Sunday
May272007
The Happiness Habit
Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 07:43PM
A plastic surgeon by the name of Maxwell Maltz wrote a wonderful book, published in 1960, called Psycho-Cybernetics. One of the chapters in the book claim that with focus and effort we can acquire happiness as a habit, because happiness can be practiced and learned.
He suggests that each of us should make 8 important commitments each day:
- I will be as cheerful as possible.
- I will feel and try to act a little more friendly towards other people.
- I am going to be a little less critical and a little more tolerant of other people, their faults, failings and mistakes. I will place the best possible interpretation upon their actions.
- Insofar as possible, I am going to act as if success were inevitable, and I am already the sort of personality I want to be. I will practice "acting like" and "feeling like" this new personality.
- I will not let my own opinion color facts in a pessimistic or negative way.
- I will practice smiling at least three times the day.
- Regardless of what happens, I will react calmly and as intelligently as possible.
- I will ignore completely and close my mind to all those pessimistic and negative "facts" which I can do nothing to change.
(Psycho-Cybernetics, Pages 109-110)
Try this. It'll take some effort, but if you implement these 8 decisions into your life, even if just for a day, I promise you'll experience something special.
Robert Louis Stevenson may have said it best, "The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the dominion of outward conditions."
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