by: Young Lonnie

According to the Declaration of Independence, one of our inalienable rights is the pursuit of happiness. We have the right to search for happiness.

“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

Benjamin Franklin

If you’re like most people you are searching for happiness in your life. You say, “I will do this or I will achieve this and then I will be happy.”

But here is the problem…we seek happiness in circumstances. We try to mold our lives to create situations that make us happy.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Yes, certain circumstances can make you feel happy, but it is only the absence of unhappy situations that make you feel this way.

But what if you realized that your innate nature is happiness and contentment? What if circumstances and situations didn’t effect if you where happy or not?

What if you believed Abraham Lincoln when he said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Would you perceive the world and yourself differently?

When you read or hear someone talk about self-realization, this is what they mean.

When you realize happiness is not in a world of constant change, but is your true nature.

The world will continue to change and the circumstances in your life will not stay constant. If you on a pursuit of happiness, then pursue it within your own mind.

This is why meditation was developed as a technique for self-discover and realization.

When you quiet your mind your innate happiness rises to the surface. You think the technique is the source of your happiness, but this is not true. You’re just getting rid of the garbage that is hiding your innate nature.

“Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

When you don’t depend or attach your happiness to things and circumstances you don’t become a victim.

The pursuit of happiness ends when you realize that happiness is not something that has to be pursued.

“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”

Epictetus

Don’t depend on others, circumstances, things, money, or your own thoughts to make you happy, because you’re happiness incarnate

Article Courtesy of :

Steve Pohlit, Business Development
Consultant

by: Jeannette Balleza

“In life we face constant change and the influx of happiness and suffering. This cycle is like waves on the ocean, one phenomenon coming after another. This neverending drama of apparent phenomena is exhausting. Without breaking this cycle of vacillating back and forth between hope and fear, stress continues mounting in our minds and bodies resulting in endless suffering, not allowing us to rest in peace and happiness. Spiritual practice is the only means to ease and transform the stress and suffering into happiness and well-being for immediate benefits and beyond.”
~Lop?n Jigme Rinpoche
Last week I attended an event at Giffells Auditorium in Old Main at the U of A called “Quintessential of the Spiritual Path in Life.” Lop?n Jigme Rinpoche, a prominent Buddhist Nyingma Master, delivered the public talk to an audience of 50 or so people.
He began the presentation with a long period of silence, sitting and staring ahead from behind a table with two simple flower arrangements. He prefaced his lecture by saying that he was not to speak about anything unusual. In fact he wanted to address what he considered to be commonplace concepts.
“All sentient beings want happiness and peace,” he asserted.
He described the statement as a universal truth. Simple, yes. True? I’m a believer. However, each one of us is left to contemplate how to define “happiness” and “peace.” Cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs and individual preferences influence our interpretations of those two ideas, but in essence we are all connected in that we ALL long for these same objectives in life.
He emphasized the importance of meditation–taking in and releasing breath at a normal pace, quietening the mind and orchestrating a spaciousness into which thoughts can flow in and out with freedom. He likened the mind to a pool of water. When the water is not at rest, reflection is impossible because of the constant activity and distorting ripples. But when water is still, it becomes possible to view a reflection of an image, clear as day.
He continued that the spiritual practice of meditation is a very natural way to experience inexpressible joy, the true nature of God. However, he also warned against attempting to grasp this joy. Instead he proffered to simply allow the joy to manifest within the spaciousness of our minds. He summed up the lesson with yet another pithy saying. “Rest,” he uttered. “Then manifest.”
As I was leaving the lecture I recalled a past conversation with my very good friend Amanda about the allegedly elusory quality of “happiness,” no matter how one might define it. We’d often heard others (and one another) say things like, “All I want is to be happy,” “Why can’t I be happy?” or even “If ___ happens, maybe then I could be happy.” Amanda pointed out that the problem did not so much lie in the fact that “happiness” is that evasive; instead, she believed that those who seek “happiness” and come up empty-handed every time have never really taken the time to define what “happiness” and “peace” mean to them.
It makes sense. Hitting a target is hard enough. When the target’s moving, your chances of impact become seriously compromised. Now, just think about aiming for a target that changes form constantly or worse, is completely invisible. The likelihood of a bullseye is little more than a pipe dream at best. How can we expect the universe to deliver exactly what we want to achieve happiness and peace when many of us have never really made up our minds in the first place about what it is that we’re chasing?
I asked yet another friend whether he could make a list of things to add, modify or subtract from his life in a way that at the end of the list, if he were to check everything off as “done,” he would be happy. An exercise in bottom-line happiness, if you will. He said it would take a long time to compile the list, but he definitely thought it was possible to do. It seems like a strange assignment, but why not? Perhaps even just working drafts would bring our respective happiness targets into our line of sight.
Forming this working draft, your own personal interpretation of “happiness” and “peace,” will require meditation. Quietude. Reflection. Spaciousness. But you can begin by taking the simple advice of Lop?n Jigme Rinpoche: Rest. Then manifest.
The resulting manifesto will be yours to keep and to revise when necessary, a guide towards the makings of your own happiness and peace.

Article Courtesy of :

Steve Pohlit, Business Development
Consultant

by: Rasheed Ali

If there was ever a principle that was responsible for the most happiness and achievement in the world, it would be the 80/20 Principle.

The 80/20 Principle or Pareto Principle was discovered in 1897 by an Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto while he was searching for patterns of wealth and income in England.

What he found was that 80 percent of the wealth was enjoyed by only 20 percent of the population. Additionally, it was consistent in different countries and in different times.

This has been found in present day as well and in almost any activity that we perform, business or otherwise.

In other words, 80 percent of your results in a given activity, are generated by 20 percent of your input or effort. Just the same, 80 percent of revenue or profits are generated by 20 percent of your efforts or sales.

The 80/20 relationship can also easily be documented in personal achievement and happiness.
Most people have never taken the time to count their achievements or much less figure out what makes them happy. If they did, they would have realized that there are very few things that contribute to most of their happiness. They would also have found that there are very few things that they have done that has resulted in most of their achievements.

A great example of the 80/20 Principle in achievement would be to look at some achievement that you’ve made in your life, and write down all of the things that you did that “truly” got you there. If you’re looking at it honestly you’ll see that it took consistent effort on very few things to get you most of your results.

My website http://www.RasheedAli.com is another great example. I could have spent a lot of working hours and even more money to get my traffic up, but in reality it took very little work and money to get my Alexa traffic rank from over 3,000,000 in the world to currently 212,901 and climbing every week! It has taken very few, small but effective steps to achieve this. You will find this time and time again in your life if you take a closer look. What you may have thought of as hard work may have been a few effective actions combined with many ineffective actions. By the way, this was done in less than three months.

Now, although achievement makes us happy, what else does?

A serious “Happiness Analysis” is also something all of us should do at least once in our lives. If you documented the things that contribute to your happiness then number the things that make you the happiest, you will find that there are only a few things that contribute to most of your happiness. In other words 20 percent of the things that make you happy, contribute to 80 percent of your happiness!

With that said, if you were to spend more time doing the things that result in most of your happiness or achievement, you WILL double or even triple your results.

Article Courtesy of :

Steve Pohlit, Business Development
Consultant