy little tiny experiences, but tons of them. Focusing on the experience of life, rather than focusing on acquisition, status, and getting somewhere.

So I began to experiment with this myself because I am someone who practices a technique for internal harmony and happiness. Those are the things that I teach, the skills and ideas to be happy, no matter what. You could be in jail and be happy. But I was also saying, “Hmm, well, maybe there’s something to this. Let’s practice something outside to see what it does.”

So I started just focusing on taking my kids to the store, to the park, going out on bike rides, riding skateboards. I used to go to concerts and buy the best possible tickets. But to do that, I could only go to one or two concerts a year because of the high price.So I decided, I’m going to stop doing that, and instead, I’m going to go to a bunch of concerts, but I’m going to spend very little on those, and see what happens. And I noticed that, immediately. I was experiencing more happiness in those moments.

There was this constant flow of excitement. It was all these little, tiny things to look forward to that have a positive impact on my happiness. But you know what doubled it? You know what made it even better?

Getting to share it with other people, and buying these lesser-priced tickets for other people as well to come with me so that I could share the experiences. Giving tickets to them as a gift was an even greater gift to me, seeing them experience the positivity of these events was a greater gift to me.

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Being Grateful is Good for Your Health

Dated: date January 11, 2011 – 12:20 pm

So it turns out that giving thanks is actually good for your health. According to Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis, adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections, and more happiness than those who do not, according to studies conducted over the past decade.

What are you waiting for? I recommend that you do two things. One, do the ten-ten visualization. I like to, every day, spend a moment visualizing 10 things that I’m grateful for. And then, 10 of my goals and dreams. I just visualize. I just close my eyes, think about all the things I’m grateful for, and instantly, I start to feel happy.

And then, I take that happiness, and I put it into my goals and dreams, and it accelerates the accomplishment of my goals and dreams, which makes me more optimistic. I am operating optimally. Do you get that? Gratitude is a great thing. Another thing I like to do is just make a little, short gratitude list. I like to have a group of people that I send my gratitude list to. I have a little e-mail chain, and we all send our gratitude to each other. You know, it’s just, “I’m grateful for this. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for this.” And I make a list of just three or four things every single day. Try it, and notice how much more optimistic, powerful, and resourceful you become.

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