Happiness Resources: The Components of Happiness
A quick web survey tonight for articles related to the components of happiness below are a few links that you might find rewarding:
Satir’s Mandala – an interesting take on happiness
A really interesting piece on happiness and contentment
Happiness from the Positive Psychology movement
Quotes about Inspiration & Happiness
Quotes about Happiness, Gratitude & Kindness
Revisiting Some of our Best Posts, Quotes & Pictures
Happiness and the best day of your life
Jumping for joy is good exercise. ~Author Unknown
Yesterday I posted a wonderful story from beliefnet.com about the best day of a man’s life, it’s a really nice story about how we usually underestimate the impact we have on each other’s lives. It showed that small acts can sometimes have amazing consequences.
So today my friends I come here to ask you, what was the best day of your life? Now for a lot of us I hope the best day is yet to come and that the best day that is in your head right now will turn out to be the fifth or sixth best day of your life. Think about it, as wonderful as that day was, you still have five or six more days to look forward to that will even be better. That’s why we are here, to keep working, to keep making our life better so we can have even happier days.
I’ve been blessed in my life to have some amazing days, some true moments of total bliss, sitting on the deck of a boat on the Amazon and not seeing land, swimming with dolphins, sitting in total silence in the Gokyo Valley in the Himalayas the sun gleaming off of Khan Tiega, and holding my niece just hours after her birth. However the happiest day of my life is still the day my little brother was born. I’d always wanted a brother and I even got to name him, he was born in an ice storm which brought one more bonus a snow day from school. I can’t wait for those five days better than that one.
Gokyo valley in Nepal, Khan Tiega in the background
So drop a note in the comment sections, tell me about your best day and bring a smile to someone who reads it and as always have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with the child’s eye – it is very beautiful. ~ Kailash Satyarthi
So in this age of FaceBook, if your friends are like mine, you see a lot of signs and slogans posted each day on their walls. Most of the time they are fairly cliché or cute but occasionally one catches your eye as being a little bit deeper than you might expect. The other day a friend posted the image below: 
I thought this was beautiful in its simplicity and wanted to pass it on with a few additional words and links to some of our past posts discussing the same things.
Free your heart from hatred – This is huge, for many of us we live our lives with the scars of the past. These scars can truly limit our ability to reach new heights. The fact is, although it is not easy, we are the only people who have power to remove the scars we carry. Work to remove those scars my friend, sometimes it takes a long time, but the work is worth it in the end.
Free your mind from worries – Worrying is the enemy of happiness, worrying is completely unproductive, and worrying is a waste of time and energy. If you are worrying about that which you cannot control just stop. And for the things you can control, stop worrying, start planning and do something about them, otherwise you have no one but yourself to blame.
Live simply – Living simply is about making sure your actions burn clean, that you don’t leave residue after you leave a situation or a relationship. This involves thinking before you act about the implications of your actions.
Give more – This has been a consistent theme for the Ministry of Happiness, the more you give, the more comes back to you, altruism is a two-sided gift.
Expect less – lower your expectations in life, this doesn’t ever mean you should get less than you deserve, but you shouldn’t always expect everyone and everything to come out right all of the time. Lowering your expectations to a more realistic level will make those times when everything goes right, even more sweet.
Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Happiness and Saying Goodbye
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. ~ Mother Teresa
Sometimes it hits me just how old I’m getting, more than that I think about my parents, and my still living grandmother and how hard this thought must cross their minds, people who are twenty and forty years older than I am. It’s been a tough last six months for a number of people that I love, there was serious concern about their health and I wondered seriously if we might lose them. Gratefully we did not and I’m truly thankful for that. However, whether it’s a month, a year, a decade it is only a temporary reprieve. As the old saying goes none of us are getting out of here alive.
I live a significant distance away from most of my family and when all of this was happening a friend asked if I was heading East to say goodbye. My answer seemed to catch her off guard when I told her I was not. She seemed confused and distressed by this answer and I saw a question cross her mind, could it be that I didn’t care about these people enough to rush to them and say goodbye? I answered the unasked question by explaining my philosophy on goodbyes. They are not necessary, they are a nice thing to do when possible but if you have truly been present in your life and theirs, they are not necessary. Too many people live their lives as if time is infinite and that tomorrow will always come, it will not always come. I have tried, even over great physical distances, to remain present in the lives of those I care for, this includes both my biological and adopted families, some people are not merely friends.
Were I too rush to their side when things didn’t look good it would do two things. First, it would make them think things are hopeless and I don’t want to put that idea in the mind of a person who is fighting to stay alive. Secondly, because I have been present in their life there isn’t anything new to say, we won’t gain anything from that experience. However, let me be very clear, I would never let someone I love die alone, were they not already surround by loved ones I would be there. A last chance for a smile, a touch or a kind word would be wonderful, but what is truly important my friends is the impact made over time, the day to day niceties, the phone calls for no reason out of the blue, the small kindnesses. No visit at the side of the death bed will ever make up for that kind of love.
So my wish and hope for you today is two-fold. First that you are finding the time to do these things, it is all too easy to have an idea cross your mind for a way to be nice to someone, only to have that idea slip into inaction because of the distractions of a busy day. Stop letting that happen, we have talked before about how what you put out comes back to you ten-fold or more. Secondly , my hope is that someone is doing this for you as well, there is nothing better than that unexpected call, card, the little niceties of life that make a day so much better. Even a smile to a stranger can positively impact their day. So, make someone’s today and hopefully someone will make your day tomorrow, and as always, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
First a piece on day-to-day happiness
A formula to calculate the happiest day of the world
Taking responsibility for your own happiness.
Enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
Quotes about Inspiration & Happiness
Quotes about Happiness, Gratitude & Kindness
Revisiting Some of our Best Posts, Quotes & Pictures
One joy scatters a hundred griefs. ~ Chinese Proverb
Hello my friends, for today’s post I want to put forward a simple idea, something we can each do to make the world a nicer place and by default make us all a little bit happier. My simple little suggestion is that each day, as you send out the myriad of work and personal e-mails you take just a minute and send an e-mail for no other reason than to make the recipient feel a little bit better about their day.
What am I talking about here, simply a quick note, it doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful or long, but just something to make the recipient smile. So, Bob wore a really nice tie today drop him a note and tell him. Sue did a really good presentation, let her know. Drop a note to a friend you haven’t spoken to for a while and just say hi. I know, you haven’t talked to them for a time and you feel the need to send something more significant, but what’s better, a simple hello, or more silence and distance between the two of you.
Of course taking the time to send the deeper e-mail would be better, but something is better than nothing. There doesn’t need to be a lot of pressure in this project, you had to send a nice thank you to that client anyway and that can definitely count for today. We have talked about this before and the more we give, the more we get back and very often we get back way more than we give. So, after you read this, take a minute and send that note, and as always, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Quotes about Inspiration & Happiness
Quotes about Happiness, Gratitude & Kindness
Revisiting Some of our Best Posts, Quotes & Pictures
The Dalai Lama on Tolerance and Patience
TOLERANCE
True tolerance is a stand or a response an individual adopts in relation to a particular incident, or towards another person or event. When the individual has the ability to act in a contrary manner as a result of his or her considerations, taking into account many factors and so on, but decides against taking negative action, this is true tolerance. This is quite different from a situation in which an individual has no capacity whatsoever to take such a strong counter-measure. Then he or she is in a helpless position, and can’t do otherwise.
PATIENCE
Many people think that to be patient in bearing loss is a sign of weakness. I think this is a mistake. It is anger that is a sign of weakness, whereas patience is a sign of strength. For example, a person arguing a point based on sound reasoning remains confident and may even smile while proving his case. On the other hand, if his reasons are unsound and he is about to lose face, he gets angry, loses control and starts talking nonsense. People rarely get angry if they are confident in what they are doing. Angers comes more easily in moments of confusion.
The Dalai Lama on Kindness and Genuine Compassion
KINDNESS
Having a heart and a kind and warm disposition is an enormous advantage. Not only does this bring us joy, but we can share this joy with others. Relations with individuals, nations and continents deteriorate only from lack of goodwill and kindness, even though these qualities are so valuable and necessary for the quality of life in society. That is why it is worth trying to develop them.
GENUINE COMPASSION
It must be said that genuine compassion is not like pity or a feeling that others are somehow lower than you. Rather with genuine compassion you view others as more important than yourself. Genuine compassion is based on the recognition that others have the right to happiness just like yourself, and therefore even your enemy is a human being with the same wish for happiness as you, and the same right to happiness as you. A sense of concern developed on this basis is what we call compassion; it extends to everyone, irrespective of whether the person’s attitude towards you is hostile or friendly.
The purpose of our lives is to be happy ~ Dalai Lama
ANGER
If your mind is dominated by anger, you will lose the greatest part of your human intelligence-wisdom that is the ability to discern between good and evil. Anger is one of the greatest problems that we have to face in the world today. In the course of our daily human relations, if we speak straight forwardly and in a reasoned way, anger is not necessary. Any point of difference can be discussed. Whenever we cannot justify ourselves through reason, that is when anger rises. It is when reason ends that anger begins. In my experience, even if anger gives us the strength to reach or to respond in the event of conflict, the energy it gives us is blind and difficult to control. Anger is a sign of weakness.
OUTLOOK
Our feeling of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, loss of hope and so forth are in fact related to all phenomena. If we do not adopt the right outlook, it is possible that anything and everything could cause us frustration. Yet phenomena are part of reality and we are subject to the laws of existence. So this leaves us with only one option: to change our own attitude. By bringing about a change in our outlook towards things and events, all phenomena can become friends or sources of happiness, instead of becoming enemies or sources of frustration.
UNIVERSAL RESPONSIBILITY
I believe that to meet the challenge of the next century all human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for his or her own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all mankind. It is very old-fashioned to think in terms of my nation, or my country, Universal Responsibility is the real key to human survival.
Dalai Lama on Simplicity & the Paradox of our Age
SIMPLICITY
If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital; satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, shelter to protect yourself from the elements. And finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.
PARADOX OF OUR AGE
We have bigger houses but smaller families; more conveniences but less time. We have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts but more problems; more medicines but less healthiness. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble in crossing the street to meet our new neighbour. We built more computers
to hold more copies than ever, but have less real communication. We have become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are times of fast foods but slow digestion; Tall men but short characters; steep profits but shallow relationships. It’s a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room.
