Day five was about starting the cruise and the questions were designed to make you think.
1. What does happiness mean to you?
2. Write down 3 ways your life would be different if you lived in a state of happiness.
These questions were supposed to make you look at what you think would make you happy. If you were able to achieve happiness, would you be truly happy? "When trying to define what happiness means to us, we would be wise to project into the future and think deeply. If we can envisage ourselves living our lives according to our definition and having a feeling of complete satisfaction and bliss ~ then our definition is probably a good one. Before we shoot for the stars, its good to know which star we are trying to reach." (Warren, 2010, p532 KV)
If we can think of three tangible ways that improving our levels of happiness will enhance our lives, we will automatically start to focus on being happy and our lives will become better - without doing anything. It's an amazingly powerful tool. Just using our imagination to dream of a better life, sets the wheels in motion for us to have a better life.
When we're done with this journey, it will be awesome to come back to this day and see how much our lives have changed. We may be pleasantly surprised to discover that our lives have improved dramatically especially in the three ways we have identified in this exercise.
Let's move on now...
Its time for the first of the 7 Ancient Keys to Happiness!! Since happiness is a choice, we can choose to live happy lives by learning to see what's so good about life. We can train ourselves to see the cup as half full, not half empty and to see the silver lining behind every cloud. Accustoming ourselves to stop, notice, appreciate and even smell the roses, makes life more pleasant. This is the first and most important of the Ancient Keys to Happiness. Seeing the good in everything is the skeleton key that opens all doors. Every block we have in our lives is due to not being able to see the good that lies within the situation. once we learn the art of extracting the good from every experience, situation, person or interaction we will find we are able to sail smoothly and happily through life - wherever life happens to lead us.
The first stop in the journey of life towards bliss and happiness is to know how to recognize the goodness and sweetness that already exists in our lives. We have some situations that don't look "pretty" but even then we can still learn to enjoy them. These situations are more like oysters than roses. Many things in life are like oysters, they may look hard and cold on the outside, disgusting and smelly on the inside, but in fact there are pearls of magnificent beauty contained wihtin them. When we train ourselves to search for the pearls and cast aside the oyster, in every part of our lives we will be on the way to true happiness.
...Monday morning, alarm goes off, immediately you realize how much you hate Mondays, why do I have to go to that job? Why can't I do something else?
OYSTERS... where is the pearl?
What would life be like if I couldn't get out of bed? What if I didn't have an awful job to go to? What if I was fired? As you realize all of these things, you slowly get dressed.... What if I didn't have shoes to put on? What if I didn't have feet? All of our thoughts can be shifted at any time, we just need to choose to do so.
It's not what we've got, but how much we focus on enjoying what we have that will bring happiness. It is completely irrelevant whether other people also have what we have as to whether we are enjoying ourselves or not. The more intensely we can focus on the good things that we are currently enjoying, the happier we become.
Warren, S. 2010, 7 Ancient Keys To Happiness, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
1. What does happiness mean to you?
2. Write down 3 ways your life would be different if you lived in a state of happiness.
These questions were supposed to make you look at what you think would make you happy. If you were able to achieve happiness, would you be truly happy? "When trying to define what happiness means to us, we would be wise to project into the future and think deeply. If we can envisage ourselves living our lives according to our definition and having a feeling of complete satisfaction and bliss ~ then our definition is probably a good one. Before we shoot for the stars, its good to know which star we are trying to reach." (Warren, 2010, p532 KV)
If we can think of three tangible ways that improving our levels of happiness will enhance our lives, we will automatically start to focus on being happy and our lives will become better - without doing anything. It's an amazingly powerful tool. Just using our imagination to dream of a better life, sets the wheels in motion for us to have a better life.
When we're done with this journey, it will be awesome to come back to this day and see how much our lives have changed. We may be pleasantly surprised to discover that our lives have improved dramatically especially in the three ways we have identified in this exercise.
Let's move on now...
Key #1 ~ See the Good
Its time for the first of the 7 Ancient Keys to Happiness!! Since happiness is a choice, we can choose to live happy lives by learning to see what's so good about life. We can train ourselves to see the cup as half full, not half empty and to see the silver lining behind every cloud. Accustoming ourselves to stop, notice, appreciate and even smell the roses, makes life more pleasant. This is the first and most important of the Ancient Keys to Happiness. Seeing the good in everything is the skeleton key that opens all doors. Every block we have in our lives is due to not being able to see the good that lies within the situation. once we learn the art of extracting the good from every experience, situation, person or interaction we will find we are able to sail smoothly and happily through life - wherever life happens to lead us.
The first stop in the journey of life towards bliss and happiness is to know how to recognize the goodness and sweetness that already exists in our lives. We have some situations that don't look "pretty" but even then we can still learn to enjoy them. These situations are more like oysters than roses. Many things in life are like oysters, they may look hard and cold on the outside, disgusting and smelly on the inside, but in fact there are pearls of magnificent beauty contained wihtin them. When we train ourselves to search for the pearls and cast aside the oyster, in every part of our lives we will be on the way to true happiness.
...Monday morning, alarm goes off, immediately you realize how much you hate Mondays, why do I have to go to that job? Why can't I do something else?
OYSTERS... where is the pearl?
What would life be like if I couldn't get out of bed? What if I didn't have an awful job to go to? What if I was fired? As you realize all of these things, you slowly get dressed.... What if I didn't have shoes to put on? What if I didn't have feet? All of our thoughts can be shifted at any time, we just need to choose to do so.
It's not what we've got, but how much we focus on enjoying what we have that will bring happiness. It is completely irrelevant whether other people also have what we have as to whether we are enjoying ourselves or not. The more intensely we can focus on the good things that we are currently enjoying, the happier we become.
Let's tune into seeing the beautiful roses that are in our lives. Sit down for 15 minutes and write down a list of all the good things you have. These may fit into the following categories:
1. Physical - head, nose, mouth, clothes, shoes, car
2. People - friends, family, acquaintances
3. Emotional - an appreciation of music, ability to feel emotions
See if you can add 5 new ones to each of the categories each day for the next week!
This exercise helps build your positive thinking muscle. Writing, prioritizing and appreciating is training ourselves to notice the good things. Awareness. The things we concentrate on happen more often. The more we notice and appreciate how many material blessings we have the more they will increase. if we notice and appreciate those that we love then our love for them will increase. If we notice and appreciate the good in ourselves then that part will naturally begin to shine forth more.
Warren, S. 2010, 7 Ancient Keys To Happiness, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
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