Predicting The Future

Predicting your future. Is it really possible on a practical scale? Is this something that happens only in fables or can an individual actually determine in advance what the future holds? What would your life be like if you knew, without any shadow of doubt, that you could forecast what was in store for you?

Alan Kay, a well known computer scientist and mathematician is often quoted as saying, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it. The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.”

His comments illustrate a serious point. Invent the future. In other words, by creatively imagining the life we prefer to live, go within and invent the circumstance in which to mold future outcomes. Is this dreaming? Yes, in a way it is. Aren’t most, if not all inventions the result of a dreamer? It is dreaming coupled with a serious belief that before anything can exist in physical form, there must first be thought. And that thought is unwavering. It is as solid as the man who thought it. Great men and women throughout history were well aware they’re thoughts molded they’re futures. Marcus Aurelius said, “a man’s life is dyed by the color of his thoughts.” He knew beyond all doubt that his plans of conquest, carried in his head, would come to fruition. Thomas Edison dreamed his future into existence by the sheer tenacity of his work. He envisioned a future of light at a time other men said it couldn’t be done.

In my opinion, we foretell our futures everyday whether we’re conscious of it or not. We may not dream of conquering foreign lands, or life changing inventions, but we do pave the way to our future with our thoughts and beliefs whether we are conscious of them or not. The best predictors are those who are deliberately aware that they can foresee they’re future. They see it as very real and only a matter of time before events and circumstances collide to produce they’re visions.

Those individuals who have disciplined they’re thoughts, who have trained they’re consciousness to focus on desired outcomes are the ones who can best predict they’re futures. It’s done everyday. Donald Trump, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates are premier examples.

Most of us simply think by default and assume that occurrences happen to us rather than our thoughts creating the occurrences. In other words, we have it flipped around. Instead of the old saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it“… how about, “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

James Allen wrote the classic, - “As A Man Thinketh.” In my opinion, this is one of the most important books of our time. The powerful philosophy of this book illustrates the best in thought dynamics. What a person thinks about is what he becomes… that a person becomes his dream. Your thoughts will shape your circumstances and therefore your future. Ideals and visions constantly acted upon will result in eventual attainment. You are the best predictor of your future.

This article is Copyright © 2006 by Robert Hunt

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[tags]thoughts, future, As A Man Thinketh, Alan Kay, Invent, imagining, predict, vision, Donald Trump, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates,[/tags]

You’ve Got To Find What You Love

I ran across this today and wanted to share what I think is a must read…. enjoy.This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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[tags] steve jobs, college, death, Macintosh, Apple [/tags]

20 Lessons That Will Turn Your Life Around

This list is not all inclusive. One or many may have applied to all of us at one point in time, but by recognizing these 20 characteristics, you can do something about pointing your life in the direction you want to go. They’re all inter-related but for the sake of argument, broken down into specifics. If you find your life is not what you want it to be, consider the following:

1. Your thinking is all wrong. When I say “wrong”, I don’t mean politically correct. I mean the balance of you’re thinking is negative or rooted in worrying about what has happened or what you think is going to happen. You fret over how events will make your life a living hell without ever stopping to think that they really don’t have anything to do with your happiness. You’re living hell is self induced. Make the balance of your thoughts positive.

2. You’re imagination is limited. You’ve boxed yourself into a self image without even knowing it. You don’t push the envelop and [tag]explore[/tag] your potential possibilities. You feel stuck. You give up way too soon before you’ve given yourself a chance to succeed simply because you don’t envision your greatest possibilities as a reality. Believe in your dreams.

3. You Have low self esteem. Deep down, you really don’t think your worth a damn. Learn about the incredible power you have to create the life you want.

4. You don’t have goals. You don’t have a clue about what you want in life. Your rudderless… your ship is floundering. Put the rudder in the water and get some direction in your life. You may not know what you want but yet your responsible for what you are. Build a vision of your life.

5. You don’t have an education. No education… no future, unless you like living under a bridge or in an apartment complex where the cops make it a point to cruise by every hour. Keep Learning.

6. You’re not very kind. Self explanatory.

7. You don’t have friends. Possibly because of number six.

8. You don’t have money. Ok, this one is going to be controversial. Can money buy happiness?. Read this article and then decide. But on the whole… no it can’t. But it can sure make life easier…. or make it suck even more… again, its all about how you decide to view life.

9. You’re a negative person and complain all the time. You wreak negativity, everything you say or do is negative. No one can do anything right. Everybody else is at fault. You complain to the guy next to you in a long line…. you cuss out the red light for making you late… you get the idea. Like your mom said… if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

10. You believe and have come to expect your life to suck. You expect that events or circumstances will not work out….That life is out to get you. First of all, no its not and number two… everything, and I mean everything always works out.

11. You believe the world owes you - simply put…the world doesn’t owe you jack. This is a self delusional trap guaranteed to hold you back from fully developing into a highly developed consciousness. Flip this around and give back to the world.

12. You believe life is not fair. Maybe it’s not, so what. No one promised it was suppose to be fair. The sooner you realize life has nothing to do with being “fair”, the sooner you can get moving on creating the life you want.

13. You lack self control. This is the one trait that keeps in check those self-destructive, unacceptable behaviors. It is also the one trait that will enhance your sense of personal mastery and competency over your own life.

14. You have no discipline. Related to number thirteen. Self-discipline requires an understanding of yourself and an awareness of the ways in which you learn to deal with frustrations and difficulties.

15. You lack passion. It may not make your life totally suck, but it sure does make it better. Passion makes your days fly by. You wake up excited to work. You get more done in less time. Passion gives you a sense of empowerment. Improving this attitude affects everyone around you. They believe in you, trust you and want to support you.

16. Quit saying yes when you mean no. We hate letting others down. Many times we’ll give in to a request even if we don’t want to, ultimately making us feel like crap. Refusing to say no, when you really want or need to, usually ends up in damaging the relationship. You lose your self empowerment and sense of control in your life.

17. Quit fixing other people’s problems. Detracts from your own well being and robs you of your peace of mind.

18. You don’t take the time to smell the roses. Surrender to a moment of joy. Acknowledge and enjoy your successes.

19. You spend time and energy on things that suck. Does this one really need any explanation? I don’t want to spend time and energy on this one.

20. You’re not grateful. Timothy Dexter said, “An ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating acorns, but never looking up to see where they come from.” Being ungrateful can make you a miserable person to be around. It kind of sums up the previous nineteen reasons. If there is nothing else you come to understand, try to look for things to appreciate. It’s the one great characteristic to connecting with who you really are.

by Robert Hunt

Your Life’s Purpose & The Power To Create

Many of us struggle to define “what is my purpose in life.” At one point or another we lose interest in a career, live life with an empty feeling, lack of direction or motivation and feel a sense of disorientation. Many become confused, worried and disappointed. This feeling is universal and shared by many, but it can be overcome.

Remember the story of the impoverished young boy who comes into the possession of a magical oil lamp? He discovers that it summons a genie and will grant the boy whatever he desires. Think along those terms and you can begin to understand what I’m about to suggest.

Suspend any beliefs you may have about how the universe works. Pretend for a moment that if whatever higher force you believe in were to come to you and ask “What is you desire. No matter what it is, how much it cost or how hard you believe it is to achieve, what you would like to have?” You are then assured this object or circumstance is yours. It’s a done deal. Hard to believe? Would this perk your interest?

Whatever it is that makes you happy in life is now going to be yours, so you want to be sure this is really what you want. You are now forced to examine what in life brings you joy. Does it give you a sense of power… of control in your life?

Sometimes we sense a lack of purpose, motivation or direction in our lives because we feel powerless. We have no feeling of power to live or create the life we want so, in essence, give up. We become rudderless. Why try? But in reality we do possess this power.

Many would agree we are free individuals that are a product of what we have been thinking in the past. Despite our circumstances in life, we have created the person we are today. No one else but us. We have been making decisions in life that have brought us to where we are today. We have been creating all long. But if we knew our desires would be granted, would that sense of control and purpose in our life return? We now are consciously creating through this higher power, knowing that this higher force is going to grant our most cherished dreams.

We possess this higher force from within. I firmly believe our purpose in life is to create. To do nothing but create. It returns that loss sense of purpose. Humans are creators. If we truly know we have this power to create whatever we want in life, our sense of power and control return and our desires become focused. Michael Gerber has written, “Purpose is the manifestation of vision. Vision is the creation of passion. Passion, vision, purpose, the holy trio which lives in potentiality within each and every one of us as a deep, deep, pure well of life-giving water, the water of our spirit, the spirit of our lives.”

Even if you don’t believe you have this power… pretend. Pretend you get three wishes and they will most definitely be granted. What would they be? What would bring you joy? It may take you days to figure this out, but you eventually will. Then pretend to go about creating it. Feel your sense of empowerment return and know without a shadow of doubt, that you can be, do, or have anything and everything your imagination can dream.

This article is Copyright © 2006 by Robert Hunt

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How To Get What You Want

Napolean Hill said “There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” No truer words were spoken, but lets break it down a little more.

I think most successful people would agree with the above statement. Those that have succeeded, by most standards in life, can probably identify with what Napolean Hill said. But what are some of the qualities successful people share that we can point to as a common thread? I’ve decided to focus on 5 of these traits. There are certain to be more but these tend to be the most commonly observed.

1. You get whatever you think about the most. Famous successful people from history bear this out. Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius said, “life is dyed by the color of his thoughts,” and the Buddha commented that, “All that a man is comes from his thoughts.” Whatever you think about most consistently and with purpose and emotion tends to expand so discipline your mind to focus predominantly on what you desire in life.

2. An attitude of gratitude will take you a long way. Melodie Beattie says, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Be in awe of all the good you have already created in your life and the more you are grateful for that - the more that will flow freely into your life.

3. Take full responsibility for the emotional state that you choose to embrace each day.You choose your emotional state each and every day. Believe it or not, no one can make you feel anything you do not want to feel. You are the captain of your thoughts, so decide to embrace those emotions that propel you toward your stated goal.

4. There is never any scarcity of opportunity, but rather there is only scarcity of resolve to seize the opportunities that knock on our door every day. Scarcity does not exist unless we choose to embrace it, therefore, it is better to never embrace scarcity only embrace the possibility for abundance.

5. Trust yourself to make the right decisions. By doing so, you trust in the very wisdom that created you. Dare to become a no limit person and abandon the idea of focusing on limitations. You already are complete, whole and perfect. Trust in the perfection of your life.

Copyright 2006 Robert Hunt

5 Steps To A Better Life

Live In the Moment

What exactly does that mean? There is an old Eskimo proverb, “Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.” It means to remind yourself that worrying about the future or regretting the past isn’t going to change what has or is going to happen. Focus on a desire and breathe it in. Let yourself fully connect with that feeling. Living in the moment is a whole lot easier during special times but most days aren’t filled with special events. Until you learn to live in the moment, those everyday worries, resentments, or other distractions will rob you of your life. Read more

Negative Thoughts Are Fantastic

You know the kind I’m talking about. That little voice that runs through your mind often telling you life is too hard, or your not good enough, or you can’t have something you really want, or it cost too much. Or how about those thoughts you have when paying the bills and there’s not enough money to go around. These thoughts, if left unchecked, repeated over and over, tend to drag us down and make it even more difficult to find the path toward a more enlightened, enjoyable life.

Trying to discipline your mind in order to keep those negative thoughts out of your head is like trying to hold water in a net. It’s like trying to not think about a pink elephant. Your going to have them. Its a given and there is no sense in attempting the impossible. Individual mind control can become tiring, frustrating and often self defeating. But there is another way…. a way to use negative thoughts to your advantage.

Let me offer a solution that might help you think about this another way. The goal is not to get rid of negative thoughts, but rather use them to guide you to thoughts that are more in line with what you desire. Bear with me on this while I use an extremely simple example.

Suppose you want a new car. But you believe you can’t have one. For whatever reason, you feel you cannot afford the one you want so you get down on yourself. Your thoughts become negative and before you know it, you feel depressed. One thought leads to another… you don’t make enough money, you’ll never get a better job in order to afford this car, much less pay your current bills. You keep focused on the fact you can’t afford the new car you desire and you continue to feel bad and your thoughts continue to spiral downward.

Instead, suppose you let those negative thoughts trigger a sign post within yourself… to wake you up, and turn your attention away from what you don’t want…the lack of a new car. Choose your thoughts. Instead of thinking about the car you can’t have, think about the car you can and will have. Doesn’t it feel much better? It feels more empowering. Begin to see yourself driving your new car. Your mind has now triggered your thought process to look for ways you can achieve your desire. Beforehand, you might have just accepted the fact you couldn’t have the car you wanted and probably would’ve given up on your desire.

I understand this is a very simplistic example, but the point is made. Negative thoughts are powerful triggers that are there as reminders to change your focus. It is your inner self, shaking you, screaming at you, rattling your cage, letting you know you are not on the path to obtaining everything you desire in life.

Negative thoughts are essential in helping you keep your focus on what it is you desire… not what you do not desire. See the difference? If I am feeling negative or having negative thoughts about something, it is a clue or signal to myself to turn my attention toward what I’m wanting… that I’ve been giving too much attention to something that doesn’t please me.

Over a period of time, if consistently practiced, those thoughts you consider negative will occur less and less. Its been my experience that if negative thoughts are not charged with much emotion, they don’t tend to affect my life in any substantial way. Its not a matter of stopping negative thoughts from occurring but using them as essential tools to keep you focused on your life’s fondest desire’s.

Copyright © 2006 by Robert Hunt

Wealth And Happiness

Happiness is a personal journey but when you watch television you would think the good life is a new car, skinny body, or winning the lottery. If you were to look at surveys, most Americans say more money would make them happier. But what if you were to look inside at what really gives you joy?

Ask yourself… what really makes me feel good inside? Is it what the American Dream promises? Individual wealth? Does money buy happiness? Some of us would definitely say yes.

Some would assume there is a connection between more wealth and feeling happy, an assumption that many scholars have called the “cycle of work and spend”—working more to buy more. According to one Gallup Poll, four in five people earning more than $75,000 a year say they would like to be richer. But does being richer really bring about permanent changes in your overall level of happiness? Does it really bring you the consistent level of joy we all so desperately attempt to achieve. Does being well off make for well being? Rich people to a certain extent are happier, especially in poor countries such as India where being well off enhances the sense of well being. But if you were to take a look in the “richer” societies, more money doesn’t necessarily mean more happiness or well being. More money often results in the law of diminishing returns.

David Lykken observes in his own studies of happiness, “People who go to work in their overalls and on the bus are just as happy, on the average, as those in suits who drive to work in their own Mercedes”. So whats the end result of all of this? Since the 1950’s we have become twice as rich as a nation and no happier. The divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has more than doubled, and teens increasingly are troubled with depression.

Social Psychologist David Myersthe calls this the American paradox. He says “More than ever, we at the end of the last century were finding ourselves with big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger.”

So what can we do on an individual level? If being surrounded by the trappings of wealth, or lack thereof, ultimately does not make us feel happy then what will? Those things that make for a genuinely good life such as close relationships, showing gratitude and feeling appreciation for what we already have achieved in life is a good start. If material wealth is not the most important ingredient for a happy life, what is? Research has offered the following three suggestions:

1. Positive Characteristics - People who are optimistic, kind, forgiving, and grateful tend to have an abundance of happy experiences and happy lives.

2. Being in the Flow - Work and leisure activities that engage an individuals skill tend to lead a happier life. The area that lies between stress and the apathy of being bored, is a zone in which people experience being in the flow… an optimal state of mind in which, absorbed in an activity, they lose consciousness of self and time.

3. Close Relationships - We all have a deep need to belong. Those individuals who are supported by intimate friendships or a committed relationship are much likelier to declare themselves “very happy.”

Ultimately, if you want to be happy, then recognize that happiness is a product of the way you think and behave and not your finances. Choosing to focus on what you desire in life while at the same time being grateful and appreciating what you already have is a good start. We are the captains of our ship. We write the book that is our life. Focus to make it happen.

Copyright © 2006 by Robert Hunt