Happiness and Satisfaction

Did you ever hear that old George Carlin bit about new and improved? He used to say that it irritated him how commercials and advertisements everywhere boast about their new and improved products. His point was that a thing could be either new or improved. But not both.

I mean, think about it, if something is brand new it has not been changed or upgraded, simply by the definition of new. And once a thing has had changes made to it, to make it better, thus improving it, it is no longer new. If you use the old item as a template to assist you in making a new item, you can improve upon the old idea, but the new item itself is not improved. It is simply an improvement of the old item. In such a case the old item would be improved and the new item would be new. Simple right?

Well happiness and satisfaction work kind of the same way. While it is technically possible to be happy and completely satisfied at the same time, it is very unlikely to happen. And in fact if it does you are likely deluding yourself somewhere. What makes me say this?

Both are states of mind. And although they seem similar, especially if we are just comparing dictionary definitions, they refer to different things.

Happiness is a choice, one that many people, for whatever reason, do not select. It is a positive filter that we can see the world through. It colors what you say and do, how you interact with others and how they react to you. It is a general way of being. And once chosen its an always on thing that only changes when you decide to make a new choice and no longer be happy.

Satisfaction is more about a comparison between your vision of everything you want in life and what you currently have. It is about ambition. And not just the idea of one day taking your boss's job. Its more than that.  It is about your ambitions in every aspect of your life whether they be financial, spiritual,religious,mental or physical. The size of your family, who your friends are and what kind of people they are, where you live, what toys you have for your amusement,what level of education you have, how you spend your free time, all these things that you have, when compared to your perfect vision of life determines your overall satisfaction with how things are.

For a happy person, a temporary appearance of unhappiness is generally only a reflection of dissatisfaction with a current event. Once that even is handled the person goes back to their generally genial nature.

Here is the key and how it ties in to the Carlin bit. Being happy is healthy and natural. But being satisfied for any real length of time is not. The reason for this is once we reach a goal it is perfectly natural to make a new goal, to always desire and strive for more. This is not greed. It is simply the way life works, constantly pushing on to learn more, do more and see more, to steadily increase itself.

It is when this increase of life stops that dissolution and death set in. So I wish you every possible happiness and a great dissatisfaction with life.

Is money evil? Or are you?

After yesterday's words you might think that I feel as many do, that "money is the root of all evil". But that is not at all true. Let us say that I have a good understanding of and a healthy respect for money, even though it often seems like the source a great many bad things.  It is not the money itself which is evil.

Money is a tool that can be used to accomplish a great many things. Like other tools the danger comes from how it is used and the intent of the user. For example, fire is a tool which can be used to take raw ingredients and turn them into tasty food. It can also be used to boil water thus killing harmful bacteria and making otherwise dangerous water safe to drink. Fire can be used in both constructive and destructive ways. It can even be used to both heal and to kill. But fire is not evil. And neither is money.

Even a tool whose purpose is only violence such as a sword is not evil, for it can be wielded by one with the purest heart and good intentions who only wishes to protect others. Conversely it can be wielded for terrible dark purposes. But it is not the tool that is bad it is the person wielding it.

The purpose of money is so that we might have a standard system for valuing things. At first glance it may be rather difficult to find an acceptable comparable value between say a pickup truck and a pig, between an acre of land and a pair of rubber gloves, or between a hot meal and the cost of adding another bedroom to your home. By comparing everything to a single standard and placing a value on it based upon that standard it becomes a simple matter to see how any one item stacks up against any other.

As the saying goes, money may not be able to buy happiness. But, if you are willing to be honest, you kind of have to admit that money has created more happiness than poverty has. After all, it is through money that you are able to buy and do many of the things that are essential to living a happy successful life.

But, just as an obsession with fire is an unhealthy and dangerous thing, so is an obsession with money. There is nothing wrong with wanting great amounts of money so that you can properly take care of those that you love and to enjoy nice things. It is when one dreams of having money just for the power that it can bring and to use that power to rule over others that one gets brought over to the dark side.

Why do you desire money? What drives you to obtain it? And when you have it what do you do with it or what do you intend to do with it?

When I grow up?

What did you or do you say when people ask what you want to be when you grow up? From lots of kids I've heard answers like a firefighter, astronaut, or super hero. Very few people ever end up with the job they claimed to want as young children. When asked, I never really knew what to say. I know the point of the question is to make you think about what kind of career you will end up with, but to me, the question always just seemed so limiting.

I wanted to do everything. I wanted more time to decide. I wanted to be a child for decades so I could try a little bit of a lot of different things and not really be pushed into any one particular thing. Eventually I settled on the answer of by the time I grow up, I intend to be old, if I in fact ever grow up at all.

Kids have this sense of wonder and awe at the newness of everything. Nearly every minute that they are not being hit with some negative stimulus, they are happy. It is something that most adults lose and with it a lot of the light in their life goes away. We tend to get jaded and bitter and cynical about life and all of it's little details. Our interest in learning new things goes out the window. Once that happens we tend  to grow old and die.

Many of the oldest people in the world have attributed their long lives to being happy people. If that is true, if happiness is the key to a long life then we should do our best to keep that childlike sense of wonder alive, or to rekindle it if it has been lost.

But how would one go about doing that? One way would be to spend as much time as possible around young children. Kids in the two to seven year old range have generally not been subjected to the fears and prejudices of their parents for long enough to tarnish their natural unconditional love of nearly everyone and everything.

I know from personal experience with my son that spending just a few minutes in his presence is enough to brighten my whole day. Seeing life through his eyes, observing how he takes in new data,  how he rushes headlong with total enthusiasm into everything he chooses to do and seeing him so open and willing to share warms my heart,makes me smile and occasionally even brings out some tears of joy. It is such a beautiful thing.

Another way would be to remember being a young child. The person that you were when you believed in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and a world filled with magick is still there inside of you It never really goes away. It just gets pushed back and shoved down. In reality, adults are just taller children playing at being older people and handling responsibilities.

But if you decide to find or build a loving supportive environment where you can safely let your safeguards and walls down, you can learn to get back in touch with that inner child, the person that you really are. You can take back your happiness. And if you really want to be, you can be that person nearly all the time. We put up the walls as an automatic measure to keep us safe. With the wisdom of age, comes the experience to be open and loving with most people and put the walls back up briefly when you need to.

You can turn plain old everyday boring life in to a super awesome unbelievably fun adventure with no ordinary moments, just by shifting your perspective. In reality that is all that ever really changes. No one ever really grows up, they just find different ways of dealing with obstacles. Some people choose to become more stuffy and boring and some people choose not to.

I changed my mind. I am never growing up.

Life in the right order

Some time ago, I took a workshop that focused on self empowerment. One of the talking points was about the general mindset and perspective of the average person. I discovered that most people have the belief that you need to do a set of things, so that you can have a set of things so that you can be happy.

It is kind of what the American dream is all about right? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all that? Work hard, to get the things that you want and then you can relax and be happy with the results. There is a problem with this model though. What happens if you work as hard as you can and through no fault of your own, you are never able to have the things that you want? Every time you seem about to get a leg up, something happens and you just barely manage to break even. Then you are doomed to never obtain happiness. Do have be does not work.

In fact it is exactly backwards. If you start being the person you want to be, you will automatically begin to do the things that you need to get what it is that you want to have. For any personal or business venture in your life you need to ask yourself, who you  need to be in order to be able to do the things that are necessary to get what you want to have.

So first, what do you want to have? Let's say the answer is a successful business. Who do you need to be? An open-minded entrepreneur . What do you need to do? Work hard and make lots of sales. Be an open-minded entrepreneur that works hard and makes lots of sales and you will have a successful business. What if you want a successful marriage? Who do you get to be? A loyal committed faithful spouse. What do you need to do? treat your mate with love, kindness and consideration. Be a loyal committed faithful spouse that treats their mate with love kindness and consideration and you will very likely have a successful marriage.

Why does it work this way? Because in no uncertain terms the do, have, be  mindset is completely materialistic. It values objects above all else and defines the lack of material things as failure. It is also a victim mindset. In every instance where you do not have  the things that you want you can complain and say if only this thing weren't in the way I could be happy.

The be do have mindset is the opposite end of the spectrum from that. It is about as responsible as one can get. When you look at what you want to have you are directly taking personal responsibility for your results. You are asking who do i have to be and what do I have to do, to get what it is that I want to have. Then once you have answered those questions you have a road map to getting what you want and nobody to blame but yourself for not having what you want.