What comes first – happiness or success?

Psychologists’ offices are filled with successful people who are not happy.

Happiness is a goal unto itself.

Once happiness is accomplished, success follows.

It rarely if ever works the other way around.

Being happy requires the type of commitment that most “successful” people seem willing to make to their careers.  The sacrifice.  The hours.  The frustrations.  And postponed gratification.

What makes you happy?

How much of your day is devoted to things that don’t contribute to your happiness?

Once you have a better idea of the types of things – major or simple – that bring you happiness, then you are likely to also be on the road to success in other areas of your life.

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If dreams alone counted, everyone would be a success.

But dreams and schemes that do not have a plan do not have a chance.

Study effective people and you find that they have an innate ability to take their desires and put together a plan of action.

Talk to them and find out that often that plan changes – sometimes in the middle of being enacted but they always start with a plan.

What gets done first?

What does it look like?

What steps must follow?

Who will help?

What resources are needed?

Big dreamers who get to realize their dreams are also big planners.

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We wouldn’t start playing a softball game by first saying “I probably won’t win”.

That’s the wrong message.

We’d probably say “we’re going to win” or “we’re going to have fun” or simply “play ball” and see what happens.

When preparing a presentation, how often have you heard “I hate to speak to groups”? Just how well do you think that will go?

The way we talk to ourselves is even more important than the way others speak to us.

Too often we send messages of impending failure.

From now on at the very least, buck yourself up. Say something promising.

I will do my best to make this talk valuable.

I will have fun with the person I am meeting for the first time at dinner by being me 100% and not someone else.

Talk yourself up, don’t run yourself down.

And don’t look for someone else to do this.

It’s your job and the road to success.

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There is no end to evidence that people are burying their faces in their phones and altering the course of their happiness.

At dinner with one of my readers recently, he shared that he was pulling out his phone just to show me pictures not to check his messages.  “I know you don’t like phones at dinner”.

I’ll take it.

All of us can establish the ground rules that we want to live by simply by living them.

When someone pulls out their phone while they are talking to you, stop talking.

If they say “I can multitask”, say nothing until you get their attention back.

If they leave their phone on the table or hold it in their hand, you can’t make them stop, but you don’t have to participate in and encourage more distraction.

I saw a woman sitting with three couples at dinner remove her phone from the table and put in on the bench seat she was in checking it every so often to check messages and even to respond while her companions talked.

We can’t control others’ addiction to their distracting devices but by example, we can get them to pay attention by the way we act.

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Achievers don’t care if they fail.  In fact, they expect more failing than succeeding.

If you go fishing and expect every hook with bait to net you a catch, you’d soon give up fishing.

Self-doubt is created by harboring exceedingly high expectations for ourselves that have little chance of being met.

Jeff Bezos didn’t build Amazon into the amazon that it is by expecting everything he did to succeed.

Google has failed many more times than it succeeded, but when it succeeded, it was big.

Here’s what to build confidence on.

Bet on your ability to keep trying and never quit.  To not expect results every time you do something.

Replace self-doubt with self-assurance that comes from knowing that if it’s worth having, it’s worth pursuing until you get it.

Never doubt yourself ever again.  Why bet against you?

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If you keep bailing people out and fixing their problems, don’t be surprised if they keep coming back to you again and again for more.

When you’re hit up for a loan, don’t be surprised if the recipient after first greeting your generosity with elation winds up resenting you.

More valuable than money is helping someone fix their problems or finding a way to handle the shortfall in revenue that they find themselves in.

It is no gift to make loans or to live another person’s life.

The real gift we have to give is also the one that we give ourselves.

Time.

Help.

Being a good listener and a constant source of encouragement.

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99% of what I am worried about will never happen. 

The 1% that does, will never happen as I fear it.

Imagine the worst thing that can happen, accept it and make it better. 

Get the facts and weigh the facts. 

Be aware of the damage you are doing worrying about what is most likely not going to happen. 

Live in the present not the past. 

The future is not guaranteed so don’t worry about it.

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As a Dale Carnegie instructor, I would ask my students to take a 3×5 card and write down their three biggest most burdensome problems that are affecting their lives at that moment.

They were asked not to put their names on the card.

The cards were collected, shuffled and then re-distributed anonymously to the other students.

Once each person saw their card with someone else’s problems, they all asked for their own cards back.  Never was this not true – not even one time.

Even people who wrote down “I have cancer”, “my wife left me”, “I am unemployed and in debt” wanted their original troubles back compared to those of others.

This gives us clues to the answer on acceptance of life’s burdens.

Everyone has problems and comparing them to what they could be helps us to accept and act on the ones we already have.

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How to be playful.

Carefree.

Laughing.

Uninhibited.

Even parents who are around children all day are not able to act a like child.

After all, they are parents.  They teach.  They bark orders.  They accept the awesome responsibility of parenting.

And they are employees at work.  Accept burdens and duties in return for a salary.

Sons and daughters, husbands, wives and partners in their relationships and all the responsibility that brings.

Still, the ability to be happy, playful, and carefree is the transforming gift children can teach us.

In an era of great anxiety, maybe our little ones have the best answer.

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There is an outbreak of rudeness.

But for every rude person, there is a kind one so nearby you may not realize it.

And, if there isn’t, there’s always you.

My wife was dropping a package off at the UPS office recently when the gal in front of her stepped up to collect a package.  When the clerk asked her for some kind of identification, the customer started with a barrage of cursing and insults that we can’t print here because she would have to go to her car to get her ID.

It is what the clerk said that was the perfect reaction.

As the customer stormed out of the store, the clerk said to the other waiting customers in shock “you never know what kind of a day she had”.  There were no counter-insults or negative responses.

Every time a person or situation hands us an act of rudeness, we have a chance to counter it with compassion and positivity.

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