Color Your Life Happy

The Internet is loaded with wonderful articles, stories and tips for improving your life. I’ve gathered a few links to give you a shortcut to the inspiration from other authors and bloggers.

Times Change–A Short Story on Looking to the Future 
Cameron explores how we look at music and other things differently in retrospect.

20 Questions You Need to Ask Your Surgeon Before You or Your Loved Ones Have Surgery 
Millions of Americans have surgery every year and most of it is elective. You will not only want to read this, but also pass it to your friends and loved ones.

Stop Using the Rewind Button and Visualize What You Want
When you start making changes in your life whether for good or bad, your subconscious will kick into survival mode. Find out what to do.

Who Wants to be Rich?
What do you think is at the top of the list of what most people want?

Ghandi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World
Guess what you have to change first in order to change the world

14 Reasons to Become More Conscious
Going beyond spiritual issues, these tips are about enhancing your daily life.

4 Reasons You Should Meditate and How to Get Started
Once you grasp how meditation positively affects your life, you won’t have trouble getting started.

How Your Income Grows as Your Personal Development Grows
Discover how income and personal development are related.

 Why Your Loved Ones Want You to Fail
You’ll be surprised at some of these reasons.

Six Steps to Become Assertive and Nice
Yes, you can do both at once.

Jonathan Field’s Best of the Web Roundup
For more inspiration and entertainment, check out the 20+ links Jonathan has rounded up

Even though we live inside our own skin, we seem to know others better than we know ourselves. Why this is true could fill volumes, but more important is what to do about it.

I just read a blog post titled “4 Tips to Finding Yourself,” by Joan Schraum at her blog Accelerating Momentum. Joan gives these four tips:

1. Discover what you really want. 

 This includes choosing jobs, relationships and living situations that suit you, not please others. Trust that your life is unfolding perfectly.

2.  Accept your mediocrity.

 ”Good enough” is good enough.

3. Create a vision board.

The movie “The Secret” has popularized vision boards. Have you created yours yet?

4. Change your thoughts.

To do this you must change what you say to yourself.

Read Joan’s full article here.

It’s inevitable that as we get older we will attend more funerals.  There’s nothing like watching our friends and age-mates succumb to illnesses or die of natural causes to remind us of our own mortality.

 One of my friends uses these funerals to remind her to keep busy enjoying her life.

She says, “Everytime I return from a funeral I book another cruise.”
 
You may not long for cruises, but surely there’s something you’ve always wanted to do. If you don’t do it now, when are you going to get it done?
 
Maybe you’ve always wanted to pursue a certain hobby, or write your life story, climb a mountain, or travel by rail across the US or have fabulous dinner parties. The possibilities are endless.
 
I can already hear your objections: 

• I don’t have the money
• I don’t like traveling alone
• I don’t know anyone to go with me to the (fill in the blanks)
• I’m too old and can’t move around fast anymore
• I’m afraid to fly.
• I’m afraid to drive
• I don’t like public transportation. 

For just a moment pretend none of your objections exist. What would you love to do?

1. Make a list.
2. Since we’re imagining, make your list as long as you want.
3. Make your wishes as elaborate as you want.
4. Now, pick one of those wishes from your list and make a list under it of all the things you would have to do to have that wish come true.
    

I’ll give you an example of one that was on my list years ago: Travel to Europe. What did I need to do to make this happen?

• get a passport
• pick a country
• look up airfares
• look up organized tours going to that country
• check out prices of tours
• select a tour
• investigate my finances to see if I could comfortably afford trip
• talk to others who have been to get tips
   
  Now make a list for each of the items on this list identifying what you need to do to accomplish this goal. For example,

To get a passport I needed to find out

• where do you get passports
• price of  passports
• application process
• what else is involved

By the time you get to this third level list, you will see that there are a number of things you can do today or tomorrow.
 
For example, It costs only a few minutes of time to find out where to get passports. If you have access to a computer, you can find out all you need to know about passports or anything else in a short period of time.
 
If you don’t have access to a computer, your local library does. The librarian will be happy to help you find what you’re looking the information you need.
 
This is just the start, of course. But drilling your lists down and your objections will begin to evaporate.
 

Get busy, start on that first list. Then leave a comment here about how this is working for you.

We count our worth in many ways.

How do you count yours?

Invest 3 minutes to watch this movie to see if you’re counting your life by numbers.  Then tell a friend to watch it too.

Living life more happily is a goal I share with many. Even though we sometimes let our efforts get thwarted by people and things, making this goal a priority will keep us on the right path most of the time.

You can find many volumes written about how to live a better life, more happily and purposefully. The words of wisdom I trust most, however,  are profound in their simplicity and based on the struggles and overcomings of the writer.

  Shanel Yang, Easy Steps to Success, is a site that offers refreshingly unencumbered guidelines, tips and inspiration for achieving happiness and success.

Shanel Yang is a South Korean woman who came to the US at an early age and had to grow up fast in order to help her parents find their way and make a home in a new land. She rose to the task and learned many important life lessons along the way.

She believes that you can be happy if you are successful with people, work, money. Because you also need good communication skills and knowledge of your rights,  she also adds English and law to this list. (By the way, she graduated from UCLA Law School and practiced law for 10 years in Los Angeles.)

Her articles and blogs dating back to Oct. 2007 are loaded with great information, tips and advice. You will gain much insight and inspiration from Shanel’s website and blog. To get started, check out her four quick tips for happiness.

There are many three-word phrases that delight people. Three of my favorites are No Assembly Required.

Whether I’m shopping for furniture, home decor or appliances, I am thrilled to see those three words. They mean that I can take my purchase home and begin using it right away.

My love of these three words extends to people too. I just love people who are so well adjusted that there is No Assembly Required. They are ready to go as is.

I’m referring to people who are fun to be with, easy going, comfortable in their own skin, guided by integrity, have a great sense of humor, are comfortable with all types of people and always leave you feeling better than when they arrived.

Let’s face it. There are some people who clearly seem to need some assembly. What’s worse, some of the necessary parts are missing.

When I’m with a No Assembly Required (NAR) I don’t have to worry about tripping over her unresolved baggage, or tiptoeing around his tender ego. We have fun laughing or just being quiet together.

NARs are great. May you always attract them. May you be one.

When the founding fathers announced in the Declaration of Independence that we have the right to the pursuit of happiness, they didn’t really mean ALL of us. But times have changed and now we all are encouraged to pursue happiness, and in some unlikely places.

Coke has bottled it if you can believe their campaigns promising happiness in a bottle. They have spent huge sums on commercials, billboards and celebrities to convince us that sharing a Coke is the same as saying hello.

Harvard University is teaching it in their most popular course on campus, Psychology 1504, “Positive Psychology.” Twice a week about 900 students flock to Tal Ben-Shahar’s class to gain insight into the secret to happiness. He bases his course on research from the new field of positive psychology which focuses on what makes people happy.
Take a look at Ben-Shahar’s tips to achieve happiness.

You know, of course, that you don’t have to drink a Coke or take a class to be happy. In the photo above I’m savoring a break from work to have lunch with my friend Melissa. Having lunch with friends always makes me happy.

So what are you waiting for? Pursue happiness.