Motivation Tips
Your happiness should be the number one goal in your life. Whether or not something makes you happy should be the primary organizing principle of everything you do. It should be the standard by which you measure every choice and decision.
Your ability to achieve your true happiness is the measure of how well you are really doing as a human being, and everything else should be subordinated to this key objective.
From Aristotle in 34 BC through the modern thinkers, speakers and writers of today, the key to happiness has been the same. 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 you whole heart into living your life to the fullest. In a way, happiness requires that you be perfectly selfish with yourself in the beginning so that you can be unselfish with others throughout your life.
Your happiness depends on your ability to please at least yourself at all times. 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. Just as you cannot make someone else happy, no one else can make you happy. Happiness is an inside job.
Many people fool themselves into thinking that they will give up their own personal happiness in order to make someone else happy, usually members of their family, but this way of thinking is completely confused.
You can’t reap what 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 allow themselves to think that they are being 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.
The starting point for enjoying happiness is for you to first accept that you deserve all the happiness you can honestly attain through your own efforts and the application of your special talents and abilities.
There is a direct correlation between happiness and your level of self esteem. The more you like and respect yourself, the more deserving you will feel of the good things in life. 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.
When happiness becomes the organizing principle in your life, you can then compare every possible action, choice and decision against the standard of happiness you desire to see whether it would make you more or less happy.
By using this standard, you will find that almost all of the problems in your life come from choices that you have made, or are currently making, that do not contribute to your happiness. When you develop sufficient character and will power to set your happiness as our highest standard, you will probably never make another mistake.
Of course, there are countless times when you will have to do little things that don’t make you happy so that you can enjoy larger things that make you very happy. This is called paying the price for success in advance.
You must pay your dues in advance. Sometimes these interim steps or means to success and happiness you desire don’t make you happy directly, but the happiness you achieve from attaining your goals is so great that it overwhelms and wipes away the temporary inconveniences and distractions you had to endure in order to get there.
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 that, “Success leaves tracks.” What this means is that you can often look back on your life, and look around you today, to identify who you really are and what you should be doing with your life.
Everyone has an area of excellence. Everyone has something that he or she can do in an outstanding way. It may take weeks, months and even years for you to develop yourself in an extraordinary fashion, but the indications will be there because of a natural tendency to be attracted to the sort of activity we are excellent in.
You probably know already what this area of excellence is because you like to read about it, talk about and think about it. You most likely admire people who are already outstanding in this area. That area of activity, the area where you can become excellent, is probably what you were put on this earth to do.
Your area of excellence, your area of talent and ability, your heart’s desire, will involve doing something that somehow uplifts and enhances the life or work of other people. You can never be really happy until you know that what you are doing is making a difference in the world. The key to happiness is to know in your heart that you are making a contribution to the lives of other people.
You have the capacity to live a life filled with greater joy, satisfaction and happiness than you have ever imagined. There are no limitations except the ones that you put on yourself by your own thinking. 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.
Happiness is an inside job, it’s up to you. Know one else can make you happy if you can’t first please yourself. When you focus all your energies on becoming the very best person you can possibly be in service to others, you open the door to happiness.
Copyright©2007 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
