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The
Happiness Formula Newsletter June
20th, 2005 It’s
an exciting time of year as graduates enter a new stage of their lives. The
future is wide open, even if a bit uncertain. Whether
graduating from high school or college, however, happiness classes were
notably missing. In spite of any career success education facilitates, a
happy life is not assured. Solve this problem today
by giving graduates the happiness tools they need. All Happiness
Kits are discounted an extra 10% until July 1st, 2005. That’s
20% off individual product prices. Graduates can also receive this newsletter for
extra happiness tools and insights. Creating a
happy life for oneself is the whole point of life. Don’t let
your graduates fail because they didn’t have happiness classes. If
you don’t have a graduate in your family this year, please pass this newsletter
on to your friends who do. Kindest
regards, Julian
Kalmar jkalmar@thehappinessformula.com Contents > Article – The Happy Hungarian Watchmaker – Part 4 – Changing Viewpoints > Article – Harmonizing for Happiness > Zelig’s Happiness Corner - Gratitude tip #2 by Zelig Pliskin. > As A Man Thinketh – Chapter Two – Effect of Thought on Circumstances >
Happiness
Products: Happiness:
The Highest Gift, Happy 4 Life
& Food for
Thought.
The Happy
Hungarian Watchmaker – Part 4 “Changing Viewpoints” Copyright 2005 by Julian
Kalmar. All rights reserved. During his watch repairs, the master craftsman was exceptionally careful. However, once in a great while, a little part would jump out from between his tweezers and fly onto the floor. The irregularities in the wooden floor made superb camouflage for the little parts, so finding them sometimes took half an hour. Slowing our searches was the very real danger of destroying a part by stepping on it. As a youngster, I wasn’t allowed to move until the part was spotted. Later, when it was clear I could be careful, the master showed me a new way of searching. After visually scanning an area big enough for my body, the master had me lie down. Then, by sighting along the floor with one eye closed, the errant part became instantly visible! My new viewpoint made finding parts easy. So it is with life. Many of life’s difficulties result from poor viewpoints. We make things harder than they need to be—and prolong our suffering—because we don’t think of changing viewpoints. For example, does getting laid-off mean you’re worthless? Or are you happy to advance into a better career sooner? Is stubbing your toe angering? Or could it be pleasing to learn greater awareness to help you throughout life? Is your teenager uncooperative, or is this a chance to improve your people skills and learn to choose your fights? Each difficulty is a doorway to a happier life when used as a cue to finding a better viewpoint. More
happiness actions—like changing viewpoints—can be found in
Copyright 2005 by Julian
Kalmar. All rights reserved. Harmonizing is a means of becoming happier by aligning yourself with the way the world is unfolding. To illustrate, imagine yourself in a moving crowd. If the crowd changes direction and you stubbornly insist on traveling in a straight line at the same speed, there will be collisions, upset, and maybe even a fight. Amazingly, this is how a lot of people operate—indifferent to the discord they are creating around themselves. They unknowingly create tension and unrest because they don’t know how to harmonize with their environment. def. Harmonizing –
the intentional process of making small changes in your choice of
actions to enhance the greater good. Two primary means of creating harmony are: altering the timing, and altering the location of your actions. Consider the following example, which has the potential for discord. Let’s say you have two things to accomplish one quiet Saturday morning: packaging up and taking three boxes to the post office, and writing a proposal. Just as you sit down to write the proposal, your neighbor starts mowing his lawn. The noise is unbearably distracting. You have several options. You could try to write the proposal in spite of the noise, but you’ll probably just get angry at your neighbor. You could try to find another place to write, although that could be very inconvenient. You could plead with your neighbor to delay the lawn-mowing, but that would likely upset his plans. Or, you could package up your three boxes first and head to the post office. By the time you return, the mowing will be over. Clearly, the most harmonious option is the last one. By becoming sensitive to the first inklings of inharmony, and then actively considering whether you can alter the timing or location of your actions, you can significantly improve your happiness level. Timing and location changes aren’t the only ways to increase harmony, however. Consider the lawn-mowing example again. What if your neighbor really needs to mow at exactly the same time that you must write your proposal? Both of you have committed to schedules that put you in each other’s way. Now what? How about this? Tell your neighbor that you’d be happy to mow his lawn for him if you could have this quiet time you so desperately need. Not only does this solve both of your problems, it breeds good will. Next time he’ll mow your lawn when he does his. Rather than struggling through the noise and getting secretly angry at your neighbor, you’ve found a solution that makes you friendlier to one another. This goes beyond the “win-win” situation—where competitors each try to get their fair share. It actually creates harmony and friendship by enhancing good will. I call these, “harmonizing solutions.” Everyone gets what they need, and friendship is bolstered. Creating harmonizing solutions requires two things: good will and creativity. Begin with good will and then imagine creative ways to help each other succeed. A harmonious solution can almost always be found. Happiness is the natural byproduct. More
happiness actions—like harmonizing—can be found in
Copyright 2005 by Zelig Pliskin. All rights reserved. Here is a one-sentence formula for becoming a
grateful person: Think, Speak, and Act like a grateful person does. There is
no mystery about how to become a person who has internalized the attribute of
gratitude. Think gratefully. Speak gratefully. Act gratefully. When you
consistently do these three things, you are consistently grateful. Even
before this pattern has become consistent for you, every little bit of
thinking, speaking, and acting this way makes you more grateful than if you
wouldn't have thought, spoken, or acted this way. Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, one
of the foremost experts on happiness, is graciously allowing a reprint of
some of his techniques for improving happiness using gratitude. If his
methods appeal to you, please buy his book, “Thank You!” It is very
reasonably priced at only $9.99, but there’s currently a 20% online discount
offer of only $7.99 from ArtScroll. “Thank You!” was ArtScroll’s best-selling
book in May 2005.
As A Man
Thinketh – Chapter Two “Effect of
Thought on Circumstances” by James
Allen A man's mind may be likened to a
garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but
whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no
useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds
will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates
his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits
which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all
the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection
the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this
process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of
his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws
of thought, and understands with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought
forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character,
circumstances, and destiny. Thought and character are one,
and as character can only manifest and discover itself
through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life
will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state.
This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an
indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are
so intimately connected with some vital thought element within himself that,
for the time being, they are indispensable to his development. Every man is where he is by the
law of his being. The thoughts which he has built into his character have
brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of
chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true
of those who feel "out of harmony" with their surroundings as of
those who are contented with them. As the progressive and evolving
being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he
learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it
passes away and gives place to other circumstances. Man is buffeted by circumstances
so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions. But
when he realizes that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being
out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of
himself. That circumstances grow
out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practiced
self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the
alteration in his circumstances has been in exact ratio with his altered
mental condition. So true is this that when a man earnestly applies himself
to remedy the defects in his character, and makes swift and marked progress,
he passes rapidly through a succession of vicissitudes. The soul attracts that which it
secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches
the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its
unchastened desires - and circumstances are the means by which the soul
receives its own. Every thought seed sown or
allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own,
blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of
opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad
fruit. The outer world of circumstance
shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant
external conditions are factors which make for the ultimate good of the
individual. As the reaper of his own harvest, man learns both by suffering
and bliss. A man does not come to the
almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate of circumstance, but by the
pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man
fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal
thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of
opportunity revealed its gathered power. Circumstance does not make the
man; it reveals him to himself. No such conditions can exist as descending
into vice and its attendant sufferings apart from vicious inclinations, or
ascending into virtue and its pure happiness without the continued
cultivation of virtuous aspirations. And man, therefore, as the Lord and
master of thought, is the maker of himself, the shaper and author of
environment. Even at birth the soul comes to its own, and through every step
of its earthly pilgrimage it attracts those combinations of conditions which
reveal itself, which are the reflections of its own purity and impurity, its
strength and weakness. Men do not attract that which
they want, but that which they are. Their whims, fancies, and
ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires
are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean. The "divinity that
shapes our ends" is in ourselves; it is our very self. Man is manacled
only by himself. Thought and action are the jailers of Fate - they imprison,
being base. They are also the angels of Freedom - they liberate, being noble.
Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns.
His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize
with his thoughts and actions. In the light of this truth,
what, then, is the meaning of "fighting against circumstances"? It means
that a man is continually revolting against an effect without, while
all the time he is nourishing and preserving its cause in his heart.
That cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness;
but whatever it is, it stubbornly retards the efforts of its possessor, and
thus calls aloud for remedy. Men are anxious to improve their
circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain
bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to
accomplish the object upon which his heart is set. This is as true of earthly
as of heavenly things. Even the man whose sole object is to acquire wealth
must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can accomplish
his object; and how much more so he who would realize a strong and
well-poised life? Here is a man who is wretchedly
poor. He is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should
be improved. Yet all the time he shirks his work, and considers he is
justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the
insufficiency of his wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments
of those principles which are the basis of true prosperity. He is not only
totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually attracting
to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out,
indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts. Here is a rich man who is the
victim of a painful and persistent disease as the result of gluttony. He is
willing to give large sums of money to get rid of it, but he will not
sacrifice his gluttonous desires. He wants to gratify his taste for rich and
unnatural foods and have his health as well. Such a man is totally unfit to
have health, because he has not yet learned the first principles of a healthy
life. Here is an employer of labor who
adopts crooked measures to avoid paying the regulation wage, and, in the hope
of making larger profits, reduces the wages of his workpeople. Such a man is
altogether unfitted for prosperity. And when he finds himself bankrupt, both
as regards reputation and riches, he blames circumstances, not knowing that
he is the sole author of his condition. I have introduced these three
cases merely as illustrative of the truth that man is the cause (though
nearly always unconsciously) of his circumstances. That, while aiming at the
good end, he is continually frustrating its accomplishment by encouraging
thoughts and desires which cannot possibly harmonize with that end. Such
cases could be multiplied and varied almost indefinitely, but this is not
necessary. The reader can, if he so resolves, trace the action of the laws of
thought in his own mind and life, and until this is done, mere external facts
cannot serve as a ground of reasoning. Circumstances, however, are so
complicated, thought is so deeply rooted, and the conditions of happiness
vary so vastly with individuals, that a man's entire soul condition
(although it may be known to himself) cannot be
judged by another from the external aspect of his life alone. A man may be honest in certain
directions, yet suffer privations. A man may be dishonest in certain
directions, yet acquire wealth. But the conclusion usually formed that the
one man fails because of his particular honesty, and that the other
prospers because of his particular dishonesty, is the result of a
superficial judgment, which assumes that the dishonest man is almost totally
corrupt, and honest man almost entirely virtuous. In the light of a deeper
knowledge and wider experience, such judgment is found to be erroneous. The
dishonest man may have some admirable virtues which the other does not
possess; and the honest man obnoxious vices which are absent in the other.
The honest man reaps the good results of his honest thoughts and acts; he
also brings upon himself the sufferings which his vices produce. The
dishonest man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness. It is pleasing to human vanity
to believe that one suffers because of one's virtue. But not until a man has
extirpated every sickly, bitter, and impure thought from his mind, and washed
every sinful stain from his soul, can he be in a position to know and declare
that his sufferings are the result of his good, and not of his bad qualities.
And on the way to that supreme perfection, he will have found working in his
mind and life, the Great Law which is absolutely just, and which cannot give
good for evil, evil for good. Possessed of such knowledge, he will then know,
looking back upon his past ignorance and blindness, that his life is, and
always was, justly ordered, and that all his past experiences, good and bad,
were the equitable outworking of his evolving, yet unevolved self. Good thoughts and actions can
never produce bad results. Bad thoughts and actions can never produce good
results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing
from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and
work with it. But few understand it in the mental and moral world (though its
operation there is just as simple and undeviating), and they, therefore, do
not cooperate with it. Suffering is always the
effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the
individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. The
sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is
useless and impure. Suffering ceases for him who is pure. There could be no
object in burning gold after the dross had been removed, and perfectly pure
and enlightened being could not suffer. The circumstances which a man
encounters with suffering are the result of his own mental inharmony. The
circumstances which a man encounters with blessedness, not material
possessions, are the measure of right thought. Wretchedness, not lack of
material possessions, is the measure of wrong thought. A man may be cursed
and rich; he may be blessed and poor. Blessedness and riches are only joined
together when the riches are rightly and wisely used. And the poor man only
descends into wretchedness when he regards his lot as a burden unjustly
imposed. Indigence and indulgence are the
two extremes of wretchedness. They are both equally unnatural and the result
of mental disorder. A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy,
healthy, and prosperous being. And happiness, health, and prosperity are the
result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer, of the man
with his surroundings. A man only begins to be a man
when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden
justice which regulates his life. And as he adapts his mind to that
regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition,
and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts. He ceases to kick against
circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid
progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities
within himself. Law, not confusion, is the
dominating principle in the universe. Justice, not injustice, is the soul and
substance of life. And righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and
moving force in the spiritual government of the world. This being so, man has
but to right himself to find that the universe is right; and during the
process of putting himself right, he will find that as he alters his thoughts
toward things and other people, things and other people will alter toward
him. The proof of this truth is in
every person, and it therefore admits of easy investigation by systematic
introspection and self-analysis. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and
he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the
material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be
kept secret, but it cannot. It rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit
solidifies into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into
circumstances of destitution and disease. Impure thoughts of every kind
crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into
distracting and adverse circumstances. Thoughts of fear, doubt, and
indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which
solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence. Lazy thoughts crystallize into
habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of
foulness and beggary. Hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into
habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of
injury and persecution. Selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits
of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. On the other hand, beautiful
thoughts of all crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which
solidify into genial and sunny circumstances. Pure thoughts crystallize into
habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of
repose and peace. Thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision
crystallize into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success,
plenty, and freedom. Energetic thoughts crystallize
into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of
pleasantness. Gentle and forgiving thoughts crystallize into habits of
gentleness, which solidify into protective and preservative circumstances.
Loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness
for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity
and true riches. A particular train of thought
persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the
character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his
circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely,
shape his circumstances. Nature helps every man to the
gratification of the thoughts which he most encourages, and opportunities are
presented which will most speedily bring to the surface both the good and
evil thoughts. Let a man cease from his sinful
thoughts, and all the world will soften toward him,
and be ready to help him. Let him put away his weakly and sickly thoughts,
and lo! opportunities will spring up on every hand to aid his strong
resolves. Let him encourage good thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him
down to wretchedness and shame. The world is your kaleidoscope, and the
varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents
to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts. You will be what you will to be; In the next
issue, you’ll find chapter three – “Effect of Thought on Health and the Body”
Order before July 1st and receive an
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Outline and excerpt Order
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excerpts Order here Food for
Thought
by Lionel Ketchian (founder of the Happiness Club) is really two treats in
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* Special thanks to Sid Madwed’s
website for ready access to these quotations. To
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