MeetUp!
I would like to tell you all a little bit about myself as it relates to what I do here in this blog and my life. I have spent the better part of my adult life lost. Lost because I had a purpose, a vision and a calling but did not have the courage to follow my dream. A dream of helping people. Part of the hesitation was fear. Fear of rejection or being criticized. Fear of not being normal. Fear of being outcast or hurt by the people closest to me. My family. I have always been called to a vocational role in life. Helping humanity or people in general. Helping humanity to me was going on a missionary or “Peace Corps” type of commitment. Which I was ready at a very young age. That is another story altogether.
When I was in my mid 20’s i became involved with an outreach church. Very involved in the community. I was encouraged to become a pastor. So I was happy to help people and if that meant becoming a pastor to achieve my dream, whether I was comfortable or not I did it. I loved it! I fell in love with the people. I was young. Having people come to me old enough to be my parents asking for help was very intimidating. I was suppose to have the answers. At 26 I would ask these people coming to me, “are you happy?”. I would always get the same answer. “It doesn’t matter whether I am happy or not, help me with my problem”.
That is where it began.
I realized that people wanted the easy way out. They wanted someone to give them the answer without putting in the work. Being happy is work. Staying happy is work. Sharing happiness is work. It is the most rewarding work you will ever embark on. It brings good health and great results. It is a free process and it is easy to apply. The concept is simple. But it is hard work. It sounds contradicting, easy and hard work.
If you are familiar with my story and what I have written about mindset you will understand this contradiction. I have read so many different authors, doctors, psychologists, therapists, motivational speakers and so on…… They all have great methods and processes. I do not have the level of education that they have. Nor do I want to have to pay back the loans. I do not have the genius and knowledge that these individuals have gained through their studies. I cannot articulate myself as eloquently as they. I only have a message that I have had in my soul, my essence, my being…. We ALL have a choice to be happy. It is inside of each and everyone of us. We are born looking for nurturing. We gravitate towards joy. We are hungry to be fed by love. We yearn for attention. As children we look for any sort of attention. If we are suffering from a mommy daddy syndrome deficiency(if that is even a plausible word) we look for a replacement in the type of people we chose as a partner. We replace our emptiness with vices and self medicate in many different ways. There are so many studies to our human nature requiring us to be loved and as to why??. I might not have the credentials to make any statements on this subject. If you do not like what I am saying get out of my blog. Stop reading now and do not upset yourself. If you continue I will do my best to love you through my words as a friend and someone that has nothing to gain from this blog. I have no hidden agenda. I am not trying to convince you to buy a product. I am not advertising any links here for you to click and I make pay per clicks. I am here for my love of people.
I am here to tell you what my soul is crying out. I am here to express my love for this world that is bleeding with misery, depression, anxiety, war, phobias, fear, anger, resentment, hurt, and so on and so forth. What is my message? Be Happy! Choose to be happy. Open your eyes. If someone or something makes you sad or upset because your perception of the situation is that it is directed towards you, and you choose to be sad because of it….Ask yourself this…”Can I control it?” “Can I control the person directing their pain towards me?”. More than likely not. So why waste time worrying about them or it or whatever…. You will waste your time. Spend your time choosing to remain in a happy state wishing that person the best and encouraging if they want to accept. If not remove yourself or avoid the emotion that allows them to affect you. Do not avoid them, Avoid the negative emotion and be a beacon for happiness.
Make sense? Choose to be happy.
Ok. I REALLY got off topic.
Back to the young Pastor that was ME> I did not see eye to eye with the pastor over me so Left. He wanted me to teach a certain way I wanted to teach people how to be happy. He said it was irrelevant. I said I wasn’t ready to be a pastor his way. So I left. I let down many people. It hurt me for a long time. I spent a greater part of my adult life feeling sorry for myself and unhappy. I do not know why to this day. Fast forward to 2007. My life started to change. Because I was fed up and asked God…. I want to be happy now. Boy be careful what you ask for. At the time I had everything I needed or so I thought. But I knew I did not have happiness inside of me.
Health started to deteriorate. My Beloved Brother committed suicide, loving uncle died, dad died, laid off of work, lost my house, divorced, realized I was a bad husband. I felt like I disappointed my children. I state all of this because when I was going through this I was relieved. I finally had nothing left and was emotionless and felt nothing. I was tired. I wanted to die and was ready. But I hear my voice inside. To me and only my opinion, that is God. My essence, my soul, My creator, my link to home. I listened. I decided to be happy. my mother had been telling me all along to be happy through anything. It is a waste of time to be sad. Love myself and be happy. Laugh at it all. It is OK to cry but cry and then be happy. Get over yourself and be-strong. Happiness is a choice. I wanted to share this to everyone. I wanted to share this secret. It must be a secret because the world is unhappy and everyone is so upset all the time no one must know and very few people are happy. I wanted to help people again. But not as a pastor.
So fast forward to now. for 5 years now I have been helping people individually. I ask them the same question. What can you control? they give me all sorts of answers. I always tell them the same thing. Your perception. How you perceive everything. Simply…all you can control is your mind, your thoughts and what comes out of your mouth. All you have control over is whether you want to be happy or not.
All I want do is teach people how to be happy. The rest will be solved. Everything will be solved in your life if you realize the secret to happiness. you can have a clearer mind to figure shit out. Sincerely so! I think this is the answer to the worlds problems. Happiness. Yes Happiness.
If you don’t like this story and my answer to this old age question then stop reading now. If I am crazy in your opinion than you have a choice to be miserable and thing your old wrong ways that don’t work. It has worked for me and any others. So there! OK. I will calm down. I love you. I state that at times because you have a choice to be here or not. You have a choice to be happy or not. You can DO or NOT. WE have choices. No one can choose for you.
I started a Meet Up Group.(MeetUp Group Happiness in Rancho Cucamonga) AND in five days I have 30 people either sign up or contact me by email expressing that they need somewhere to be around happiness. 5 days. here is a need for happiness. There it is. The state of mind of this world. We yearn for it. We look for it. We are addicted to it. We look for it in the wrong forms. We think it has to be external to trigger something internal and all along it is internal first. We have to decide first and then we can feel and then share!!! Wake up. it is a choice not an event. You do not need sex drugs or rock and roll. you do not need money or a validation from someone that doesn’t care about you. We have to love ourselves and accept who we are and decide we are good enough and then BE happy. In a room alone for 2 hours with nothing but you and your thoughts. BE Happy. TRY THAT.
ok Im Tired and I am out! See you at the meet up group if you are near by. If not keep reading this blog!
As Always i love you!!!!! So Much!
I Want To Be Unhappy!!!!
Is there any way we can be happy without effort. One day wake up and it is a feeling that we cannot run away from? Is there anyway where our learned trait and habits are that of a positive nature? Could we have success in transforming our mindset to that of loving all the time and not having a reason for it, with no effort and just because? What I know now in my present perceived reality is that there is little effort spent in being miserable. It is much easier to blame everyone else and including work, government, school, the milkman, the in-laws, and the person that cut you off this morning….. It is so easy and comforting to know we do not have to take accountability for our unhappiness. In the first place most of the time we have created our own damage to our psyche. We have conditioned ourselves to believe the perceptions we have allowed ourselves to listen to. There is a group of people that have visited Los Angeles this month from the Special Olympics. They did not choose their current state of being. Their being is perceived by the rest of the world as challenging and out of the normal in society, yet they are an amazing group of people performing amazing feats that a “normal” person cannot even begin to accomplish. They are truly special. They have attacked that exterior perception of themselves and internalized their view of themselves as amazing and powerful! If you watch any news reports about their games and see their faces, they are always happy. Are they challenged? Yes of course they are, but not in the way you think. They are challenged because of the general view of their state of being. They do know the difference between unhappiness and happiness. They do have a choice and know that either is available.
Effortless happiness is only achieved through quiet time or what is called meditation, or at least some inter thinking of ones being. Getting in touch with your essence so important if you are to find that internal happiness that is called love. We all have it inside us. It is our soul, essence, being, spirit, Conscious…..Yes conscious….. If we start to understand what we are about and how we are made we can stop suffering. WE will always experience. The perceptions of the experience will change. We can sort out the emotions and feelings and categorize them accordingly. We can wash our different negative states of mind with love and transform them into amazing experiences that strengthen us and shape who we can potentially be. It is hard work but worth the effort. It is harder to work towards that connection to our essence than to accept the vulgarity of pain and discomfort as “normal”.
I always tell people that they have a choice. To be happy or not. I always get the reply that I make it sound so easy. Where in that statement did I say it was easy? I said one or the other is our choice. The easy choice and most comfortable is unhappiness. There is no effort involved. No work. Just sit back accept and feel what the majority of the world is believing. Hard work is being uncomfortable, feeling the pain, conditioning you to something that is not”normal”. Inside us we have the drive that is our love for ourselves; a sense of the effort is good and just. We have a fire inside us that connects to the feeling of happiness and joy, when we experience it we do not feel our physical pains, we heal quicker, think logically, love everyone and it is reciprocated. We share our true inner selves with the world around us and it feels awesome!
Happy or Unhappy? Give it a try. I bet I am right. If I am not then don’t read this blog. I will still love you anyway.
Mindset
We go through life reacting to situations around us. Our fast paced world dictates that. WE have so many distractions to not allow us to focus on the “ME” in our lives. WE always focus on everything else around us. Our external world is very overwhelming. How do we focus on ourselves without feeling selfish or guilty? We have to change our mindset. We have to focus on our strengths and eliminate weaknesses; sort out what is causing us a rift between our happiness. All of this is an opinion of mine based on my experience and what I study and observe. You can process my information anyway that makes you comfortable. You can twist it for something that it is not. I have no gain by convincing you to believe either way from left to right. I have only a mission in life is to help you change your perceptions of Happiness.
The mindset I am talking about is a very simple process that takes a lot of hard work. First step is to accept the things you cannot change. How is that done? Well….. If you have no control over the situation or problem then you have no reason to worry about it. All you can do is change your perception towards how you are going to feel about it. Once you decide to accept what cannot be changed in your life, you will need to find out how to quiet your mind. These two steps can be done together.
Sit in a room with no distractions whatsoever and observe what comes to your thoughts. Sort out the thoughts that you cannot change or control at that present moment. Review your thoughts one by one. Eliminate one by one by what you cannot control. If there is a situation that is serious but you cannot handle at the moment your sitting there… don’t think of it. Move on to the next thought or emotion. What you will find out is that everything in life has a priority list. Some situations can be resolved with some work, with the assistance of someone else; some things will be resolved over a long and short period of time.
For the sake of the exercise you are focusing on that specific moment alone in your space, all you can control at the moment in time is quieting your mind. You are there alone in your thoughts and worrying about this or that is not important at the present moment. You will find that sitting and eliminating the thought, for a temporary moment is affordable and possible. The problem will still exist after you are done focusing. All you are doing is removing it from your thought process temporarily. (eventually permanently)
After you have removed 99.9% of what you think is important for your thought processes, you are left with an empty mindset. Fill it up with one thought or memory in your life that made you feel good. In fact think of a moment that made you feel overwhelmingly excited. So excited that you could scream and yell just remembering it. Hold on to that emotion or feeling from that moment and continue to hold it for a couple of minutes. Let it go after a five minutes. Now think of a horrible time or memory, experience in your life where it was so tragic or heartbreaking that thinking about it makes you cry. Hold on to that for five minutes and then let it go.
Now reflect on the two emotions and compare. Which one was easiest to remember? Which one was easier to re-create the emotion or feeling? Most people can remember the negative. For most it takes less time to remember the bad than the good. It takes work to remember a great moment than a negative experience. Once you remember the good moment it is easy to enjoy it. When you capture the negative moment it is hard to maintain the painful emotions you easily remembered.
At the beginning of this post I stated, “The mindset I am talking about is a very simple process that takes a lot of hard work.” This mindset is happiness. It takes work to achieve happiness but once you are there it is effortless. The hard work isn’t at maintaining happiness; the hard work is applied towards how to eliminate the distractions that block our happiness.
I hope my thoughts that I have shared will give you a little help if you are struggling with something. I love all of you and hope you will continue reading. It is all about our mindset.
God Bless.