Count your blessings

"Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have."

Unknown

Seeing what we don’t have is a lot easier than seeing what we do, which is funny if you think about it. The things that we have are right in front of our faces and yet sometimes they are the last thing to be recognized. Pause to count those things in which you do have. Remember to take the time to appreciate that which you are blessed with, like family who put up with your crap, like friends who like wise put up with your crap (willingly even), or just the simple fact that you don’t have to sleep out in the cool or rain.


Besides everyone had to start somewhere. James Oppenheim said that “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” If you are always seeking that which you don’t have in order to be happy, when will the happiness come? After you have the newest and greatest piece of technology? With the way technology advances you would never be content.


The happiest people I know don’t rely on “having” in order to be happy. They don’t need certain job or certain level of income. They don’t have to be the perfect weight, or the perfect body. Instead, they learn to be happy with what they already have. Be happy with what you have.


This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t progress or have goals to better yourself or your position. It simply means that one should appreciate that journey as much as the destination. Appreciate the steps along the way, and remember to stop to smell the roses.

Be yourself

"The summit of happiness is reached when a person

is ready to be what he is."

Desiderius Erasmus

This may be the most difficult to achieve. Finding yourself takes a lot of searching. But once found is the compass to life.

Character

"Character is the basis of happiness and

happiness the sanction of character."

George Santayana

When you are true to yourself and others, you will be at peace. In short, keep the promises you make to others as well as the ones you make to yourself.



Develop Your Talents

"The more passions and desires one has, the

more ways one has of being happy."

Charlotte-Catherine

A lot of my friends call me Jack. “Jack?” you say, “Why Jack?” Well, from what has been explained to me is that it was derived from the phrase “Jack of all trades.” Still confussed? So am I.

I am a curious person and I love to learn…I also must admit that I get bored pretty easily. Because of these facts I have dabbled in many different genera of experiences. A small example: Since a young age I have been curious about different cultures. I wanted to immerse myself in all of them. But having grown up in a middle class home in the middle of the American West I didn’t get many opportunities to do so. My solution? Dance. I learned as many different dance forms I could get my hands…or feet into. From Pointe I learned the refined discipline of Victorian Europe. In Capoeira I learned the strength of the Brazilian people. I’ve learned to jig like the Irish, Salsa and Cha Cha like the Cubans, Swing like an American, Shimmy like a native Moroccan, and even walk like an Egyptian. You name it I have done or would love to learn it.

The same curiosity I have for dance and culture has translated into most parts of my life. And by so doing I have found talents that I didn’t know existed and in so doing I have found a lot of things that give me joy.

A word of warning: Be careful with your curiosity. Monitor what your curiosity is and if it fits with your values and morals first. As you may know, curiosity did kill the cat after all. And curiosity is a road that if not monitored with constant map checking can get a person lost.

Relationships

"Life’s truest happiness is found in friendships we

make along the way."

Unknown

Why are relationships so important? Can a hermit not be happy?

The ways in which humans deal with one another has as much of an influence on their behavior as their instinctive reactions. That’s what distinctifies mankind.

Humans, by nature are social creatures, in fact one of the most social on earth, and therefore have a strong desire for belonging. So, the simple answer is that only through relationships can we love and be loved. And that, my friends, is the essence of belonging.

My apologies to all those hermits out there reading this blog.

Let It Go

“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.”

Rita Mae Brown

It is difficult to find room in your heart or mind for happiness if it is filled with regrets. In other words; it is hard to think or do things that make you happy if all you can think of is what burdens you from the past.

Do you still clutch on to memories of was or what could have been? Was your heart broken? Did you do the breaking? Where you not trustworthy? Where you too trusting? Did you live through a traumatic experience? Each mistakes, misgivings, wrongdoing, and regret hold so much weight. That is probably why they are so hard to get rid of.

We fear that lifting a heavy burden out of our theoretical back pack might be more painful than we would wish, so we do not. Carrying it seems easier; I mean you’ve already got the momentum built up, right? Stopping to take the time to remove it may ruin what you’ve worked so hard to get.

Not to face it may seem less complicated, but it is not. One burden’s weight may not seem like much but when others are added it may become the straw that breaks you. Our bodies and minds get weary and small things tend to become more like a millstone around the neck if they are not confronted and resolved.

Let it go. Whatever that process may entail for you, just let it go. There is nothing you can do to change the past, so I say take it at face value, learn from it, maybe you’ll want to make recompense for it, and then let it go. Then you’ll be better able focus on the present and your future.

Take responsibility

The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage. Thucydides

One of my favorite mottos is “you can’t control the people or the circumstances around you, but you can control how you respond to them."

For example, there are certain people in this world who just annoy me, and there always will be. I can choose to always let that ruin my day (which would be a lot of perfectly good days gone to waste), or I can choose to accept them for who they are and move on.

If I gave someone the power to make my day a good one or a bad one where is my freedom? I would be bound by the will (or sheer stupidity) of others. I will not give over that power, because that to me is the ultimate annoyance.

That kind of freedom does take courage. If I choose to not blame another for the crappy day I had then I have no choice but to take responsibility for it myself. That is defiantly not the easier way, but it sure gives me a lot more options.