Posts Tagged ‘spiritual freedom’

Be Cool Like Barack Obama

Do You Want To Be Cool Like Barack Obama?

A Key Happiness Habit is:

Don’t hand control of your thoughts, actions or feelings over to outside forces or people who try to hurt or harass you.

Don’t Give Them Emotional Control Over You.

Decide How You Are Going To Think, Act and Feel.

Choose Your Mood and Your Attitude.

Emotional Independence, Freedom and Balance are key Happiness Habits.

This does NOT mean that you don’t get angry or that you don’t decide to take decisive corrective action when necessary.

It does mean you weigh options carefully, decide when and how you will act and that you don’t just automatically react in anger.

Choose the timing, the place and substance of your response carefully.

We all have an Optimal Best Self – a sweet spot or optimal zone where we feel our best, do our best and perform our best. Habitually Happy people try to maintain their optimal Best Self State all of the time.  Getting angry and irrational is not part of their process.

Much has been written about Barack Obama’s Cool calm demeanor.  His actions and reactions epitomize  Emotional Independence. He decides how he will act, react and project himself.  He doesn’t let outside forces control his emotions easily.

If you let another person make you angry, you’re giving them control of your thoughts, actions, feelings and your well-being.  Don’t do it!

Don’t Help Them Hurt You.

The next time someone tries to hook you into an angry response, simply think, “I’m not giving you control.”  It’s that easy.

This does not mean stuffing your feelings or suppressing your emotions.  It means not giving them control over you, your attention or your emotions.

Channel Anger Into Activism And Actions That Achieve Positive Goals.

Choose Emotional Independence and Spiritual Freedom.  It’s that easy.  Decide  how you’re going to act, don’t simply react to them. Take command and lead interactions in the direction you want to go. Make this a Happiness Habit.

It’s a great way to stay cool and happy!

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Links to our website and pages are welcomed!  Please note our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.

Explore HappinessHabit.com and HappinessBlog.com for more happiness insights!

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What is Spiritual Freedom?

utahlandscape21.jpg“The highest and greatest of the human freedoms is to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

~ Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”

The concept of Spiritual Freedom grew from Viktor Frankl’s incredible accounts of how some men triumphed emotionally and spiritually over the most horrific circumstances, Auschwitz.

“Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical distress.”

Each inmate ultimately chose whether to succumb to prison camp mentality and become a mere product of their environment and experience or to try to triumph spiritually and be something more, better and different.

“Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”

Frankl describes how some men went about comforting and aiding their fellow prisoners while others succumbed to the most selfish, basest motivations and desires.

Frankl illustrates a key aspect of the Happiness Habit :

“If we don’t consciously decide what sort of person we want to be and  then work to become that person, our environment and our experience determine both our identity and our destiny for us.”

Beyond the barbed wires in life, there is always a wide expanse of opportunity, spiritual freedom and emotional independence that frees us from being dominated and controlled by our circumstances.

We can decide what sort of person we want to be and work to become that person.  We can decide to practice being our best selves all of the time and and continually try to do our best, feel our best and be our best all of the time. Our best will continue to get even better.

A key to happiness and spiritual success is to always look past the barbed wire!

See HappinessHabit.com for more happiness insights. Copyright 2007, Michele Moore.  All Rights Reserved.  Reprints.  Michele Moore is author of How To Live A Happy Life – 101 Ways To Be Happier.

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