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7 SECRETS To a Great Life

Republished from topachievement

By Kathy Gates

A great life doesn’t happen by accident. A great life is the result of allocating your time, energy, thoughts, and hard work towards what you want your life to be. Stop setting yourself up for stress and failure, and start setting up your life to support success and ease. A great life is the result of using the 24/7 you get in a creative and thoughtful way, instead of just

what comes next. Customize these “secrets” to fit your own needs and style, and start creating your own great life today!

1. S – Simplify. A great life is the result of simplifying your life. People often misinterpret what simplify means. It’s not a way to remove work from your life. When you focus on simplifying your life, you free up energy and time for the work that you enjoy and the purpose for which you are here. In order to create a great life, you will have to make room for it in yours first.

2. E – Effort. A great life is the result of your best effort. Creating a great life requires that you make some adjustments. It may mean

re-evaluating how you spend your time, or choosing to spend your money in a different way. It may mean looking for new ways to spend your energy that coincide with your particular definition of a great life. Life will reward your best effort.

3. C – Create Priorities. A great life is the result of creating priorities. It’s easy to spend your days just responding to the next thing that gets your attention, instead of intentionally using the time, energy and money you have in a way that’s important to you. Focus on removing the obstacles that get in the way of you making sure you are honoring your priorities.

4. R – Reserves. A great life is the result of having reserves – reserves of things, time, space, energy, money. With reserves, you acquire far more than you need- not 6 months living expenses, but 5 years worth; not 15 minutes of free time, 1 day. Reserves are important because they reduce the fear of consequences, and that allows you to make decisions based on what you really want instead of what the fear decides for you.

5. E – Eliminate distractions. A great life is the result of eliminating distractions. Up to 75% of your mental energy can be tied up in things that are draining and distracting you. Eliminating distractions can be a difficult

concept to many people, since they haven’t really considered that there is another way to live. Look around at someone’s life you admire. What do they do that you would like to incorporate into your own life? Ask them how they did it. Find ways to free up your mental energy for things that are more important to you.

6. T – Thoughts. A great life is the result of controlling your thoughts so that you accept and allow for the possibility that it actually can happen to you! Your belief in the outcome will directly dictate how successful you are. Motivated people have specific goals and look for ways to achieve them. Believing there is a solution to the same old problems you encounter year after year is vitally important to creating a life that you love. Whatever you think and believe, you create. Listen to what you’re telling yourself, and adjust that voice if you need to.

7. S – Start! A great life is the result of starting. There’s the old saying everyone’s familiar with “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a

single step.” In order to even move from the couch to the refrigerator, you have to start. There’s no better time to start than today. Don’t wait for a raise, or until the kids get older, or the weather is better. Today, right now, is the right day to start to take a step in the direction of your heart’s desires. It’s what you do TODAY that will make a difference in your

life tomorrow.

Kathy Gates is a Personal Life Coach who believes that “Life Rewards Action”.

Visit www.reallifecoach.com for more information, or email Kathy@reallifecoach.com, or 480.998.5843.

After I Read This, I Started to Speak Less and Listen More…

Republished from Lifehack

We’ve been blessed with a very precious gift, my friends: the gift of talking. The gift of language. The gift of being able to express our feelings, emotions, ideas or plans into something called words. But, alas, as with every gift, overusing it may lead to unexpected results.

Speaking and listening in a balanced way are imperative in our world. The noise of useless words that many of us are throwing away in an attempt to get a grip on someone else’s attention, creates a thick fog that makes it really difficult to actually understand each other. Ironically, the more we talk, the less we’re able to communicate.

Read on about these 6 benefits of speaking less and listening more and improve the way you communicate with the world.

Think Before You Speak

So obvious, yet so underused. Under the impulse of “taking the stage,” of speaking before the other one could make his moves, we often open our mouth without really knowing what we’re going to say. Sometimes we improvise and it may turn out right.  But most of the time, we’re just shouting randomly about a topic, without any quality contribution to the conversation. The result: no one really listen to us.

Take a deep breathe before you respond, no matter how “urgent” the answer may look. Think for a while. Keep in mind the thought that you really have has many options, not just one. Ponder and your answer will not only be well thought out but people will be more apt to listen.

Listen Before Jumping To Conclusions

Again, the “need for speed” of our current world often forces us to simplify our interactions, to the point where they become useless. Based on just a few words, or a few sentences, we often create a perspective on some thing or some person, which may simply be inaccurate because we didn’t take the time to actually listen.

Really listening means not only giving to the other the time to finish his speech, but also the exercise of “borrowing” his perspective.  Listening means to actually  see things from their point of view.

Limit Yourself To What’s Important

The infamous “information overload” created by the internet revolution is not about the quantity of the information available out there. But merely about the relevance of that information. Every time you update your Facebook timeline, or you publish a blog post, or you simply open your mouth to say something, you’re adding up to this fog. Have you ever tried to contemplate if what you’re going to say is really that important? Sometimes, silence really IS golden..

Too often, the reason is that we’re talking is simply just to hear our voices, no matter if we do this out loud, by writing emails or updating our Twitter. Imagine how silent it would be out there if we could just limit ourselves only to what’s really important.

Get To Know Others Better

And that means doing things together, not only talking about things together. Getting up from the couch and do a short team jog, watching the sunset together, silently, playing a game, or having a meal. All these are actions that, apart from the main benefit of enjoying life, have also a secondary, very important outcome: they help you understand other people better.

Create A Better Reality

When you speak less, you do more. It’s obvious. Your focus switches from talking to doing. While talking and expressing your feelings is important, ‘doing’ is equally important. If you could refrain yourself from talking for 5 minutes a day, in a month you will have gained 30 days x 5 minutes = 150 minutes, 2 and a half hours for yourself. What would you do with this time?

Whatever you want, of course. You can go to the gym, cook for your spouse, craft something in the garage, coach someone, help a neighbor, you name it. As long as your goal is to make the world a better place, doing will always beat speaking.

Write More

It’s still a form of expressing yourself, but it has a few perks. If you write, you’re more accountable. Written words last more than spoken words. Also, you will clear your mind without the help of somebody else. Writing in a journal or blogging, as long as you follow the number one rule of this list, (“think before you do it”).

And when you’re writing, something very interesting will happen: you will be forced to “listen” to yourself. You will be exposed to your own thoughts and emotions. You will get to know yourself better. Or, to be more precise, you will start to discover who you are.

There’s an avalanche of information about introverts on the web. 7 Positives Only Introverts Would Understand

Featured photo credit: josemanuelerre via photopin cc

Power Of The Mind, You Can Always Get What You Are Looking For!

Republished from The Secret

I’d lost my watch that I held very dear to me about three years back at school.

Only a few months before the incident, had I started reading The Magic with an open mind. I was very excited to know if it would work.

The first thing I did was find my copy of The Magic book. I made it a practice to visualize myself having gotten the watch back on my wrist, feeling as joyous as I could for having gotten back my watch and telling my cabin mate about it. I also told her that I’d get it back in three days.

After a day of thorough searching in all places I could think of, I did not find it but I still hadn’t lost hope. My friend had just gotten got a missing book back from a cupboard at school, although I was nowhere around that area when I lost my watch and they don’t usually put lost objects in that cupboard. However, I just knew it had to be there.

I had to talk to my teacher before I could scrounge the cupboard for it.

To my delight it was right there! It was found on only my the third day of LOA practice!

However trivial the incident might be, it shows how powerful your instincts are and how they’re guided by your visualization.

To my friend, from whose book I learnt about gratitude and LOA, I shall forever be grateful!

You Are Unique — Believe It!

Republished from rickwarren

“My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace.” (Acts 20:24 NIV) 

 

You’re the only person in the world who can live your life. No one else can live your life for you, and no one else is in competition with you to complete the task Jesus gave you.

 

Take a deep breath, and rest in the truth that God created you with such a unique mix of spiritual gifts, passions, abilities, personality, and experiences that only you can be you. No one else can duplicate you, and you cannot, should not, imitate another. You are an original masterpiece from the Master’s hand.

 

Your uniqueness means you’re the only one who can fulfill the mission that God assigned for you to complete.

 

God’s graduate assistant, Paul, says, “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace” (Acts 20:24 NIV). 

 

We shouldn’t waste a precious minute of life doing things that don’t matter if that means the most important thing we can do is left undone.

 

It’s never too late to start faithfully pursuing the mission God has set before you — the one he designed you to complete. 

 

You may think you don’t have skills God can use, but the truth is, God designed you with the very skills he needs in you to do what he asks of you. You are uniquely, wonderfully, and fearfully made.

 

Talk About It

• Everything God has done for you, including redeeming you from your sinful failures, will support your success and bring glory to God. Think back on your life. In what specific ways has God been preparing you to accomplish his goal for your life?

• How would you live differently if you truly believed God created you for a unique mission, one that only you can accomplish?

 

 

Jon Walker is author of “Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s ‘The Cost of Discipleship’” and “In Visible Fellowship: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer's Classic Work ‘Life Together.’”

 

He is managing editor of Rick Warren’s Daily Hope Devotionals. 

 

This devotional © Copyright 2012 Jon Walker. All rights reserved. Used by permission. 

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Give hope, prayer, and encouragement below. Post a comment & talk about it.

Life’s Challenges

Republished from Be Happy Stay Happy

Many times in our life we find that we are faced with challenges. How we deal with these challenges helps us grow.  Whether you are faced with an illness, divorce, loss of a loved one, job loss, etc., it is up to you how you handle it. Yes, these situations can suck but if you let them consume you, they can bring you down really fast.

Here are few suggestions to deal with challenges in our life:

• Surround yourself with positive people & embrace their energy.
• Remember that everything happens for a reason, even though we may not know it at the time.
• Don’t over think the issue. Accept the situation as it is and realize that sometimes there is nothing you can do to fix it.
• Open up to a friend or therapist and really let yourself be vunerable. Share your thoughts and how the situation makes you feel. Don’t hold back.
• Don’t beat yourself up about what you could have done in the past, that will get you nowhere.
• Change your perspective and look at the positive of the situation, think about how much you will grow and learn from it.

Merry Christmas!

Thank You!!!

Republished from The Secret

Hello friends!!

I am Preet from India.

I had a hair problem, my hair was not healthy. I tried everything but no results.

Then I decided to apply the law of attraction on my hair. I imagined that my hair was so beautiful and that it was black and healthy.

Within one month my hair has become so beautiful!! I love it! My hair is black thick hair and so healthy!

Tank you Rhonda Byrne and The Secret team. Thank you universe, I love you so much!

Unexpected Check And Money!

Republished from The Secret

Thank you, thank you, thank you to The Secret and to Rhonda.

I am currently on day 10 of The Magic and it has gone just magically!

Since it’s close to Christmas I told myself that I would have enough money to buy everything on both my daughter’s Christmas lists, and that unexpected money would come my way.

Well, two days later there was an unexpected deposit in my account and that same day I received a check!!!

I am fully aware of how awesome we all are, but it never seizes to amaze me!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Rhonda and everyone that has posted their wonderful stories, which have given such motivation. Thank you.

Instant Manifestation!

Republished from The Secret

My name is Camila and my life has improved so much because of The Magic and The Secret!

Today’s story is about an instant manifestation of a desire. Today I was returning back home from downtown Buenos Aires by train and that’s about 30 kilometers. It was really late at night so it was dark and I needed my mum to come to the station to grab me when I arrived, so I needed to call her.

Unfortunately I had no battery in my phone, it was literally dead so I couldn’t make the call. I started feeling bad because the thought of being alone at night in the train station and having to walk home alone frightened me. But I told my self to stop having such feelings and turn the situation into something positive instead.

So I started thinking of the beautiful evening I spent with my friend who lives far away from me, the fact that I got a place to sit in the train. I felt glad for the train’s speed and at the end of the ride I grabbed my phone with both hands and started saying thank you for working so well and always letting me communicate.

Instantly I pressed the power button and unbelievably it worked and had a bit of battery, just the necessary amount to make a call!

I arrived home safely and happy. It really helped me to see the law of attraction in action and reaffirm my faith. Thank you to all The Secret team for making this gift accessible to everyone.

Never Give Up On Yourself!

Republished from The Secret

The night my husband showed me The Secret, we were in a very difficult time in our marriage and life. My husband had been in and out of jobs, we had gone bankrupt and we were barely making ends meet.

I was a teacher and had been for 11 years. The last year had been the worst, my husband had had several different jobs and mine was the only steady income we had. I had lost my love of teaching, the administration began harassing me because I spoke up against some negative situations going on where the administration was at fault. My life was at an all time low.

The only thing I loved anymore was my children. The longer we struggled to pay the bills, the harder my work life became. I thought that  I had to change something.

After watching The Secret I thought nothing could hurt so why not try it.

For several weeks I tried different things while reading stories online. I read where a lady just started putting out into the universe that she would have a new job, so I tried that.

I had no idea what that job would be, but I asked, believed it would happen and started picturing myself in the job I wanted. As a teacher you never plan to do anything else. I didn’t know what I was prepared to do out side the walls of a school, but I knew I was smart and I would find something. I was also getting my Master’s degree in Instructional Technology. I had a feeling one night to post on a discussion board that I was interested in getting involved in corporate training.

Several days went by, people posted how horrible I was to give up a job where I was touching children’s lives. One night I got a message from someone that would touch my life forever.

I had just started teaching summer school, but I had just about cleaned out my normal classroom not knowing where I would be the next school year, just knowing I wouldn’t be there. I still had a contract but I was ready any day to turn in my resignation. This angel wrote on the discussion board that she lived in my city and wanted to meet with me to talk about what I needed to do to move into this other “unknown” world of corporate training. After we met, we were instant friends. She explained her years in the industry, explained how I could get in and how to prepare my resume.

The next day she called and said she had a job for me and asked if I could start the following week. I made a vision board at this time. I had pictures of myself carrying a brief case in every day. I would wear heels and a suit to my executive job and I would have a red brief case. I would have a house with stairs and a stainless steel refrigerator. I tell you this to explain the visions throughout the rest of my story.

She said it was a contract job, $17.00 an hour. I would be taking a pay cut at first and there would probably be a better job in the following months, but this would give me a foot in the door. I took a risk and knew this was exactly what I needed to do.

She was right, in six months I was offered a job where I was making $15,000 more dollars than I was making as a teacher. For my birthday, that was 10 days before my offer, my husband came in with a new brief case, red and exactly like the one on my vision board. He didn’t even know I had a vision board. This all happened four years ago, I have been through a lot.

Nine months after being hired on to a permanent position I was laid off. I was extremely scared, but kept the faith that the universe had something better. On my last day with the job laying me off, I had a new job the next day making $10,000 more than I had at the previous job. Then about 9 months after working for that job, I had a call from my old boss / good friend that she had a job for me, making $20, 00 more than the current one, now close to $50,000 more than I was making as a teacher! I took it and in a year I was promoted to manager with a raise of $30,000. I have been in this position for a 18 months now. I love it. I manage a multiple member team and consult for a fortune 300 company.

You would think I was done. Nope! In September of 2014, my good friend called and had several side jobs for me. I decided to start my own side business on the weekends. We just moved into a new house with stairs. I come home each day with a brief case and in heels from my executive job. Oh and we also just bought that stainless steel refrigerator. Now my husband can stay at home and take care of our kids, and do sales for our business. I can provide more than enough for my family while doing exactly what I want to do.

My gratitude for The Secret is more than I can ever express. I spread this testimonial as often as I can. Every employee that works for me, our family and any friends. Those that were the most skeptical were our family members. Our mother’s both advised against it, but now say they were the first to tell us to go for it. It doesn’t matter, because the gratitude I express daily to those that have helped me through this process is endless. The loyalty and devotion of my husband and employees has been unbelievable. Daily something happens that is even better than I could have imagined.

Thank you to all that have helped this program to become live and a part of all of our lives. It has helped me to become a better wife, mother, and daughter. I am now able to teach my children to set goals, believe in themselves and not dwell in the negative because the negative will happen, it is how we deal with it that determines our next steps. Ask, Believe, Receive . Each step is important.

The Unexpected, Completely Irrational Grade.

Republished from thesecret.tv

I would like to start of with expressing my deepest gratitude to Rhonda and her team for having written The Secret and sharing it with the world. I would also like to thank everybody who has ever written his or her story on this website because reading them keeps my faith in gratitude high.

This story is about my recent university exams.

I had 4 subjects to pass this semester. 3 of them I was fairly sure I would succeed at them if I just studied enough. But the remaining one, this subject had been a struggle the entire semester.

Our teacher had a weird style of teaching and there was no real manual to study from. This was very frustrating for me because I had no idea how I was going to study this subject and therefore I estimated my chances of succeeding as very slim. 3 days prior to the exam, I had to start studying. I still didn’t know what or how to study. In my mind I had kinda given up and decided that I would go do the exam just to see how the questions would be asked so that I could do well at the second attempt.

When I arrived in class and was presented with the exam I was very surprised. Their were only 3 questions being asked which drastically improved my chances of succeeding and two of them were “open” questions so I completed them as well as possible. But remember I had barely studied anything and I didn’t have any prior knowledge on this subject. I was laughing at myself during the exam because of the “stories” that I was writing as an answer.

Once I was finished, I wasn’t sure at all if I had answered the questions good enough to at least score 50% and succeed. But I decided to apply The Secret for the next three weeks and thanked the universe for helping me pass this exam by scoring at least 50%.

Today I received my results and guess what?

I scored 85% on the exam!!!!!! I was so shocked and amazed, laughing hysterically from joy because I knew this could have only happened with help from the universe.

So thank you, universe. Now that you’ve clearly confirmed that the law of attraction works, I can’t wait to attract everything that I want into my life.

Keep the faith and gratitude high guys and you will achieve anything you want.

Sometimes The Path Will Find You!

Republished from The Secret

I am a 35 year old Accountant in the UK. I have been working with numbers all of my adult life and I stuck with it, not because I enjoyed it, but because it was simple and the pay was OK.

Last year my work and how invested in ‘the rat race’ led to me having a nervous breakdown and resulted in a long bout of depression. I was away sick from work for over 3 months and the storm cloud that had appeared over me got bigger and darker. Basically I got lost in it and no amount of medication was helping me find myself again. The bubbly laughing girl I had always been got stripped away until all that was left were my insecurities and my anger at what the world had ‘done to me’. It was actually my doctor who suggested meditation to assist with my recovery.

I turned to YouTube to find music to meditate to or guided meditation to listen to and teach me how. Well you all know how YouTube works, you watch something and it suggests other videos to watch. I kept getting suggestions about something called The Law of Attraction and like so many before me, I scoffed and ignored it. Pfft, spirituality! Yeah. Right!

To cut a long story short, I was still feeling low the majority of the time and searching YouTube every day for an answer. A few weeks ago I came across an interview with Oprah speaking to Jim Carrey and I thought, well, I have to watch that because I love Jim Carrey. I watched it 7 times in a row and every word he said about visualizing how he wanted his life to be resonated deeply with me. He was telling my story! As I watched and listened to this very talented , very successful man talk about his experience with depression and how he had lost sight of how lucky he was and forgotten the necessity of gratitude, I started to cry. I had been such a fool.

I had lost sight of the things that really matter to such an extent that it had manifested itself into ill health. The universe was warning me that I was out of balance and I hadn’t been listening.

From that moment I started searching for the law of attraction and I came across The Secret. Really it had found me a long time ago but I had not been ready to receive the message.

Well it only took one viewing of The Secret and the flood gates opened on my being ready to receive! I had finally found what I had never been looking for but really should have been. Realizing that I was the master of my life, my destiny and my universe was a huge revelation! How had I never thought to simply ask for what I wanted?

I have started slowly, making a vision board on Pinterest that I can look at daily and writing affirmations on little squares of note paper that I can carry with me everywhere. This week I created a grateful moments list that I can add to whenever I feel it so I can look back on all my blessings whenever I need a reminder of why life is so great.

The reason that life is so great is because I truly believe it should be in a way I never had before. I wasted so much time complaining that my life wasn’t great and drawing to me more bad things to stop my life being great.

In the last few weeks I have begun to sleep better, feel more healthy, taken time to enjoy the things in my life that are really important like my family and friends, good books and beautiful music. I can’t remember when I have smiled so much and I am more grateful than I can say.

From now on it will be meditation, not medication for me, and this is my perfect day.

Attract Money

Republished from The Secret

Thank you, thank you, thank you Rhonda Byrne, thank you very much.

The Secret book changed my whole life. I knew about The Secret in Jan 2013 but I only started to apply The Secret in 2015.

I applied The Secret to attract money because after my marriage I had some financial problems. Then I decided I will attract money. And I attracted a lot of money!

Every night and every morning I said to myself that I am a money magnet and money comes very easily and effortlessly.

I also wrote in my journal that I love money and money also loves me. I used the gratitude practice for 15 days and there were no results.

But guess what?!

I amazing because I won the lottery 500,000.00. and I believe so much in The Secret!!!

Thank you Rhonda for writing such a great book!

Thank you very much!

Friends, just ask, believe and receive.

Dreams Can Come True If You Don’t Give Up!

Republished from The Secret

My friend told me about this contest in which you can go to Italy for 2 weeks and everything is paid for, the flights, hotels, and excursions.

In 2013, I applied for the contest and my mother stated, “There are so many applicants I doubt you are going to win”. After reading The Secret I tried to remain positive and be in a positive mood when I opened up the letter to see if I was accepted into the program.

However on the day of the contest, to my discouragement I discovered that I did not win the contest. I questioned what I did wrong. I put the pictures of me winning in the contest on my vision board. Also I was in a positive mood when I opened up the letter. However, none of this worked in my favor.

Then the next year I applied for the same contest. This time before applying I watched The Secret and created a countdown on my phone on the day I would get accepted into the program. I played Italian music and I researched and discovered the location that the group would be going to this year. Then I set it as my background on my phone. Also, I wrote a fake letter to myself from the company and I hung it up on my board.

Then when the time came close to finding the results, my mother again gave discouraging advice saying, “I don’t see why you applied for this contest, a lot of people entered it and I doubt you are going to win”.

I realized that last time, even though I was in a positive mood, my mother’s mood effected me and subconsciously I must have agreed with her.

So this time I refused to take what she said to heart and I told her, “Watch me, I am going to win!” Then when it came time for the drawing, I looked at my fake letter, and felt the emotions of what it would feel like if I won.

Then to my surprise, I opened up the email and it said I had won!!!

20 people were selected from the United States, and I won, can you believe that?

Reflecting on this experience, I would say that one has to change their attitude and mindset to achieve what they want in life.

Also, I firmly believe in the quote, “Everything happens for a reason” because that year when I went to Italy, the tour guide said she went on a lot of trips to Italy and this was the best trip she has been on. The group I was with was amazing and I still keep in touch with them.

Also, after I won the contest a friend of mine wished me congratulations and she said that she applied and she had a person who was on the board of the contest write her a recommendation. Meanwhile I got picked over her which means that The Secret does perform miracles if you believe!!!

Are You Happy Or Delusional?

Republished from Observer

(Photo: Katherine McAdoo/Flickr)

Happiness may be the purpose of life, but it seems to elude most people. Consider this startling and sad fact: Only one in three Americans claim to be happy.

Which, of course, begs the obvious question: Why is happiness so hard to experience?

I have a theory, which is a bit counterintuitive: The pursuit of happiness is getting in the way of happiness itself. It’s always out there, waiting to be had around the next corner. We hear this all the time.

“I’ll be happy when I graduate.”

“I’ll be happy when I find my soulmate.”

“I’ll be happy when I finally catch my big break.”

“I’ll be happy when I retire.”

I’ll be happy when…

The Problem With The American Dream

In a recent interview, Naval Ravikant, angel investor extraordinaire and founder of Angel List, explained that Americans naively believe that success will bring them happiness.

As he points out, society had taught us that we can all be like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Katy Perry. We obsess ourselves with success only to find ourselves stressed out and wanting. And yet, once we get what we want, or close enough, we realize we still don’t have what we were looking for. There is something even more fundamental than happiness.

“It is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.’”  —  Viktor Frankl

What Ravikant was hinting at, and what Frankl gets just right, is that happinesscannot be pursued directly. It is a byproduct of having sincere meaning in one’s life. Find your purpose — live it — and happiness takes care of itself.

There’s good grounding for this in psychological research. According to the experts, happiness and meaning have some crossover, but are also distinct. People seeking happiness are often “takers,” while people seeking meaning are often “givers.” There is more to life than what you can acquire and achieve. Even still, the world gives to the givers and takes from the takers.

But it’s even simpler than that.

The Paradox

Most people believe they must first have something (e.g., money, time, or love) before they can do what they want to do (e.g., travel the world, write a book, start a business, or start a relationship), which will ultimately allow them to be something (e.g., happy, peaceful, content, motivated, or be in love). But happiness is not in what you have or do — it’s in who you are.

The have - do - be paradigm must actually be reversed in order to experience happiness, success, or anything else you desire.

First you be whatever it is you want to be (e.g., happy, compassionate, peaceful, wise, or loving), then you start doing things from this space of being. Almost immediately, what you are doing will bring about the things you want to have. We attract into our lives what we are.

So if you want to be happy, be happy. If you want to be generous, be generous. If you want to be sincere, be sincere.

“There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.”  —  Wayne Dyer

Do You Choose Discipline or Regret?

“There are two types of pain you will go through in life, the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” ― Jim Rohn

I’ll make an uncomfortable observation: You are delusional if you forego discipline in your pursuit of happiness. True happiness follows from who we become and how we relate to the world.

Yet, people are sold on get-rich-quick schemes or happiness-over-night promises because they don’t want to put in the work. They don’t want to change; and discipline requires that you change. And change is hard as hell and painful.

Most people would rather appear good than actually be good.

Do You Choose Freedom or Security?

“He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”  —  Ben Franklin

When you seek security in external things, you are living a delusion. Yet, we’ve been taught that security comes in having a steady paycheck, in fitting in with our friends, and in having nice possessions. So we spend our entire lives trying to keep up.

“We spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to make impressions that don’t matter.”  —  Tim Jackson

This is not security, but conformity.

True security can only be experienced internally — in being authentic to your core-self. This is personal freedom.You could have all the money in the world and still not be free. You could be a slave to time and all your possessions. As Chuck Palahniuk famously wrote in Fight Club, “The things you own end up owning you.”

Do You Have Harmonious or Obsessive Passion?

There are two forms of passion: one healthy and the other unhealthy.

Harmonious passion is something you’ve chosen on your own accord. You view the activity as important in itself and feel no social pressure to do it. You are in control of your passion and can easily concentrate while you do it, often entering a state of flow.

On the other hand, obsessive passion originates from social pressure with certain contingencies attached — such as feelings of social acceptance or self-esteem.

People become unhealthily obsessed with things all the time, becoming dependent on the object of their passion. They are controlled by this passion, rather than the other way around.

Obsessive passion can cause a person to give up everything meaningful in their lives. They become narrow-sighted and the center of their own universe—thinking very little about the feelings or needs of others (even those closest to them). Everything becomes tied to a specific result. Their lives become a empty and shallow mess.

I’ll be honest. I’ve been obsessed — and it’s not a happy or healthy place to be. When obsessed, I can become highly irritable and reactive— the smallest things can put me on edge. I can even come to resent my wife and kids. I often isolate myself from others and become consumed in self.

It’s not worth it.

Do You Choose Happiness or Pleasure?

Research has found that during periods of stress and exhaustion, people’s cortisol levels can spike, increasing their cravings for things that bring momentary comfort.

In such moments, people are likely to act based on emotion, rather than logic or resolve. Hence, stress eating and other behaviors like impulsive shopping, sex, and TV binging.

These behaviors are not inherently bad. But often act as a form of self-sabotage when a person is in survival mode. The belief that these impulsive and often regretful behaviors will bring happiness is delusion.

But compulsive comfort seeking does not have to be our automatic reaction (no matter how stressed or exhausted we are). As human beings, we are not governed by animal instincts, but by our choices.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  —  Viktor Frankl

Sadly, people often choose momentary pleasure at the expense of genuine happiness. And there is a fundamental difference between the two.

Pleasure can be experienced in the moment — like say, eating a doughnut or having a one-night-stand. Happiness is focused on the long-term; to borrow the old canard, it is a journey, not a destination.

Is Happiness Mundane Or Sexy?

Yes. Both.

Happiness can be had in any circumstance. But we’ve been taught our whole lives that happiness is flashy, exciting, sexy, famous, and in high position. Apparently, if we’re not constantly feeling amazing, our lives suck.

However, when looking back on life, we find that the deepest meaning was had in the small and simple things. Happiness is often not sexy, but mundane and even boring a lot of the time. We are fooled when we dismiss the fundamentals in exchange for outward appearance, social norms, or other people’s opinions of what matters. This is being caught in the thick of thin things.

Happiness is simple, not spectacular.

Want to be happy? Be happy.

“Happiness is now.”  —  Rumi

Sure, it might seem easy, or even contrived, so posit that in order to be happy, you must simply become happy. But the truth is it’s about that simple. Everything you need to be happy, you already have—it is a state of being. But we have become a society of human-doings, frantically searching for the next thing.

More than happiness, our search should be for meaning. No matter what your life currently looks like, be happy. Your life matters, and the simplest things in your life are ultimately what matter most.

Be happy. Your universe will flourish and flower.

Benjamin Hardy is the foster parent of three children and the author of Slipstream Time Hacking. He’s pursuing his Ph.D. in organizational psychology. To learn more about Mr. Hardy, visit www.benjaminhardy.com or connect with him on Twitter.