Happiness Blog

Happiness and God

Is God central and necessary to happiness? The answer is both Absolutely and Not Necessarily…

Some of the happiest people in the world are Buddhists whose religious teachings do not recognize an all powerful God like the Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions. Buddhist spiritual teachings do strongly emphasize the actions and attitudes that lead to a happy, rewarding, joy-filled life.

In fact ALL major religions are founded on the same fundamentals that are central to happiness… Caring, compassion, creating a loving community, altruism, goodness, sharing, tolerance and release from anger and greed. Problems arise when religious righteousness becomes a bludgeon rather than a blessing.

Happiness and Love are Healing.

Living and worshipping within a happy, affirming spiritual community helps build and strengthen the skills and love that propels happiness. Helps, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Some of the habitually happy people we interviewed said they were atheists or agnostics.

The Happiness Habit is all inclusive, embracing and accepting all major religious traditions, yet resting on and requiring none.

Existing religious and spiritual communities already do a superior job sharing their theology, we leave that work to them. We focus on strictly skills and strategies that lead to a happy, fulfilling, successful life and leave religious teaching to others.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Reprints.
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Extend A Warm Welcome To Everyone You Meet

Habitually Happy people choose to cultivate a warm, enthusiastic, energetic spirit. It’s their Best Way of Being, the Optimal Best Self target they continually try to attain and maintain. Why not try to feel your best, do your best, and be at your best all of the time?

If you summon up a sense of fun and sparkle, and honestly project it, you can’t help but take on a positive mood yourself. Try to touch each person you meet with a genuinely warm, caring spirit. Make genuine goodness your guiding goal.

Habitually happy people extend a warm welcome to everyone they meet. They continually try to touch each person they meet with a genuinely warm, kind, caring spirit. If they can help you, especially when it’s at no cost or risk to them, they will always do it because that’s the way they want to live. They don’t withold help to gain control or advantage.

They don’t try to change a person’s mood or become let’s be happy cheer leaders. They simply greet everyone warmly, they try to touch each person they meet with a genuinely positive spirit. If it comes back to them, so much the better. If it doesn’t, they don’t worry. By extending warmth and goodness to others they feel it within themselves.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED! Reprints
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Happiness And Work

Happiness comes from a job well done, from knowing we’ve accomplished something of value in a positive and joyous way. Even repetitive, mundane tasks can be made beautiful by the spirit in which we address them. Joy in all we do is something we can choose to cultivate.

The best way to do anything well is to cultivate a love for it.

It makes no sense at all to have our attitudes in conflict with the actions we must take to achieve our goals. That’s a sign we need to change what we’re doing, change how we feel about it, or both.

Excellence is a function of the attention, care and concern we give to what we do. Mediocre results from mediocre efforts bring little joy or satisfaction. We can choose to excel and do well through the attention, care and concern we extend to our work.

Happiness can come from doing an ordinary job extraordinarily well and taking pride in our achievements. Happiness can come from achieving something we value and celebrating our success.

Happiness comes from the joyous spirit of attention, care and concern with which we can choose to address our work.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Reprints
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Rapid Rebound - The Resilience Response

Want to speed your rebound from life’s disappointments and difficulties? Imagine how you will think, act and feel when you have put the difficulty behind you. Envision what it will be like once you have rebounded from the problem and try to adopt that mental perspective.

Once we have put a problem behind us, the difficulty:

- Absorbs less time and attention.

- Causes us less emotional pain.

- Our view of the problem changes.

As we reposition our perspective on the problem, our perception of the problem changes. The key is to want a less painful perspective. Resiliency is important to Happiness. Imagining a rebound mind set helps us to acquire a new view of our alternatives and opportunities.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Reprints
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ESE Your Way To Happiness

Eat, Sleep and Exercise to feel happy, healthy and energized.

Eat Foods that help make you feel happy, alert and healthy. Some meals make us feel especially good for several hours, eat those foods! Body systems differ, food that gives some people a burst of energy makes others tired and sluggish. Eat what’s good for you. Avoid foods that taste good for a few minutes and leave you feeling low and slow for a long time.

Sleep is refreshment. Peak performance requires adequate rest. A small, additional investment of time in sleep can enhance efficiency and producticity for the entire day. Your best investment of time often lies in adequate rest.

Exercise - Activity raises our adrenalin levels and sharpens mental acuity. Exercising daily keeps the mind and body alert. Invest twenty minutes daily in a brisk walk for your body and private time for your mind. It’s time you spend building happiness and health.

You can’t think, act and feel your best or be at your best when you are tired, hungry, mis-fed or sluggish.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved! Reprints.
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Practice Being Your Best Self

We all experience those magical days when we are thinking, acting and feeling our very best. Our minds are alert, sharp, focused, we are able to concentrate well. An easy, relaxed powerful energy flows through our bodies. Our spirits seem to soar with joy.

Remember those days, recall those thoughts and feelings. Feel the rhythm and beat of that marvelous, positive energy flowing through your body. Connect with those and feelings and take them on for yourself. Project them and they will be yours.

You can’t step into that magic zone by concentrating on how bad you feel!

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Reprints.
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Money Is Not Happiness

Here’s further proof that “Money Does NOT Buy Happiness” from a new study in Australia. ABC-Australia Higher income people showed less satisfaction with their lives than people in lower income brackets.

Money buys beautiful things that bring Situational Happiness. It shows superficial status and financial success. Money buys interesting, enlightening experiences, education and travel. Money buys freedom from some worries, it provides food, shelter and health insurance. It buys delightful distractions and diversions.

These are external experiences that temporarily elevate our feelings.

Habitually Happy People focus on Spiritual Success which brings Sustained Happiness. It’s fairly independent of their external environment or circumstances.

It’s easy to confuse things that make us happy temporarily with the true source of happiness, which ultimately lies within ourselves. Unhappy people will be unhappy irrespecttive of their wealth and resources. Habitually Happy People have decided to be happy no matter what happens around them.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Reprints.
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Chaos, Calm & Creativity

It’s a myth that Happiness generally comes with calm, complacent serenity. Happiness flows from action, achievement, accomplishment and activity.

Our happiest moments often come at our most exuberant, creative times. Most people feel extraordinarily happy when they are in their most creative state. Creativity comes with energy and excitement.

“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce - the cuckoo clock!”
~ Orson Wells, The Third Man, 1949.

Happiness often comes from creativity, with energy and excitement.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Reprints.
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See Yourself Smiling, Successful & Happy

Stop for a moment, detach from what you’re doing. Take a few deep breaths and relax. In your mind’s eye, see yourself smiling, successful and happy. Take a moment to relish those good feelings, connect with them and make them your own. Now radiate and project those positive, happy, successful feelings.

You’ll find yourself smiling, and feeling happy and successful.

We tend to take on the feelings we consciously choose to radiate and project. Summon up a sense of joy and genuinely project it, you will feel happy.

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved.
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Focus On How You Want To Feel

Habitually Happy People know how they like to feel, they have a sort of Best Self optimal way of being and feeling. They try to be that way and feel that way most of the time.

Yes, like the rest of us, they times when they fall into the dumps or doldrums. But they catch themselves and try to stop, re energize and return to their Best Self way of being.

They’ll say, “I don’t like myself when I feel or act that way.”

They focus on how they want to feel and try to become that way. When you focus on a bad feelings they expand in your mind. Happy People focus on how they want to feel, not on what they want to cast off.

It’s a powerful technique from the Happiness Habit!

Happiness Habit: Skills & Strategies of Habitually Happy People
Copyright 2005, Michele Moore. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED! Reprints.
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