“Open minds lead to open doors.” ~Unknown

We start forming opinions at an early age, and continue all through life.

We decide what we think is right and wrong, what’s good and what’s bad. Not just on a larger scale (our religion, politics, ethics) but also in every-day interactions.

How people should act. What people should think in certain situations. What it’s OK to feel and express, and when it’s smart or polite to do so.

We develop ideas about how the world should be to support our beliefs and views–things we learned from our environment and experiences–and inevitably feel a sense of internal conflict when a person or situation doesn’t fall in line.

They won’t always. In fact, they won’t more often than they will.

Sometimes our opinions have nothing to do with fact, logic or common sense. It’s just a matter of what feels right. What our gut tells us, because our gut’s always right. Isn’t that what we’ve been told? To trust our instincts against all odds? We don’t often stop to consider what educated our gut; when we learned what to trust and what to fear.

That’s usually what it comes down to. What’s familiar and safe and supports our sense of order; versus what’s unknown and unpredictable and reminds us how little we can control.

The reality is there’s very little we can control. No matter how orderly a world we create around us, things will sometimes happen that hurt us. No matter how big a distance we place between ourselves and people we don’t understand, they will affect us directly or indirectly–and likely for the worse if they feel judged.

It’s not realistic to suggest we should all completely abandon the concept of good and bad. In fact, it’s a neurological impossibility. Research actually shows that we use conflicting experiences to form value judgments, and then subconsciously predict situations that may cause us trouble in the future in response to brain activity (in the insula cortex, which helps to process emotions).

It’s instinctive to protect ourselves. The only problem is we sometimes sense danger where there isn’t any there just because we’re scared or don’t understand. And in doing so, we limit ourselves, our experiences, and our impact on the world.

Follow your gut if you feel threatened. But stay open to the possibility there’s something you don’t know. The world’s a far more beautiful place when you see it with eyes that want to understand.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Recent Do Happy Tips:

• Stop Hoping
• Get Luckier
• Stop Explaining
• Forget Yourself

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“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.” ~Samuel Johnson

You’ll find lots of inspiring quotes and posts that suggest you hold onto hope against all odds, find hope in the darkest of moments, and generally push through difficult times with your eye on a light down the road.

This isn’t one of those posts.

Sometimes hope is a beautiful thing. It can motivate, empower and inspire you when you’re tempted to give up. But other times it just keeps you stuck, albeit with a smile on your face.

When you push through today for a better tomorrow without doing anything to create that new possibility your hope creates the illusion of change to come.

When you hold onto the past, hoping to revive a relationship, situation, or time that’s come and gone your hope precludes even better possibilities in the present.

When you hope you’ll someday know happiness—when you get the right relationship, the right job, the right adventure—your hope allows you to avoid reality. And makes it unlikely you’ll ever know happiness since hope for something else is the only way you know to experience it.

We all want to feel happy. We all want to avoid feeling pain. That’s what makes hope so exciting. It divorces us from the moment and projects us immediately into something better. It creates a beautiful illusion to superimpose on top of reality—a world that oftentimes seems difficult, unfair, and maybe even unbearable.

It allows us the freedom to close our eyes and imagine a world far better than the one we think we know.

Hope is comforting, but not always empowering. Hope gives you possibilities in tomorrow. Belief gives you possibilities now.

When you believe you can be happy regardless of what you gain or achieve, you open your eyes and find reasons to feel and share joy.

When you believe you can have something better, you take responsibility for creating it, starting in this moment.

When you believe you’re complete, even if you don’t feel good in any given moment, you challenge yourself to think beyond your emotions, and remember the larger picture.

You can hope yourself into a corner, waiting for tomorrow to improve. Or you can believe your way onto center stage, and create that tomorrow you want.

It starts with what you think, feel, and do now.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Photo here

Recent Do Happy Tips:

• Compare Yourself to Other People Well
• Get Luckier
• Stop Explaining

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” ~Lao Tzu

Conventional wisdom suggests if you want to be happy you shouldn’t compare yourself to other people. Conventional wisdom isn’t always realistic.

Try as you may to completely stop making comparisons, you’ll likely come back to the instinct at least on occasion.

Discontent is part of the human condition—the nagging sense that something’s missing, even when you seem to have it all. We’re constantly evolving, growing, and looking for new ways to expand our impact on the world. New ways to reach and stretch our potential.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you see the pursuit as constant gain, instead of the cause as constant lack. And it’s equally harmless to compare yourself to others if it allows you to learn from people you admire.

If you compare yourself to your boss, and it motivates you to work smarter, that comparison improved your life for the better.

If you compare yourself to someone your age who started a non-profit, and it inspires you to volunteer, that comparison made a difference in not just your life, but others’, too.

It’s when the comparison game gets you down on yourself that you need to be cautious.

• When you sit around complaining it isn’t fair someone had more advantages instead of working harder to create your own luck.
• When you feel paralyzed because you’ve made nowhere near the same progress as someone else in a similar place.
• When you convince yourself there’s something wrong with you for not having, achieving, or being like someone else.
• When you think you need to compete with someone else to get approval from other people.
• When you start thinking you should “have it all” instead of honing in on what you really want—which is the only way to devise a plan to get it.

Comparing for the sake of complaining does nothing but hold you back.

There will always be someone smarter, stronger, more attractive, more successful, wiser, healthier, and happier than you. Just like there will always be someone who doesn’t have your potential, advantages, or opportunities. None of it guarantees any of you are happy. And isn’t happiness the main goal in the end?

Choose your comparisons wisely. Find people who’ve done what you actually want to do and use comparisons as motivation to improve.

Do Happy. It’s something you’re due.

Read more Do Happy tips. Most recent:

• Do Happy: Get Luckier
• Do Happy: Stop Explaining
• Do Happy: Forget Yourself

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“Care and diligence bring luck.” ~Proverb

When things aren’t going well for you it’s easy to blame it on bad luck. To assume other people who are doing better had more help and advantages.

Nothing could be less empowering. This line of thinking just confirms that the world is unfair and you have limited control.

While both those things are true on some level—life isn’t fair, and in many ways, we’re not in control—happy people take responsibility and create their own luck; while their unhappy counterparts sit around blaming misfortune, feeling bitter that other people appear to get all the breaks.

Happy people focus on ways to improve their situation, put in the work, and allow themselves to enjoy minor victories.

You could be one of those people.

According to Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life, anyone can create their own luck. He argues that our thinking defines far more of our reality than chance. He notes that lucky people:

• Are open to possibilities and act on them
• Listen to their gut instincts
• Expect good fortune, which makes them more likely to recognize it
• “Turn bad luck into good” when things go awry (by seeing blessings in disguise)

Though you can’t think yourself a whole new set of circumstances or the winning lottery numbers, you can create more abundance in your life by changing your attitude and perceptions.

By taking responsibility for what you have and don’t, without blaming other people or external circumstances. By starting each day open-minded and positive so you see opportunities where other people may see adversity. By expecting the best in people and situations instead of looking for the worst (and finding it—you usually do when you’re looking).

And most importantly, by replacing the words “fair” and lucky” with “possible” and “determined.”

There will always be people who seem to accomplish and gain big things with little effort, just as there will always be people who need to work harder than you. You can’t control all the advantages you receive—especially not by dwelling on it. You can control your own effort and attention so you see the world as working with you not against you.

You can be luckier by opening your eyes and seizing the opportunities that come your way. Even the ones in disguise.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Photo here

Recent Do Happy Tips:

• Stop Explaining
• Forget Yourself
• Look Longer

You feel unusually anxious before a performance evaluation so you tell your coworker about everything that’s riding on this promotion. You don’t want her to think you’re neurotic.

You feel subdued at your family reunion, so you tell your father you have a lot on your mind. You don’t want him to think you’re antisocial.

We often feel the need to justify our feelings, like everyone outside is watching, assessing and forming judgments.

The truth is they often are.

We all watch other people—it’s hard not to; they surround us. We all assess other people—it gives us a break from assessing ourselves. And we all judge other people—it’s usually when we don’t understand and we’re scared.

Knowing these things are inevitable, we’re left with two options:

• Constantly explain ourselves to preserve how we’d like to be seen—even though it’s generally fruitless.
• Accept that our feelings will change all the time, and that we’re allowed to feel them—and that other people deal with the same things.

You’re entitled to a quiet afternoon if you don’t feel like engaging, even if you’re usually bubbly. You’re allowed to feel anxious when dealing with uncertainty, whether someone’s watching or not.

You’re even allowed to cry if you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, confused, lonely, or any emotion that makes you feel like crying. And it could potentially help. Research has proven crying out negative feelings actually reduces harmful chemicals that build up in your body due to stress.

Instead of devoting your energy to pretending you feel fine—and explaining why it may seem otherwise—let yourself feel what you feel. And let people think what they want. They’re going to do it anyway. It’s just what people do.

Instead of explaining why you don’t seem perfect, or thinking you need to forgive yourself for it, let yourself be human without apologies. Everyone else is, too. No one is always together.

Sometimes it makes sense to explain yourself—when someone misunderstands, or when you hurt someone accidentally. But most often the only person who needs an explanation is you so you can understand, accept, and work through whatever is on your mind.

And then actually feel better, instead of just trying to look better.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Recent Do Happy tips:

• Forget Yourself
• Look Longer
• Stop Doing

“When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand.” ~Sue Patton Theole

Whether you’re talking to your mother or your coworker, odds are you don’t always give your complete attention without formulating thoughts of your own. Even the most Zen person sometimes waits to talk instead of really listening.

It happens all the time.

As your sister recounts her afternoon and the hassle she encountered at the DMV, you feel the temptation to interrupt and one-up her—your afternoon was even crazier.

While your boyfriend tells you about his interview, you half-listen and half prepare your own monologue, entitled My Long Day at the Office.

And let’s not forget your daughter’s after-school recap, when it takes everything inside you to not finish her sentence, rush her to the point, and start doling out chores. Without realizing it, you’ve given a subtle cue she doesn’t deserve your time and full attention.

When you focus your energy on planning what to say next, you don’t completely hear what someone’s saying—meaning you respond to them without digesting their words first. Instead of staying open, allowing their story maximum impact, you listen halfheartedly so you’ll have your turn, and hopefully their agreement or approval.

After all, that’s what we all want: a sense that we’re heard, our feelings make sense, and we have a right to feel them.

Why not give that gift to someone else before seeking it for yourself?

It’s challenging to stop thinking about our lives long enough to focus on someone else’s. And it may seem counterintuitive—how can you converse if you don’t process what someone else says and considerate it within the context of your own reality?

It’s not so much a matter of shutting off your mind as it is learning to focus your attention. To actively listen without judging or drifting so you can respond from a place of clarity. To quell your instinct to switch the subject when that person you care about would appreciate just a little more of your time.

When you resist the urge to compare or compete, and refrain from forming opinions, you let other people know you care about what they have to say. Not just because it gives you an excuse to talk about yourself, but because you value their thoughts and learn from them.

In the process, you also give yourself a break from worrying, analyzing, and judging—a brief flicker in time to let everything go and just absorb the world around you.

In that way you benefit twofold from forgetting yourself for a while.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

• Look Longer
• Pursue Fewer Goals
• Stop Doing

Read all Do Happy tips here. Photo here.

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for a minute?” ~Henry David Thoreau

You’re riding on the subway, immersed in a book. You’re running in the park, lost in your iPod. You’re waiting in line at Starbucks, fixated on the menu.

Sometimes we act like we’re completely alone, even when  surrounded by lots of people. It’s like we’re following an unspoken rule that suggests we shouldn’t look at each other, at least not for too long.

It happens all the time: you suddenly make eye contact with someone you don’t know, and your discomfort compels you to avert your eyes. If you do manage a smile, it’s probably perfunctory, without real joy and affection behind it. Those are emotions you reserve for people you  know–people you’re more intimate with.

Some studies have indicated people who live in cities are less apt to make eye contact with strangers than people who live in suburbs. This may be a response to crowding; when you feel you don’t have enough personal space, you’re more protective of it.

If there’s truth to that hypothesis, it’s somewhat ironic. You move to a city to experience the life that pulsates through it; and respond by shutting down in everyday situations.

Resist the urge to shutdown. Instead of walking with your eyes glued to your feet, hold your head high and connect with people. Really see them and let them see you. If you’re not a confident person, connecting for more than one second may feel incredibly difficult. Just try.

When you make a genuine connection you acknowledge the person in front of you is real and worthy. You remind both them and yourself that no one operates in a vacuum. That the world is so much larger than the constructs we operate within: our families, our teams at work, our friends. And lastly, you foster the type of spirit that stays open to possibilities.

When you look a little longer you see more–more in other people, more within yourself, and more within your reach. 

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Related Do Happy tips:

• Unstrange a Stranger
• Un-Side for a While
• Connect Without Complaining

“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed- it is a process of elimination.” ~Elbert Hubbard

A couple weeks back you probably wrote out a list of resolutions; that’s what people do when a new year approaches. And that’s a wonderful idea.

According to research published in the University of Scranton Journal of Clinical Psychology, people who explicitly set resolutions are 10 times more likely to reach their goals than people who don’t.

Perhaps your list addressed  multiple areas of your life–professional milestones you’d like to reach, objectives for your health and fitness, experiences you’d like to have. If you’re a blogger, you may even have listed 50 things you’d like to achieve. It’s a popular format in the world of online lists.

As impressive as all these plans look on a page–and as capable as you may be–you might find it difficult to follow through with all those good intentions.

As a culture, we tend to think more is better, but this mindset often sacrifices quality for quantity; never mind that it sets most of us up for failure. When you overwhelm yourself with plans and information you’re likely to get overwhelmed and stop before you start.

Statistically, only 64 percent of people keep moving forward with their New Years resolutions into February; and only 46 keep going beyond the 6-month mark. The rest slowly go back to what they’ve always done, perhaps recommitting when January comes again.

If you find yourself already losing steam or motivation–or if your past suggests you might do so eventually–now may be a great time to revamp that list you made.

Whittle it down to just a few key goals, making sure each of them is SMART (described in more detail here). Break each one down into small steps, and spend a little time every day working toward each of them.

Staying focused and committed to a few objectives, and achieving your desired results will be far more fulfilling than making short strides multiple directions.

You may be surprised by how rich your life feels when you do less, but do it better.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Read more Do Happy tips. Photo here.

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.” ~Robert M. Persig

We live in a fast-paced, achievement-oriented society. At the end of a busy, to-do-list-focused day, we often find ourselves mentally and physically exhausted and uncertain whether we’re actually moving in the right direction in “the pursuit of happiness.”

Perhaps this explains our fascination with all things Zen. It’s become a buzzword in pop culture, branding products that have little to do with peace and enlightenment—and oftentimes, represent ideas that are diametrically opposed.

Zen Dharma Teacher Rev. Lynn “Jnana” Sipe takes an interesting look at Zen in titles in print publications, on all topics from automobiles to music. Some notable titles include: “Engine Zen,” “The Zen of Contractor Relations,” and “Zen and the Art of Propane Safety.”

Then there’s the vast world of products branded with Zen: tea, candles, rakes, fans, stones, books, eye masks, pillows, fountains, wind chimes, bath products, incense, oils, home décor. All intended to soothe our harried minds. It’s ironic that their acquisition requires more doing and earning—and possibly more stress.

We reach for our wallet to buy little pieces of peace because we’re programmed to fix problems by doing. Sometimes doing itself is the problem.

Our minds are like little hamster wheels, desperate to reach some point down the road when things get easy, or things make sense. In all reality, we never get there.

There will never be a moment in time when everything feels done. When everything is certain. When there’s no pain or discomfort. Life is a constant juggling act of items in the inbox, people to please, feelings to process, tasks to complete, experiences to be had, problems to face.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

At any given time we have opportunities to learn, grow, change, and experience life. There’s no shortage of things to do in this world—new hobbies to try, challenges to take on at work, steps to take to strengthen relationships.

It’s all available to us at any time. They key to enjoying these undertakings is learning to completely stop in between. Stop thinking. Stop analyzing. Stop worrying. Stop planning. And simply do nothing for a while.

It’s one of the most difficult things to do in this world; it’s why fewer people meditate than buy little Zen fountains for their desks. But stillness is far more rewarding than the gratification of making an impulse purchase, and the fleeting moment of joy you feel when rippling water offsets the sound of your typing.

You don’t need a complicated plan to spend 5, 10, or even 60 minutes doing nothing. You just need commitment to that goal.

Find an uncluttered space where you won’t be distracted—preferably somewhere with minimal technology. Write down everything on your mind, and then move that paper to a different room. If it helps, put on some soothing music. Be sure you haven’t eaten and drank anything recently so your body doesn’t put a snag in your plans.

And then work at being still and clear-headed, starting with just a few moments. Inhale and exhale deeply, focusing solely on your breath. It may help to visualize your breath filling and draining from different parts of your body, starting with your feet and ending with your head.

If thoughts come into your head, simply notice them and let them go.

You will spend your whole life juggling different thoughts, jumping back and forth between true presence in the moment, and thought processes or feelings that pull you out. Make a goal today to spend at least a few moments in the former state. It will definitely change your day, and it just may change your life.

Do Happy. It’s something you’re due.

Photo credit

Other Do Happy tips you may enjoy:

• Start Late
• Assume the Best
• Share Your Passion
• Be Your Purpose Now

“It is never too late. Even if you are going to die tomorrow, keep yourself straight and clear and be a happy human being today.” -Lama Yeshe

There’s a common misconception that there comes a point when it’s too late to do things you want to do. Maybe one of these statements sounds familiar to you:

“I can’t become a designer. I’m far too old to change my career path.”

“I’ll never get married. It’s too late in the game for that.”

“I couldn’t possibly start yoga. That’s for people much younger than me.”

We choose arbitrary windows of time when we imagine we should have tried something, and then believe it’s not possible once those days have past.

The saddest part of this way of thinking is that we’re generally right. Not because it can’t be done; but because we can only do what we believe we can.

If you don’t think it’s possible to begin a new profession, you won’t take a training course, send out resumes, or make the connections you need to succeed.

If you don’t believe it’s possible to fall in love, you likely won’t put yourself out there, and open your heart to let someone in.

If you don’t think your body can get stronger and more flexible, you’ll stay on your couch instead of trying a class, going to the next one, and being patient with your progress.

Instead of doing the things that would make you feel alive and proud of yourself, you’ll simply sit back–feeling frustrated, regretful, and maybe even a little jealous of other people who make their own rules.

Barring physical limitations, it is never too late–for anything. No matter what you did yesterday, or what type of person you’ve been, you can wake up today and decide who you want to be. Don’t think about as changing. Think about as living this moment as you want to.

You may not accomplish in your remaining time what someone who started decades earlier will. But you won’t accomplish anything if you refuse to start. And more importantly, with each day that passes, you’ll feel a greater disconnect between the life you’re living and the life you dream about.

Get started. Take a small step. What you’re seeking isn’t necessarily the end goal you think you need years to reach. It’s a life aligned with who you want to be. You can be that person right now.

Do happy. It’s something you’re due.

Photo credit

Other Do Happy tips you may enjoy:

• Celebrate a Non-Event
• Act Your Shoe Size
• Seek Smiles at Work