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The Journey To happiness
The key to
happiness is both simple and complex. It is the sum total result
of more than 2000 years of philosophy, psychology, speculation
and discussion about the meanings and sources of happiness. From
Aristotle in 340 BC through to the modern
thinkers, speakers and writers of today, this key to happiness
has hardly changed at all. It is the same for virtually all men
and women, in all countries and situations and in all walks of
life.
The key to happiness is this: dedicate yourself to the
development of your natural talents and abilities by doing what
you love to do, and doing it better and better, in the service
of a cause that is greater than yourself.
This is a big statement and a big commitment. Being happy
requires that you define your life in your own terms and then
throw your whole heart into living your life to the fullest. In
a way, happiness requires that you be perfectly selfish in order
to develop yourself to a point where you can be unselfish for
the rest of your life. In Edmund Rostand’s play “Cyrano de
Bergerac”, Cyrano, is asked why he is so intensely
individualistic and unconcerned with the opinions and judgments
of others. He replies with these wonderful words, “I am what I
am because early in life I decided that I would please at least
myself in all things.”
Your happiness likewise depends upon your ability to please at
least yourself in all things. You can only be happy when you are
living your life in the very best way possible. No one can
define happiness for you. Only you know what makes you happy.
Happiness is an inside job.
Now, there is a good deal of confusion on the subject of
happiness. When I was growing up, I was told by older relatives
that my happiness was irrelevant. I was reminded again and again
that it was selfish for me to set my own happiness as a goal and
to strive toward it. I was told that I was here on earth to make
other people happy and that if I got a little happiness on the
way through, I should consider myself lucky.
Many people fool themselves into thinking that by giving up
their own personal happiness, they can make someone else happy,
usually members of their family. But this way of thinking is
completely confused. You can’t reap where you haven’t sown. Just
as you cannot make someone else healthy by being sick, you
cannot make someone else happy by being unhappy. People who
think that they are unhappy so that others can be happy are
deluding themselves. They are rationalizing their own
dissatisfaction by somehow pretending that it is noble to be
miserable.
Study after study shows that the best thing you can do for the
people around you, especially the members of your family, is to
be a happy person. If you want to raise happy children, be a
happy parent. If you want to have a happy spouse, be a happy
husband or wife. Only happy people can make other people happy.
A very important point on the subject of happiness is whether or
not you feel that you “deserve” to be happy. The question of
deservedness is one of the most fundamental and confusing issues
that we have to deal with throughout life. Most of us have been
brought up with vague feelings of guilt and uneasiness. Deep
down inside, we often don’t feel that we deserve to be truly
happy. In fact, these feelings of guilt and inferiority can lead
us to sabotage our own happiness when we finally do achieve it.
A starting point for enjoying happiness is for you to accept
that you deserve all the happiness you can honestly attain
through the application of your special talents and abilities.
The more you like and respect yourself, the more deserving you
will feel of the good things in life. And the more deserving you
feel, the more likely it will be that you will attain and hold
on to the happiness you are working toward.
Another key is to make happiness the organizing principle of
your life. By doing this, you can compare every possible action
and decision against that standard of happiness to see whether
it would make you more happy or less happy. Soon, you will
discover that almost all of the problems of your life come from
choices that you have made, or are currently making, that do not
contribute to your happiness.
Of course, there are countless times where you will have to do
little things that don’t make you happy on the path toward those
larger things that make you very happy indeed. We call this
paying the price of success in advance. You must pay your dues.
For example, if you want to enjoy the good life of success,
prestige, respect, and inner satisfaction that comes from
successful selling, you must often get up early, make cold
calls, prospect with rude or indifferent people to find
business, and stay later than anyone else. Sometimes these
interim steps don’t make you happy directly, but the happiness
you achieve from attaining your goals is so great that it wipes
away the temporary inconveniences and dissatisfactions you had
to endure in order to get there.
As Earl Nightingale said, “Happiness is the progressive
realization of a worthy ideal.” You only feel really happy when
you are moving, step-by-step, toward the accomplishment of
clearly defined goals that you feel will enhance the quality of
your life.
Since you can’t be truly happy until you are clear about your
inherent possibilities, it’s very important that you take some
time on a regular basis to analyze yourself and identify your
strengths and weaknesses. There is an old saying: “Success
leaves tracks.” You can often look back in your life, and look
around you today, to identify who you really are and what you
should really be doing with your life. One of the best ways to
do this is to ask yourself two powerful questions.
The first question is my favorite: “What one great thing would
you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?”
Imagine that you are absolutely guaranteed success in the
pursuit of a particular goal, big or small, short term or long
term. Imagine that you had all the money, all the time, all the
education, all the contacts, all the resources and everything
else that you could possibly need to achieve any one big goal in
life. What would it be? This is a very important question
because when you remove the limitations from your thinking, you
often get a very clear idea of exactly what you should be doing
with your life.
All successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what
their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they
work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or
purpose. And step-by-step realization of their ideal makes them
genuinely happy. The second question you can ask yourself is
this: “How would I spend my life if I learned today that I only
had six months to live?” If you could only do one or two things
before your time on earth was over, what would they be? Where
would you go? Who would you spend your time with?
Often, when you think about only having a short time left, you
become very clear about exactly what it is that you should be
doing with your life.
Both of these questions assess your values. They go right to the
very heart of the person you really are. They give you
indications of your natural talents and abilities, of what is
really important to you.
You get indications of your heart’s desire, the key to your
happiness, throughout your life. The things that you did with
the greatest joy and happiness between the ages of 7 and 14
contain the seeds of what you should be doing as an adult if you
want to fulfill your full potential and become everything you
are capable of becoming. Think back to your early teenage years.
What did you most enjoy doing? What kind of people did you most
enjoy associating with? What sort of things did you most enjoy
learning about? What sort of activities did you most enjoy
engaging in?
Dr. Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book “Man’s Search for
Meaning,” said that you can divide the things you do in life
into four categories. The first category consists of the things
that are hard to learn and hard to do. An example in this
category for many people is mathematics. Many of us struggled
with math in school, and still struggle with bookkeeping,
accounting, financial statements, and tax returns as an adult.
If you find mathematics hard to learn and hard to do, this is
the sort of activity for which you are clearly not suited. No
matter how much of it you do, or how good you get at it, you
will never achieve any lasting satisfaction or happiness from
it. The next category consists of things that are hard to learn
but easy to do. Riding a bicycle and driving a car are hard to
learn but easy to do once you’ve practiced enough. Tying your
shoes is another example. These are seldom the sort of
activities where you feel terrific about yourself when you
engage in them. They do not demand your best.
The third category consists of things that are easy to learn but
hard to do. Physical labor falls into this category. Digging a
ditch with a shovel or chopping wood with an ax are easy to
learn but they are hard to do. And they never get any easier.
The fourth category is the key. These are things that are easy
to do and easy to learn. You seem to have a natural proclivity
for them. When you are engaged in this sort of activity, time
flies. The things that are easy to learn and easy to do for you
are the sort of things that you should be doing with your life.
They indicate where your natural talents and abilities lie. It
is engaging in these activities with your whole heart, and
committing yourself to becoming better and better, that will
give you all the joy, satisfaction, and happiness you could want
in life.
Everyone has an area of excellence. Everyone has something that
he or she can do in an outstanding fashion. It may take weeks,
months, and even years for you to develop yourself in that area
so that you can really perform in an extraordinary fashion, but
you will be strongly attracted to that sort of activity from the
beginning. You will enjoy reading about it and talking about it
and thinking about it. You will find yourself admiring people
who are outstanding in that area. You will look longingly at
that field and wonder what it would be like to be in it and to
be successful at it. And that is very often your heart’s desire.
That area of activity, the area where you can become excellent,
is probably what you were put on this earth to do.
There is a direct correlation between the feeling of growth and
the feeling of motivation or personal power. It is when you are
growing progressively, becoming better and better at something
that is important to you, that you really feel alive and in
touch with your world. And remember, excellence is not a
destination; it’s a lifelong journey.
So resolve to persist until you succeed. The first part of
courage is the resolve to launch in faith toward your
objectives; the second part of courage is your willingness to
endure in the face of the inevitable disappointments and
setbacks along the road.
Happiness is not an accident. Happy people are those who
deliberately do the things that invariably lead to happiness.
Happy people are those who know what they want and then throw
their whole hearts into using their unique talents and abilities
to make a contribution to the world in the achievement of their
goals.
You were put on this earth with a special purpose, programmed
with unique talents and abilities that have not yet been fully
tapped and utilized. When you focus all of your energies on
unlocking your true potential, you can claim your ultimate
birthright: happiness.
About Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy is a leading
authority on personal and business success. As Chairman and CEO
of
Brian Tracy International, he is the best-selling
author of 17 books and over 300 audio and video learning
programs. Copyright © 2001 Brian Tracy International. All Rights
Reserved.
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