It's amazing what all works in our society

Every day we are bombarded by the media with bad news, but have you ever stopped to think about everything that's working as it should, at least most of the time?

If it's cold outside, we can turn on the heat in our home or car just at the touch of a button. When we need water, we just turn a tap and it's there -- we can even choose if we prefer hot, warm or cold. Electricity to power all of our appliances comes to our homes, as do signals carrying telephone and/or Internet services. We can even access those almost anywhere we want. I am not even mentioning television or radio broadcasting signals - well, actually I am :-)

When we need to get from A to B, we can take a bicycle, car or public transportation. If we need to cross the ocean, we can take an airplane or a ship. When our car starts running out of gas, we drive to the nearest refuelling station and we fill up. If the gas station runs out of gas, a big truck comes and delivers more gas. If there is a problem with our car, we go to the nearest service and they can usually fix the problem pretty quickly.

When we get hungry, we can go to the store -- which is usually pretty well stocked -- and buy whatever we crave and cook ourselves a delicious meal. Or we can go to a restaurant and let ourselves be served. If we don't feel well, we can go to a doctor. If we have any kind of problem, odds are pretty good that there is someone specializing in that particular problem who can help us. If...

I could go on and on, but I think you get my point - sometimes it's very useful to stop and think about everything that is working well around us. Because most of the time most of the things are working so well that we don't even notice them. And noticing them can go a long way towards increasing joy and happiness in our lives...

Let's learn from the things we do well!

Most of us have heard that we need to learn from our mistakes. Which is of course true, although one could debate what a mistake really is (I've heard there are some aboriginal tribes that don't have a word for "mistake" and the closest word they have means something like "opportunity" - I like that line of thinking!)

But what I wanted to write about today is that we should also make the conscious effort to learn from the things we do well, from our successes! Because our minds are so conditioned toward negative thinking (which is simply because hundreds of thousands of years ago negative thinking equalled survival - it was better to see that roaring bear as something negative and run away rather than try to look for the positives in it - a general mind set that is still predominant today, even though it's no longer so necessary), we need to make the conscious effort to really notice the things we do well (even small things) and learn from them.

So the next time you do something well, take the time to reflect on it, pat yourself on the back, and make a list of some of the lessons you learned. Not only will you get to know yourself better (think Aristotle and "know thyself"), but you'll also start conditioning your mind to focus less on the negative and more on the positive - a very useful strategy on the path to putting more joy and happiness into your life!

Average Time Spent Being Happy Drops To 13 Seconds Per Day

Interesting article on The Onion today:

April 16, 2010 | ISSUE 46•15

BERKELEY, CA—A study published in the latest issue of the Journal Of Social Sciences revealed that the amount of time spent being happy has dropped to an all-time low of 13 nonconsecutive seconds per day. "According to our data, the average American experiences a 0.8-second window of happiness upon awakening, before remembering that they're conscious beings in a relentlessly bleak and numbing world," said Dr. Derek Moore, lead author of the paper. "Other periods of happiness include 1.9 seconds after a good meal; 0.6 seconds upon receiving a paycheck; 1.1 seconds following completion of a scientific study; and the 2.5 seconds approaching orgasm, just before the guilt sets in." Researchers also recorded the smallest period of contentment yet, a 3.7-millisecond interval preceding the realization that one was experiencing happiness and that it could not possibly last.
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Btw, just in case you don't know, The Onion is an online "newspaper" specializing in satire. But I find that there is a little bit of truth in every bit of humour...

If you want to sing out, sing out

Cool classic tune by the legendary Cat Stevens that fits in well here...

The Lost Generation

Many of you have probably seen this video, but I just saw it today for the first time after receiving the link in a newsletter from Dan Millman. I've got not much else to say other than enjoy the video if you haven't seen yet (and if by any chance you're not familiar with Dan Millman, one of my favourite books of all time is The Way of the Peacefull Warrior -- Google Dan and/or the book if you're not familiar with him or haven't read the book :-)

Lessons from the Continuum Concept - Lesson 1

In an earlier post I mentioned that I really enjoyed reading a couple of interviews with Jean Liedloff, author of the Continuum Concept. Well I finally read this 1975 classic and it has skyrocketed right into the top three on my "happiness literature" chart. The book has provided me with so much insight and inspiration that I have decided to do a small series on some of the lessons from this book. So without further ado, here we go with lesson #1:

The time we spend en route to a destination is equally valuable to the time we spend at the destination after we have arrived

Jean has a great story in the book about how she was helping the Yequana indians carry some of their load back to their village and how she felt that she was slowing them down. But suddenly she realized the indians didn't feel at all that she was slowing them down because they consider the time en route equally valuable to the time at the destination. Jean then makes the point of how much tension she felt released when she realized this.

When you think about it, this is brilliant. For some reason we in western society treat the time en route to somewhere as "inferior time". But that's nonsense, that's just our ego getting in the way, along with all the "we have to be productive" thinking we've picked up in our lives. I've tried incorporating this thinking into my life during the past few weeks and it does makes an incredible difference in living an even happier, more relaxed life. How about experimenting with this for a couple of weeks as well to see what it does to your life?

Cute video of a friendship between an orangutan and a hound dog

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.