Whatever your skills are, whether it is good listening, organising people, building things, making people laugh or being a good friend, whatever your skills are let them shine in the service of your fellow human beings, for it is through kindness and gratitude, collaboration and forgiveness that we can all find happiness and success. The happiness you bring to others will be multiplied in your own life. As many sages have said, the route to happiness is in trying to make others happy. Happiness is found in what you do and how you do it, it is not a destination; it is a way of life.
Category: Happiness
Context is everything
It is true that context is everything. When someone puts up their hand in a class room they are either asking permission to go to the toilet or asking a question. If the same person was in a church they might be raising their hand the show that they agree with what the preacher is saying or that it resonates with them. The physical action of raising the hand is the same, but they mean very different things, because of the situation the person is in and the meaning of raising their hand in that place.
Sometimes raising ones hand is an act of standing up for what you believe in, by showing that you agree with something or you are voting for something. The point I am making is that as we go about our lives we often judge others based on the context in our own heads, and we often don’t try to see things from someone else’s perspective or how this would apply to the situation.
This is the route of the saying ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ You could say that there are as many points of view as there are people in the world, and they all mean something to those who hold each view. We should respect this, but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with them. We should, however, begin with respect and make the effort to try and understand someone else’s view on things before wading in with our own self righteous point of view.
Finding happiness and success is a path we walk together
My philosophy is ‘Finding happiness and success is a path we walk together.’
Meaning that if I know the way I have a responsibility to guide others to find it and sometimes others will know the way and I have to be humble enough to follow them. Happiness and success are found in cooperation with others.
Walk Your Own Path
When I was twenty I received a shaving razor from a well known company free in the post, which was a savvy move on their part, as I’m still buying razor blades for it fifteen years later. This razor worked very well and has never given me any cause to think about buying one from another company. However, a few years ago I was doing my usual big shop in a local supermarket when I saw a fancy looking razor that had been reduced to half price. It was made by a rival company, it was white and it vibrated the blade of the razor to give a closer shave. Intrigued and encouraged by the low price, I bought it and gave it a try. It was no way near as good as the razor I had been using for years. The lesson here is not to be drawn in by low prices and the promises of better features that don’t actually improve your life, because they only superficially appear to do so.
It is very easy in our current society to be convinced to buy consumerist products simply by being told they are better than the last thing we were told to buy or to behave in a certain way that is deemed cool or popular because so many others are doing the same. If we are not careful we can start to sleepwalk through life, living based on borrowed thoughts and feelings, on assimilated beliefs, and we end up not following our own path. In this situation I believe rebelling and walking our own path will lead to a happier and more fulfilling life. This, however, is not easy to do. Firstly it takes courage to swim against the stream, and secondly you have to find your own path before you can walk down it. This means lots of mistakes and walks down unfamiliar paths. Walking your own path takes courage but also persistence and self compassion. Mistakes will be made, so go easy on yourself.
A Reflection on Resilience
Resilience is an essential character trait when it comes to happiness and success. It is the ability to treat knock-backs and disappointments as feedback, as opportunities to learn, which will result in both happiness and success. However, this can be a difficult mindset to engage in, because it feels more natural to react to knock-backs and disappointments with negativity, to treat them as negative feedback. This is due to the mental habits we have developed, the examples we have witnessed and the general assimilation of the narratives from the culture we have grown up in.
What we need to do is detach the negative from the feedback and disappointments, to try to look at it with a neutral mindset and try to tease out what can be constructive, so that we can move forward more positively. This, as with many things, requires practice. To a large degree we are working against all of the mental habits we have thus far embedded into the pathways of our brains. The good news is that if we repeatedly look for the feedback that we can use to make ourselves better, and as a result our careers and our relationships better, we will build resilience to cope with the disasters that life can sometimes drop on us. When we train our minds in this way we become ready for the tough times in life, but it has to be a daily practice otherwise when the disaster hits we will crumble.
The Fullfilment Project 