Lifestyle

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.  It’s the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln

Eighty years is currently the average life span in the West.  Here’s how to make them happy and fulfilling:

1.  Travel often.

Do yourself this favor before it’s too late.  Without thinking too much about it, pack a pillow and a blanket at least once a year and go see a part of the world you’ve never seen before.  You will not regret it.

Traveling has less to do with seeing things, as it does with experiencing them.  It has less to do with discovering something, as it does with discovering yourself.  In your travels you won’t find all the answers, you will find lots of questions you would otherwise have never thought to ask.

The thing about traveling to new places is that you run into your insecurities and fears around every twist and turn.  You run into all the good things and bad things about yourself on a daily basis, and are provided the opportunity to grow far beyond your years.

2.  Work on something every day that moves you.

When you strike that fine balance between the challenge of an activity and your skill at performing it, when the rhythm of your work feels in sync with your purpose, when you know that what you’re doing makes a difference, you become absorbed in the task at hand to the point where time ceases to exist.  This is what true passion and happiness feels like.

So is there anything you do on a regular basis that makes you forget what time it is?

That forgetting, or optimal experience of pure absorption, is what the psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi calls “flow.”  He describes the phenomenon as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake.  The ego falls away.  Time flies.  Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.  Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

On your average day, flow experiences are those flashes of intense living when you’re engrossed in a meaningful task that makes you feel more alive.  These optimal experiences can happen when you’re engaged in work, paid or unpaid, that move you.  Work like this is something you should be pursuing on a daily basis.  Read Flow.

3.  Spend time with friends who improve you.

You can go through life and make new friends every year – every month practically – but there is no substitute for the few who truly improve you.

These aren’t the people who are simply nice to you; they’re the ones who help you uncover the things that are holding you back.  In subtle ways, they bring ideas to your attention that change your life.  These friends don’t just sit beside you unknowingly; they shake your world up, reveal your obstacles and weaknesses, and remain beside you because they care.

Friends like this are the most important people you will ever meet because they tear down the invisible walls you have built in your mind.  In other words, they come into your life and reveal new, valuable layers of yourself that you would never have discovered without them.

4.  Accept the risks that feel right.

Security is mostly an illusion.  There are no sure things in this world.  The nature of the world is constantly evolving.  Reserving yourself with numerous safety measures is usually no safer in the long-run than indulging in constant exposure.

It is far more fulfilling to dare yourself to the mighty experiences life has to offer – enjoying great successes and enduring occasional failures – than to hide forever in safety, only to leave the majority of your life unlived.

5.  Work hard and conquer great challenges.

The road to greatness is far from smooth.  You can be absolutely certain that when you feel you are growing weak from struggle, you are in fact growing stronger than you ever have been before.

The more difficulties you encounter and overcome on your lifelong journey, internal or peripheral, the more significant and inspiring your life story will be.  Read The Front Nine.

6.  Make the very best of every situation.

One of the great secrets of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is doing the best you can with what is done to you.  It’s all about how you choose to respond to the sometimes unpredictable deliveries life ships.  This simple choice makes a world of difference.

You are honestly free now and always, no matter what circumstances surround you.  If you find your circumstances tolerable, by all means tolerate them; if you find them too confining, break through them – stretch yourself.  Ultimately you are free because you alone are responsible for your thoughts and how you use them to empower your growth.

7.  Provide great value to the world.

The best way to get ahead in this world is not to compete with others, but to serve them.  If you want to score a raise at work, be of service to your boss.  If you want to build a profitable business, be of service to your potential customers.  Provide unmistakable value.

Value is what makes relationships, businesses, and personal endeavors thrive.  When your strategy is to grab all you can as quickly as you can, you will grab far less than you are capable of holding.  It is foolish to think that you can fool the world in any way.  Success and happiness come when you choose to work for the world diligently.

At any age, in any situation, for every possible life path, there is value you can provide.  Look closely and you will see opportunities everywhere.  Read The $100 Startup.

8.  Spread your light.

As the Buddha once said, “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.  Happiness never decreases by being shared.”  Spread your light through love and kindness to the people around you, and let the ‘giving spirit’ you initiate spread like a virus, infinitely touching the lives of people you may never meet, across boundaries you may never cross, in ways you may never have thought possible.

That is the power of your love and kindness, and it’s your ticket to making the world a happier place.

Photo by: Angela Sevin

At the end of the day, the questions we ask ourselves determine the type of people we become.

When you’ve been running a successful personal development blog and life coaching business for the better part of a decade, one thing becomes crystal clear:

Everyone has the same basic wants and needs.

No kidding, over the years Angel and I have gotten to know thousands of people of different ethnic backgrounds, from different cities and countries, who live at various socioeconomic levels, and trust me, every one of us basically wants the same things.  We want validation, love, happiness, fulfillment, money, and hopes for a better future.  The way we pursue these needs is where things branch off, but the fundamentals are the same.

Think about it.  If I ask you, “Quickly, in one sentence, what do you want most out of life?” I bet your rushed response is going to be something like, “I want to be happy, and have a healthy family, and a career I like that pays well, etc.”  Your response is going to be so common and ubiquitous that it basically doesn’t even mean anything.  Which is precisely why senseless, happy-go-lucky questions like this aren’t very helpful.  And yet, this is precisely the kind of questions we often ask ourselves.

So what kind of questions might you ask instead?  Questions that force you into a corner.  Questions that help you embrace the sacrifices it takes to get where you want to go.  Questions that motivate you to focus on the next step forward.  In other words, questions like…

1. What is worth suffering for? – If you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs.  If you want the six-pack abs, you have to want the sweat, the sore muscles, the early mornings at the gym, and the low carb meals.  If you want the successful business, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business deals and decisions, and the possibility of failing fifty times to learn what you need to know to succeed.  If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is just an idealization, a fantasy, and a false promise.  Maybe you don’t actually want it at all, because you’re not willing to suffer though the work it’s going to take to achieve it.
2. Based on my daily routines and actions, where can I expect to be in five years? – This question just backs up the first one.  If you have an idea about what you want the next chapter of your life to look like, you have to DO things that support this idea every day.  An idea, after all, isn’t going to do anything for you until you do something productive with it.  In fact, as long as that great idea is just sitting around in your head it’s doing far more harm than good.  Your subconscious mind knows you’re procrastinating on something that’s important to you.  The necessary work that you keep postponing causes stress, anxiety, fear, and usually more procrastination – a vicious cycle that continues to worsen until you interrupt it with ACTION.  (Read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)
3. What do I need to spend more or less time doing going forward? – Most of us spend way too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.  In other words, productivity is not just about getting things done, it’s about getting the right things done.  At the end of each day, look at how you have spent your time, and adjust the allocation as necessary for tomorrow.  Do your best to get rid of your schedule’s complexities so you can spend more time on the things that matter.  This means fine-tuning and eliminating all but the essential tasks, so you are left with only the ones that add value to your life.  And above all, know when to set aside the important things for the vital things, like family.
4. In service of what? – As Viktor Frankl so eloquently put it: “Don’t aim at success.  The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.  For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than one’s self.”  So think bigger.  Be a part of something greater than yourself.  This could be anything.  Some people take an active role in their local city council, some find refuge in their faith or family, some join social clubs supporting causes they resonate with, and others find passion in their careers.  In each case the psychological outcome is the same.  They engage themselves in something they strongly believe in.  This engagement brings happiness, success, and meaning into their lives.
5. What am I pretending not to know? – Reality denied always comes back to haunt.  There are two ways to be fooled by your own subconscious.  One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.  Both are tragic forms of self-deception, because the person who lies to herself and listens to her own lies comes to a point that she cannot distinguish the truth within her, or around her, and so loses respect for herself and for others she cares about.  Don’t be this person.  All possibilities open up when we stop deceiving ourselves.
6. What old rejections are still holding me back today? – All too often we let the rejections of our past dictate every move we make.  We literally do not know ourselves to be any better than what some opinionated person or narrow circumstance once told us was true.  Of course, an old rejection doesn’t mean we aren’t good enough; it just means some person or circumstance from our past failed to align with what we had to offer at the time.  It means we were graced with more time to improve our thing – to build upon our ideas, to perfect our craft, and indulge deeper in to the work that moves us.  Don’t let old rejections take up permanent residence in your head.  Kick them out on the street.  (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)
7. What do I not want others to know about me? – This question cuts right to the heart of your insecurities.  Let it remind you that problems and flaws are a part of everyone’s life.  If you try to hide them, you don’t give the people in your life a chance to truly know you and love you.  And you allow small problems to escalate and dominate your self-confidence.  When you make a mistake, it might be irritating, but don’t bury it.  Be open about it, address it, and move on.  Our problems are really our blessings if we use them to grow stronger.  And, ultimately, the people who belong in your life will see your problems and flaws simply as signs that you are just as human as they are.
8. Are the people around me helping me or hurting me? – A big part of who you become in life has to do with who you choose to surround yourself with.  And as you know, it is better to be alone than in bad company.  You simply cannot expect to live a positive, fulfilling life if you surround yourself with negative people.  Distancing yourself from these people is never easy, but it’s a lot harder when they happen to be close friends or family members.  As hard as it may be, it’s something you need to address.  To a certain degree, luck controls who walks into your life, especially as it relates to your family and childhood friends, but you decide who you spend the majority of your time with.
9. How are my “shoulds” getting in the way of my “haves”? – The desires of our ego are often in conflict with the emotions of our heart.  Find your balance between planning and presence – between striving and appreciation.  Work hard, but don’t go looking for something better every second.  You must be willing to loosen your grip on the life you have planned so you can enjoy the life that is waiting for you in this moment.  It may not be everything you want for your future, but it’s everything you need right now.  Experience it and appreciate it.
10. What is worth smiling about right now? – As Shawn Achor describes in his book The Happiness Advantage, a recent scientific study showed that doctors who are put in a positive mood before making a diagnosis consistently experience significant boosts to their intellectual abilities than doctors in a neutral state, which allows them to make accurate diagnoses almost 20% faster.  The same study then shifted to other vocations and found that optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by over 50%.  Students primed to feel happy before taking math tests substantially outperform their neutral peers.  So it turns out that our minds are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative, or even neutral, but when they are positive.

Your turn…

At any given moment, life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek these answers that continues to give our lives meaning.  Honestly, you can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led down a road strewn with trouble and confusion, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it and step forward.

So with that said, which of the questions above hit home the most?  Why?  Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and insights with us.

This article was co-written by Marc and Angel and Mark Manson, and inspired by Mark’s insightful work which can be found here.

Photo by: Marco Bellucci

We all want to be winners.  We all want to succeed.  So why then do so many of us struggle indefinitely and come up short?  It has something to do with how we think, what we focus on, and how we live each moment.

Here are a few ideas on why winners win and losers lose.

• Losers fail once and quit.  Winners fail a thousand times and eventually succeed.
• Losers look for success at the finish line.  Winners experience success along the way.
• Losers work to make money.  Winners work to make a difference.
• Losers buy things.  Winners build things.
• Losers see things they don’t understand and get discouraged.  Winners see things they don’t understand and get curious.
• Losers talk.  Winners communicate.
• Losers attempt to conquer the world in one shot.  Winners add up all their small victories.
• Losers expect certain outcomes.  Winners prepare themselves for the unexpected.
• Losers seek respect.  Winners earn respect.
• Losers stare at the problem.  Winners look around for the solution.
• Losers review options.  Winners act on decisions.
• Losers are paid for their time.  Winners are paid for their results.
• Losers let things happen.  Winners make things happen.
• Losers want to get ahead of others.  Winners help others get ahead too.
• Losers hangout with losers.  Winners hangout with winners who are more successful than they are.
• Losers follow other people’s definitions of success.  Winners define their own success.
• Losers escape fears.  Winners face fears.
• Losers waste their free time (watching TV).  Winners use their free time (learning or experiencing something new).
• Losers see the unknown as a risk.  Winners see constant familiarity as a risk.
• Losers live in the past.  Winners live life now based on lessons learned in the past.
• Losers label themselves as experts.  Winners know there is still much to learn.
• Losers over-sell.  Winners over-deliver.
• Losers frown.  Winners smile.
• Losers think winners are lucky.  Winners realize the harder they work the luckier they are.

What did I leave off the list?  What qualities do you think separate successful people from everyone else?

Photo by: Yasin Hassan

Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth, “You owe me!”
Look what happens with a love like that,
it lights up the whole sky.
-Hafez

Selflessness is the sincere concern for the well being of others.  It’s about love.  It’s about compassion.  It’s about kindness and faith.  It’s about making a difference in the world.  Sure, you are only one, but you are one.  You cannot do everything, but you can do something.  Smile and enjoy the fact that you have the ability to make a difference – one you’ll likely remember forever.

So go ahead and make the words, “How can I help?” part of your everyday vocabulary.  Start today; choose one of these 60 selfless ways to pay it forward.

1. Hold the door open for the person behind you.
2. Introduce yourself.  Make new colleagues, classmates, etc. feel welcome.
3. Clean out all your old clothes and donate them to someone in need.  Your old is someone else’s new.
4. Write a positive Yelp review about a local business you like.
5. Listen intently to people’s stories without trying to fix everything.
6. Donate blood.  One pint of blood can save up to three lives.  Locate your nearest blood drive.
7. Volunteer at a hospital, homeless shelter, nursing home, etc.  Get outside of yourself and help others.  Check out Volunteer Match.
8. Buy house warming gifts for new neighbors.
9. Inspire other online.
10. Share your umbrella with a stranger on a rainy day.
11. Check up on someone who looks lonely.
12. Let someone with only a few items cut you in line at the grocery store.
13. Spread good news.
14. Replace what you’ve used.  For example, fill up the copier or printer with paper after you’re done using it or start a fresh batch of coffee.
15. Give words of encouragement to someone about their dreams, no matter how big or small they are.
16. Stop and buy a drink from a kid’s lemonade stand.
17. Help someone get your parking space in a crowded parking lot when you’re leaving.
18. Babysit for couples or single parents who don’t get out much so they can have some alone time.
19. Look for ways to save a few extra bucks a month and then donate it to a good cause or charity.
20. Shop at your local charity thrift store.  The money you spend there helps others.
21. Help someone get active.  There’s a coworker or acquaintance in your life who wants to get healthy, but needs a helping hand.  Offer to go walking or running together or join a gym together.  Check out your local Active activities.
22. Spend a few clicks of your time at Free Rice.
23. If someone you love really likes something (a meal, a favor, etc.) give it to them when they least expect it.
24. Make a difference in the life of a child. Give them your time and undivided attention.  Read Raising Kids Who Will Make a Difference.
25. If you shop online, make your purchase through Amazon Smile.
26. Pay for the person in line behind you.
27. Drop off your old eye glasses at your local LensCrafters as a donation to the OneSight program.
28. Create a care package and send it to an active duty military unit.
29. Redirect gifts.  Instead of having people give you birthday and holiday gifts, ask them to donate gifts or money to a good cause.
30. The next time you see someone pulled over with a flat tire, or in need of assistance, stop and ask how you can help.  Read How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist.
31. Become a mentor or tutor to someone in need.
32. Help the weary shopper in front of you who needs that extra two or three cents to avoid breaking a 20-dollar bill.
33. Come to the rescue.  If you realize someone is sick, bring them some hot tea, soup, etc.
34. Be a courteous driver.  Let people merge in front of you.
35. Put some change in an expired parking meter (where it’s legal).
36. Offer your seat to someone when there aren’t any left.
37. Listen to someone’s pain and help them find a path through it.
38. Hug a friend.  Let them know how important they are.
39. Think twice before you throw something away.  As Jack Johnson once said, “Reduce, reuse, and recycle.”
40. Help an entrepreneur with a Kiva donation.
41. Bake cookies or brownies and share with a neighbor or colleagues.
42. If you have a good book you’ve read that’s just sitting around on a book shelf, give it away to a friend.
43. Become a member of Freecycle, and participate.
44. Clean up litter in a park or open space nearby.
45. Look into co-housing.
46. Borrow and lend things in your neighborhood by using Share Some Sugar.
47. Send a nice email or handwritten card to someone you know, unexpectedly.
48. Leave encouraging post-it notes in library books and other random places.
49. If you see a couple taking a self-pic, offer to take the picture for them.
50. Setup a donation box at your school, work or place of worship and ask others to make canned/dried food contributions.  Then deliver the donations accordingly.
51. Join efforts to preserve and protect the environment.
52. Donate cat and dog food to an animal shelter.  Call and ask what is needed.
53. Compliment someone who deserves it.
54. If there’s been an accident or a potentially hazardous situation presents itself on the road, report it to the local authorities.  Your phone call could save a life.
55. Collect and donate prom dresses for underprivileged youth.  Check out the Princess Project.
56. When you’re getting fast food, buy an extra meal for a homeless person.
57. Stand up for someone.  Lend your voice. Often the powerless, the homeless, the neglected in our world need someone to speak up for them.
58. Take the time to teach someone a skill you know.
59. Teach others how to make a difference in this world by setting a good example every day.  Read 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life.
60. When someone wants to repay you for something, ask them to pay it forward.

Photo by: Bart