How to Live a Happy Life

You have 30 seconds to live, what would you tell your children are the 3 most important things you learnt about how to live a happy life?

I’d love my children to know these three headlines that I could utter in less than 30 seconds before saying goodbye. If fortune would have been kind enough to let me live until that point, I would have had the time to explain to them the details below through one way or another as they grew up. All that would be left then would be gentle reminders, not brand new, bold lessons.

1) Attitude is (almost) everything – remember the top 3 of the list

10% of your life consists of things you willed or brought about. Don’t sweat that small stuff. 90% is all that you cannot control, the stuff that just happens to you. How will you deal with those things? How will you react? What will you learn? The key to these questions is attitude. That’s great news, in a way. No matter your level of formal education, no matter how far you think you got in your life with your career or relationships. None of these things (the 10%, remember?) matter if you have not fostered three most important attitudes. Both can be infinitely scaled. Their power is limitless if you learn how to attend to them.

First is gratitude, the attitude directed towards appreciating anything and anyone. The ability to assign value to something that others overlook. The deep, bottomless wellspring of being thankful for your health, your family, your job, anything. This is the secret to true richness. It never runs out. And best: it is not a scarce resource, unlike any other resource in the world.

Second is levity or humility, the attitude of not taking yourself too seriously. Never forget where you came from. Never forget what you are: just human. No matter how high you fly or how low you fall, it all just seems so much easier if you tread lightly, if you remember not to take yourself and those many projects of yours too importantly to the point of agonizing about them. It is fine to strive and seek. But this too, shall pass. Don’t forget that in your darkest hour and it will set you free.

Third is resilience, the attitude to weather anything from the gentlest breeze to the strongest gale threatening to derail or break you on your journey. Some call it growing a thick skin, a tough hide, robustness or fortitude. No matter what you call it, foster it because you have no idea what people are capable of surviving. The world is not necessarily cruel by definition, but it can be cruel by ignorance, by the apathy of nature, by forces so large they can toss you around like a speck of dust to make you know your place in the scheme of things. Those times can hurt. A lot. I won’t lie as you will likely have your fair share of hurt even if you did nothing to deserve it. For those times, I wish for you to have resilience to suck it up and then get back to work.

2) Know your values – always try to stay true to them

The goal of life, if there is any, is to gain self knowledge. To learn who you are and what makes you tick. What makes you tick is this squishy, intangible but very real set of values that make you the person you are. It is the compass that was implanted in your heart when you were born, then shaped by your upbringing and experiences.

If you ever feel lost in life, if you don’t know what you are supposed to do, if you don’t know what is even worth doing, chances are you have not been in touch with what it is you most value. If there is any task worth doing, any adventure or ordeal worth going through, these things are all only helpful as later seen by their ability to help you articulate or confirm your values.

Keep it simple, since as much as you like to think you could be this incredibly complex person, chances are there are some 2-3 core values that make you who you are, that define your choices and preferences in people, places and occupations. Make it your life’s work to figure them out – I mean really figure them out, to know them without the shadow of a doubt. Then do what is necessary to affirm them, defend them to the death if you should be so inclined. That is what it means to be lead an authentic life. Go lead one. It’s not the only way to live, but the most noble in my opinion.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: some of your values can change throughout your life, just to make things a bit harder. Where would the fun in it all be otherwise?

3) Help others – and always return to kindness

You may wonder if this is not just one of those values I talked about above, and I would tend to agree if it were not for the fact that kindness is not just a value. It is something so enormously important I would place it in a category of its own. Whatever your values, whatever you do with yourself, never forget to be kind.

Let me rephrase this, since we all forget a lot of the time (we are human): try not to forget, and when you eventually do, make it up by returning to kindness. Don’t ask why. If you have to the reason is this: because it’s the right thing to do.

Listen, life can be short. It can also be very painful and unpleasant, mostly because you put yourself at the center of the universe. But the world is too vast for your small heads. So don’t torture yourselves unnecessarily. The trick is to think of others, to live in service of others, not because it will serve you later in return, not because you expect something from them, but because this is what you were put on the planet to do. Let me put this more bluntly: everything you have ever learned, everything you have worked so hard to achieve so far, all that you have accumulated in riches and experiences and glories and war stories – it all amounts to nothing ultimately unless you have found some way – some tiny, modest or outright ingenious way – to put it to use to help others.

Help them find comfort, help them by loving them, by keeping them companionship; help them survive, help them thrive, help them learn something, help them find themselves – anything – but please be of help in some meaningful way to you. And throughout all this: be kind more often than you are not. Remember, kindness is not the goal, it’s the path. When you stray, just get back on, it’s no big deal.


I believe that you can be happy everyday and always , if you:

  1. Start your day believing that you are going to have a great day.
  2. Focus on what you have rather than what you want. At the end of every day, thank god for all that you have.
  3. Let go things that are beyond your control, particularly those that frustrate you or make you sad.
  4. Learn to accept people or things around you as they are rather than how you want them to be. This will make your life easier.
  5. Follow the good old saying “Do good and feel good.”
  6. Don’t have unreasonable expectations from both, you personal life and professional life. Count your blessings.

Happiness is a choice.

1. Stop caring what people think about you. If you like something go for it, don’t think about how people are going to judge you.

2. Help someone in need. Helping someone will always give you feeling of great pleasure.

3. Don’t react, but respond properly. If anyone hurts you, or says something bad to you. Don’t be quick to react. Control your self and give it some time. You will discover that it is worthless even thinking about it.

4. Exercise daily. Relaxing your body muscles will also keep you happy. You will not feel exhausted.

Karma is everything..Be good to others..and don’t try to hurt anyone

Sam Berns’s Philosophy for a Happy Life

Three years ago, HBO produced a documentary about Sam Berns called  “Life According to Sam.” I had not seen the documentary until earlier this year. It’s a remarkable story. I don’t think anyone can watch this documentary about this amazing young man and his two loving parents and not be deeply moved. The documentary does not play on sentimentalities, but it will surely make you cry, especially knowing now that on January 10 of this year, Sam Berns died due to complications from Progeria  (Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome), a rare and fatal genetic condition which is characterized by an appearance of accelerated aging in children.

Most children with Progeria do not live past their teens. When I saw that Sam had passed away, I felt so sorry for him and for his family. But pity is not something Sam would have wanted anyone to ever feel about a happy life.

A great talk & life advice from Sam Berns

Sam gave a talk last October at TEDxMidAtlantic in Washington DC. The video below of his talk was posted in December, just about a month before Sam passed away. Sam touched the hearts of a lot of people while he was on this planet, and through this presentation, he will continue to do so. 17-year-old Sam Berns gives us some good advice, but he also demonstrates how to tell your story in 12 minutes in a way that is simple, clear, and engaging.

Sam’s approach to telling his story

Sam does not start off his presentation by talking about Progeria because his whole point—his theme—is that the disease is not the biggest part of his life. Instead, he begins with a short story from his life about a challenge and overcoming that challenge without even ever mentioning the disease. That was what his life was like Overcoming and moving forward. Sam opens with a mini-story where he tells of his deep desire to play snare drum in the high school marching band. The problem was the frame for the snare drum weighed 40 lbs, but Sam only weighed 50 lbs. A clear conflict. He was devastated by the reality that he would be unable to fulfill one of his dreams.

His body was not up to it though his spirit was. We learn, then, that he was, however, able to work out the problem thanks to the kindness and brilliance of an engineer who created a special snare drum frame that weighed only 6 lbs. Right from the start we have a story of conflict and resolution. Moreover, the snare drum story returns later on in his talk with added significance.

Sam does get into the facts of what the disease is—this is part of the exposition if you will. The audience needs this knowledge to understand what follows and to appreciate just how remarkable his wisdom is given his difficult circumstances. We usually reserve wisdom for the old, obviously because they have been through so much. Well, Sam too, although only 17, had been through a lot. Sam recalled that when he was asked by an NPR interviewer “What is the most important thing that people should know about you?” His answer was “I have a very happy life.” Sam said that Progeria did indeed present many challenges but that people should not feel sorry for him. Besides, he said, he was able to overcome most of the challenges anyway.

Sam’s advice

“My Philosophy,” he said, “has three parts, essentially.” Sam then prefaces his list of three with a quote from the movie Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

(1) “Be OK with what you ultimately can’t do, because there is so much you CAN do.

 Sam said he is very much aware of the things he can’t do, like ride a roller coaster, but instead of focusing on that he instead focuses on the things he can do, and the things he is passionate about. Sam said you can put some things that were impossible or out of reach before in the “can-do category” by making adjustments. To illustrate this point with an example he plays a clip of himself with the marching band, the story he opened with, which further illuminates his theme or his core message.

(2) “Surround yourself with people you want to be around.”

Sam talked about the importance of having high-quality people and great friends in your life, and a close family. “We see each other for who we are on the inside,” Sam said of his friends and loved ones. You can see Sam gets choked up when talking about how the relationships in his life supersede even all the other positive aspects of his life. Our friends, our families, our communities, Sam said, are really the things that can make a huge difference in our lives.

(3) Keep Moving forward.

Here Sam quotes Walt Disney: “Around here…we don’t look backward for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things.” Sam said he was able to get through difficult times by always having something in the future to look forward to, even if it was just a small thing like a new comic book or a football game. “This mentality includes staying in a forward-thinking state of mind. I try hard not to waste energy feeling bad about myself, Sam said, because when I do I get stuck in a paradox where there is no room for happiness or any other emotion.”

Sam was so positive and so optimistic about his future. “No matter what I choose to become, I believe I can change the world. And as I am striving to change the world, I will be happy.” He showed a clip from the film which he said embodies his philosophy. Even though he had changed in four years, he said, his philosophy had not. Sam told a story at the end of being very sick. It was a time he had to use all his strength and put his philosophy to the challenge. It was the three keys above that saw him through the roughest times, he said. “Being brave isn’t supposed to be easy,” Sam said. “But it’s the key to moving forward.”

“Being brave isn’t supposed to be easy, but it’s the key to moving forward.”

Sam’s talk is a beautiful thing. It is positive, authentic, and from the heart. His presentation is a wonderful contribution that is continuing to touch people, and inspire them to live life as fully as they can.

Thank you, Sam. You live on in more ways than you could have imagined

Happy Life: Want To Live Happily? Here is How

Let us start with a simple premise that you must accept. That is, happiness is a choice. It is your choice to live a happy life.

happy life
How to live a positive happy life.

Forget customer satisfaction, what matters is life satisfaction.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

Here’s a great study in the latest edition of the wonderfully titled academic ‘Journal of Happiness & Well-Being‘ that can help you understand and deliver happiness.

10% of your life consists of things you willed or brought about. Don’t sweat that small stuff.

90% is all that you cannot control, the stuff that just happens to you. How will you deal with those things? How will you react? What will you learn? The key to these questions is attitude.

None of these things (the 10%, remember?) matter if you have not fostered the most important attitudes we discuss here. Most can be infinitely scaled. Their power is limitless if you learn how to attend to them.

Share your happiness: Successful Leaders: 12 Habits Happy People Share

Do you have unusual fears? Have any doubts? Like the fear of an embarrassing moment? Don’t. This world is full of people very sympathetic and willing to help you with help to get you through the day. And help you with the attitudes needed for happiness. All you need to focus on is defeating your doubts. Do you sometimes wonder how much-unseen impact your actions and life is having on others?

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,

it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

-Vivian Greene

There was a time when I thought happiness was a destination, in much the same way I imagined I’d eventually arrive at peace or success.

It seemed like something I needed to chase or find—definitely not something I could experience without dramatically changing my life.

I’ve since learned through experience that helping to get through the day is always available, and like any desirable state of mind, it requires effort, even if that effort entails consciously choosing to be still.

Here is a checklist of simple attitude reminders to improve your happiness each day. It certainly has been a big help to me:

 

Happy life … start well

Start your day believing that you are going to have a great day.

 

Sharing

Sharing is always caring. You can’t do enough sharing.

Show kindness

Show some kindness without expecting anything in return. If they ask what they can do for you, tell them to pay it forward.

 

Smiles

Smiles matter. And they are so simple to execute.

live a happy life
Live a happy life.

 Strangers

There are many strangers just waiting to make new friends. How many friends can you make today?

 You

 You are the master of your destiny. Take charge and show your happiness.

Happy life … create some alone time

Sit in nature—under a tree, on a mountain—and let yourself simply be quiet.

Remarkable

 Be nothing less than remarkable. It just takes a little more effort.

Share some fun with someone you love

Forget about everything that feels like a problem and do something that seems like fun. Have fun spontaneously.

Play

Play is always the centerpiece of work. Be happy and enjoy the things you do.

 

how to live a positive happy life
How to live a positive happy life.

Defeat doubts

Eliminate fears or doubts. Mistakes and failures are ok.

 

Actively enjoy good things now

Be about the present instead of scheming to create a better future.

 

Volunteer your time 

Volunteer your time to help a charity you believe in. Put all your energy into helping others, and you will find happiness without looking.

 

Serve someone else

Just because … just for them. That might mean helping them pursue their passion, or motivating them to reach their fitness goals. Whatever gives your life meaning, give it to someone freely.

show gratitude
Show gratitude.

Show gratitude

Gratitude is the attitude directed towards appreciating anything and anyone. Think of it as the ability to assign a value to something that others overlook. It is the secret to true richness. It never runs out. And best: it is not a scarce resource, unlike any other resource in the world.

Live with humility

Humility is the attitude of not taking yourself too seriously. Never forget where you came from. Never forget what you are: just human. No matter how high you fly or how low you fall, it all just seems so much easier if you tread lightly.

Remember not to take yourself and those many projects of yours too important to the point of agonizing about them. It is fine to strive and seek.

 

Be resilient

Resilience is the attitude to weather anything from the gentlest breeze to the strongest gale threatening to derail or break you on your journey. Some call it growing a thick skin, a tough hide, robustness, or fortitude. No matter what you call it, foster it because you have no idea what people are capable of surviving.

The world is not necessarily cruel by definition, but it can be cruel by ignorance, by the apathy of nature, by forces so large they can toss you around like a speck of dust to make you know your place in the scheme of things. Those times can hurt. A lot. For those times, I wish for you to have the resilience to suck it up and then get back to work.

Live a happy life … stay true to values

What makes you tick is this squishy, intangible but very real set of values that make you the person you are. It is the compass that was implanted in your heart when you were born, then shaped by your upbringing and experiences.

Keep it simple, since as much as you like to think you could be this incredibly complex person, chances are there are some 2-3 core values that make you who you are that define your choices and preferences in people, places, and occupations. Make it your life’s work to figure them out – I mean figure them out, to know them without the shadow of a doubt.

 

 

Let go of uncontrollable

 Let go of things that are beyond your control, particularly those that frustrate you or make you sad.

  

Learn to accept and move on

 Learn to accept people or things around you as they are rather than how you want them to be. This will make your life easier. Follow the saying “Do good and feel good.”

 

 

No worries

Don’t worry about what others think about you. If you like something go for it, don’t think about how people are going to judge you.

Respond properly

 If anyone hurts you or says something bad to you, don’t be quick to react. Control yourself and give it some time. You will discover that it is worthless even thinking about it.

 

End well

 Focus on what you have rather than what you want. At the end of every day, be grateful for all that you have.

 

The bottom line

There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad and focus on the good, and keep your peace of mind very intact.

 

 

The important thing is that we create many of these mental attitudes each day. Practice each day; they don’t just happen until they are strong habits.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?

 

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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics that relate to improving the performance of a business. Go to Amazon to obtain a copy of his latest book, Exploring New Age Marketing. It focuses on using the best examples to teach new age marketing … lots to learn. Find them on G+Twitter, and LinkedIn

  

More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

The Nine Most Valuable Secrets of Writing Effective Copy

How Good Is your Learning from Failure?

10 Extraordinary Ways for Learning to Learn

Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success