Happiness & the thoughts and words of others
Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different ~ Stacey Charter
One of the things we have talked about before is the impact others thoughts and ideas can have on your own happiness. We pretty quickly understand when things are said directly to us that those words are damaging to happiness and we demand their end, or simply walk away. There are more subtle attacks on us however that we don’t often recognize. There are constant images on television, in advertising that make us feel less than good about ourselves. Advertising in particular is basically the science of manipulation and often to sell us products that temporarily make us feel better, advertisers use ads that make us feel worse. This is one reason I advocate watching TV primarily by DVR and programming your remote for 30 second jumps, many remotes have a pre-programmed button for this. That way in several jumps you can skip past commercials that are rarely if ever in your best interest.
One other place that the world slips inside and makes us less happy is via the internet. Through advertising of course but in other ways as well, being an arena where everyone can express themselves more or less anonymously allows people to be their lowest and basest selves. Reading the comments on news articles can quickly make you lose faith in the species we belong to. I play a game at times and try to find the least political article I can locate and then guess how many comments before it turns into the same old conservative/liberal argument. It’s fun, but also a bit depressing. What we have to keep in mind is that in fact those comments represent a very small number of people, and people who I would guess are not very happy.
Our happiness is our fault and as such we have to be vigilant to keep our happiness intact. So be careful with the influences in your life be they on TV, the internet, or other people. Be careful and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 
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