Friends...how many of us have them?

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” Tennessee Williams

OK, a little Whodini old school rap. Up to this point I have been a little stern about the things that are required when pursuing personal happiness. I thought I would lighten it up a bit. Everybody has friends. Old school pals, acquaintances from work, people you met at a bar or picnic. True friends are a gift, because unlike family, their kindness and loyalty is completely voluntary and heartfelt. Family bonds sometimes are made out of obligation or loyalty to “blood”, but true friends choose each other. It is very important to have at least one true friend in your life. Someone you can trust without fail, someone who will never judge you, and someone who would put your life ahead of their own. At the same time, you must strive to be this person for all the close relationships in your life. The bonds of friendship are truly the cornerstone of morality in our society. Courtesy, compassion, love, and honesty are all traits of a true friend, and they are traits that you should always seek in order to live a harmonious life. If you strive to be the best friend you can to each of your friends, your goodness and positive energy will spread exponentially. When you accept someone as your friend, you accept a responsibility to be the guardian for that person’s well-being. Imagine if you had several people trying to insure your well-being and happiness. Sounds like a good plan to me.

This blog goes out to all of my good friends. Thank you for all that you are in my life, and I hope to live up to the love and understanding that you consistently show me.

Fear

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

Bene Gesserit Litany

An appropriate Halloween topic. Fear is one of the main limiting factors in our ongoing pursuit of happiness. The reason fear is so crippling is that it is almost universal in its application. People are afraid of everything and anything, and every fear is different. I will just give some examples of situations where fear directly contributes to the detriment of a person seeking personal happiness.

Fear of failure
Fear of success
Fear of the unknown
Fear of what others will think
Fear of embarrassment
Fear of intimacy

These fears are not natural. These are learned fears, embedded in you by all the people in your life, starting with your parents. Your friends and peers solidify these fears and make them part of your personality, because you end up grouping yourself with people who carry the same fears. Unlearning these fears can be one of the hardest things to do as an adult, and requires courage that is not part of a normal personality pattern.

This courage is the ability to honestly say, “I don’t care.” If you don’t care what the consequences of your actions are, because you feel that the actions were preceded by good planning and judgment, and because you trust your decisions and judgment, you will have nothing to fear at all.

People will always judge you in anything that you do in your life. If their opinion is irrelevant and unimportant because it is below your personal decisions, then their judgment is rendered powerless. You will never be embarrassed or ashamed again. You will never care what others think of you because you are exactly who you want to be, not what they expect you to be.

This clarity of self will also allow you to choose your mate more wisely, because you will never have to try to be someone you aren’t to please a potential mate. Honesty is the root of all good intimate relationships, and this starts with your own personal honesty with yourself.

If you control your own world by projecting your personal power outward, instead of accepting what the world gives you, all of your fears will fall by the wayside. The path to happiness is paved with the strength of self, and your good relationships with those around you. You cannot take this path with fear blocking your progress.

The Victim

"Evil requires the sanction of the victim. " Ayn Rand

Everyone knows this person. It is the person who always seems to get screwed over. The one who always has the bad luck. The girlfriend that always gets cheated on. The guy who always gets passed over for promotion or who's wife is raking him over the coals in a divorce.

This person is what I call The Victim. The occasional bad deal comes for everyone just by random chance, but this person seems to be a magnet for it. Why do you think that these people are just so cursed?

In my opinion, there is a very logical reason for it. Mathematically speaking it is impossible, due to the Law of Averages, for a person to continuously get a bad deal unless that person is constantly changing his/her situation. That is, consciously or subconsciously, they are making themselves a larger target. The only way The Victim continues to get screwed over and over is because they want it to be that way.

The Victim fails to acknowledge a cardinal rule in the pursuit of happiness:
People will treat you as good or bad as you allow them to treat you.

Sympathy is a drug that some people must have to function, so they keep themselves in an unhappy situation to keep that drug coming. How many times has The Victim come to you crying about their situation, only to take no actions to change it, or returning to that situation several times expecting a different result? It is the enabling behavior of the friends and family that allow The Victim to destroy themselves.

The collateral damage caused by this enabling behavior for The Victim is the negative impact on your life. Time, money, and overall mental health is wasted on The Victim, because as long as you give them sympathy, they will continue to draw you into their web of despair. A contributing factor is if The Victim is a family member, and you feel obligated to continue trying to help them because they are your relative.

In my opinion, the best way to handle The Victim is the same way you would treat an alcoholic or drug abuser. You offer a solution to their problem. If they do not accept the solution, then you have to remain closed as a resource to them. You don't give drugs to an addict to ease their pain. It is the same with The Victim.

The worst thing about The Victim is that their unhappiness is contagious. Misery loves company, and The Victim will eventually draw you into their misery and negativity. Stay objective, and maintain a good assessment of what makes sense, and The Victim will remain powerless in your pursuit of happiness.

God has a plan...

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that he is even infinitely above it."
Benjamin Franklin

"God has a plan..." My mother, my ex-wife, and others

A weakness in human physiology that has been exploited and profited from for centuries is the genetic predisposition to worship and surrender our lives to the hands of an unknown higher power. I am not against faith, or religion properly practiced. However, I believe it is contrary to the pursuit of happiness to use God or anything else as a crutch to escape the realities of your position in life. People place their lives and situation "in the hands of the Lord", not usually from their faith in their respective deity, but because they lack the initiative or courage to take control of their own lives. They also lack the integrity to accept that most of the bad things in their life did not happen by chance or fate, but are the results of bad decisions.

I don't know if God has a plan for me, but if he does, it is for me to make my life better by my own actions. I can't wait for divine intervention or for things to run their course. In my opinion, if God truly had an active role in everyday life, babies would not die of cancer and Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard would not be millionaires.

The point I am trying to make, all religious preferences aside, is that there is a gigantic lack of personal responsibility and accountability in today's world. People absolve themselves of their personal responsibilities by giving the blame of their life's outcome to God, or blaming the color of their skin, or blaming their parents. They release the accountability for their own shortcomings, blaming bad luck, bad government, or bad genes. Aggressive pursuit of accepting and correcting one's negative behaviors is just as important, if not more so, than actively pursuing positive, productive goals.

The situation you are in is only the responsibility of one person. You alone have control of what you do and what you don't do. The basic concept of this is Cause and Effect. The results of your actions, good or bad, will produce a result, good or bad. If you choose to be happy, and take actions to make it happen, it will. If you choose not to take action, then you will remain the same.

Newton's First Law of Motion states, "Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it."This is the same concept that applies to your life. If you do not exert an external force, your life will remain in its constant state. God will not apply this external force on his/her own. You have to do it.

I am not God, but I have a plan. My plan is to be as happy and successful as I can by my actions, without hurting others. I know that this will also involve the recognition and acceptance of my mistakes as my own failures and inadequacies, not the failures of others. Or God.

Personal Integrity

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. ~Adlai Stevenson

The first obstacle to being happy is always yourself. Personal integrity is difficult to achieve, especially with the "blame everyone else" culture that is fostered in today's society. The hardest thing to do is to look in the mirror.

Honesty at it's base concept is the initial key to ensuring your well-being.

It all starts with two questions.
1. Am I truly happy?
2. Why not?

These questions seem simple, but they are not. People will do anything to lie to themselves about these two questions. They do this because of laziness, ignorance, guilt, or fear.

It is a proven fact that a person can talk themselves into anything. Suicide bombers have talked themselves into thinking that if they blow themselves up, they will be sent to Paradise to get their 72 virgins (why 72?) . Abused women have talked themselves into thinking that their marriage will eventually get better, or that there is no way out. Catholics talk themselves into thinking that their salvation is reclaimed through confession, regardless of their sins.

The path to bliss is started with honest answers to the two questions above.

The answer to the first should always be NO. I know that sounds negative, but no one has everything that they want in their lives. I am not talking about material things. Mother Teresa was probably more at peace than anyone in the world, but she had conflicts about her faith, and she always wanted to be able to do more than she was doing for the poor. So the first question is easy. If you say YES, you definitely have issues with your self-assessment and personal integrity.

The second question is the trick, because it has multiple layers.
1. Why am I not happy?
2. What is causing my unhappiness?
3. What can I do to change the cause of my unhappiness?

These are the questions that actually shape our society, because it is the reaction to these questions that drive people's behavior, and therefore their lives. It is the displacement of truth in these questions with excuses and lies to make life easier that causes sorrow and pain. The AGGRESSIVE pursuit of truth for these questions is the most difficult and profound change of behavior that any person can try to achieve. I will delve more into these questions in later posts.

The Beginning

"I become a transparent eyeball." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I observe things in my life and in the lives of people around me and I try to learn from them. I see things that other people may not see in themselves. I am not a psychologist or a therapist. I use logic and reason to come to the conclusions I draw from different situations.

It is my belief that happiness in life is only acquired through an active, aggressive pursuit. I believe that passivity or stoicism will always result in the loss of happiness, or the inability to achieve happiness.

In this blog, I will address several things that need to be actively pursued or actively avoided to increase the chance of your personal happiness.

Take this advice or leave it, but think about the behaviors and processes that I discuss to better your life, and the lives of the people around you.

Contribute your experiences and make this blog better. Challenge me and try to change my mind about things. Communication is vital to the success of any relationship, even the relationship between all of us online.