March 13, 2013 – I’m not a fan of the self help section of the bookstore, but here is some of the best advice I’ve ever read, courtesy of www.dumblittleman.com. The list is long, and they all may not apply to you, but I’ll bet you will relate to many of the items on it.
75 reasons you’re unhappy (and 75 solutions)
1. Desire – “When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself – Oh yes, I already have everything that I really need.” – Dalai Lama
2. Loneliness – “Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Tillich
3. Materialism – “An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth – in short, materialism – does not fit into this world because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.” – E.F. Schumacher
4. You wish you were someone else – “The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” – Lao Tzu
5. You don’t make time – “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” Michael Jordan
6. You surround yourself with the wrong people (unhappy people) – “Surround yourself with good people. Whether they’re the best or not, people are capable of learning if they’ve got good hearts and good souls.” – Kid Rock
7. You haven’t found your purpose – “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity since it is the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.” – Ayn Rand
8. You compare yourself to others – “When you stop comparing what is right here and now with what you wish were, you can begin to enjoy what is.” – Cheri Huber
9. You’re being someone you’re not – “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest achievement.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. You’re stuck in the past – “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha
11. You’re stuck in the future – “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” Pope John Paul II
12. You’re unhealthy – “The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.” – Deepak Chopra
13. You’re negative – “Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of your inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through… whenever we see a negative state that is where we can destroy it.” – Vernon Howard
14. You’re irresponsible – “In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
15. You’re a perfectionist – “I’m a perfectionist. I can’t help it, I get really upset with myself if I fail in the least.” – Justin Timberlake
16. You’re afraid of failure – “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
17. You’re insecure – “The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.” Erich Fromm
18. You’re in debt – “A man in debt is so far a slave.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
19. You seek validation – “Choose yourself.” – Seth Godin
20. You have a get mentality – “A few people, not many, but a few, take. They take the best education they can get, pushing teachers for more, finding things to do, exploring non-defined niches. They take more courses than the minimum, they invent new projects and they show up with questions. What have you taken today?” – Seth Godin
21. You don’t pick yourself – “You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what to do. And you are the guy who’ll describe where to go.” – Dr. Seuss
22. You’re unskilled – I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.” – Dean Koontz
23. You neglect personal relationships – “Trust is to human relationships what faith is to gospel living. It is the beginning place, the foundation upon which more can be built. Where trust is, love can flourish.” – Barbara Smith
24. You procrastinate – “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” – Lord Chesterfield
25. You don’t give enough – “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward
26. You don’t receive enough – “Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.” – Jim Rohn
27. You try to control everything – “As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.” – Emmanuel Teney
28. You hold grudges – “I’ve had a few arguments with people, but I never carry a grudge. You know why? While you’re carrying a grudge, they’re out dancing.” – Buddy Hackett
29. You play by the rules – “If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.” Katharine Hepburn
30. You’re unrealistic – “I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” – Walt Disney
31. Your professional expectations are out of line with reality – “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu
32. You’re not learning – “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” – Henry Ford
33. You have unrealized dreams – “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchill
34. You’re bored – “The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.” – Susan Sontag
35.You’re too busy – “If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle – absolute busyness – then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy – and without consciousness.” Gunther Grass
36. You don’t sleep enough – “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” – Ernest Hemingway
37. You don’t spend enough time alone – “Solitude is the place of purification.” – Martin Buber
38. You spend too much time alone – “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” – Kurt Vonnegut
39. You’re acting (you pretend to be happy when you aren’t) – “I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.” – Paulo Coelho
40. You’re jealous (of people who are happy) – “Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.” – Mary Schmitt
41. You don’t take the time to actually set goals – “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins
42. You never act on your dreams – All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
43. You’re dependent – “The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.” Denis Waitley
44. You can’t accept happiness (don’t think you deserve it) – “We all of us deserve happiness or none of us does.” – Mary Gordon
45. You’re always one step away (you think the next step will finally do it for you) – “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” – Erich Fromm
46. You ignore opportunities – “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Jefferson
47. You’re complacent – “Don’t let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does the truth – don’t let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” – Aesop
48. You hate your job – “Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
49. You’re with the wrong person – “People are not perfect… very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they’ve had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.” – Patricia Hewitt
50. You have no spiritual life – “Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.” – Buddha
51. You do not provide any value (to others) – “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
52. You’re lazy – “Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.” – Lord Chesterfield
53. You have no excitement – “If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life – that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment – that would be the perfect state.” – Cate Blanchett
54. You don’t belong – “By building relations we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier.” – Susan Lieberman
55. You have no real friends – “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” – Oprah Winfrey
56. You’re afraid of yourself – “I’m sure not afraid of success and I’ve learned not to be afraid of failure. The only thing I’m afraid of now is of being someone I don’t like much.” – Anna Quindlen
57.You mistake structure for control – “As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.” – Emmanuel Teney
58. You don’t live where you are – “Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.” – Denis Waitley
59. You over-complicate life – “Truth is, I’ll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candor.” – Tom Hanks
60. You don’t focus – “One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.” – Tony Robbins
61. You care too much about what others think – “I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it’s shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it’s a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It’s truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.” – Tom Hooper
62. You lack gratitude – “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” – Denis Waitley
63. You don’t relax – “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” – Alan Watts
64. You don’t take risks – “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T.S. Elliot
65. You limit yourself – “The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.” – Helen Keller
66. You limit others – “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
67. You’re impatient – “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.” Robert Schuller
68. You don’t have a hobby – “Artists usually don’t make all that much money, and they often keep their artistic hobby despite the money rather than due to it.” – Linus Torvalds
69. You commute too far – “I’m very fortunate in that I don’t have money problems. I have lunch with my wife at home. I don’t have to commute, so I have much more time with my family.” Kazuo Ishiguro
70. You don’t like your town/city – “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” – George Burns
71. You don’t have a dog – “Any dog under 50 lbs. is a cat, and cats are worthless.” – Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
72. You equate comfort with happiness – “Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.” – Dean Karnazes
73. You’re self-absorbed – “To attempt to advise conceited people is like whistling against the wind.” – Thomas Hood
74. You’re out of shape – “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” – John F. Kennedy
75. You don’t love yourself – “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” – Lucille Ball
March 29, 2013 – My good friend Dina is the first person I heard use the term purchase anxiety, the feeling that she gets when spending money on something she shouldn’t.
janemcmaster 