We all have times when we feel our life is not all it should be. Maybe the forces opposing us have joined together and are exerting themselves against us as one unit rather than a number of individual smaller problems we have been ignoring.

Maybe life has been unpleasant for so long we have forgotten what normal life is like. Waking up every day to the same problems and no solutions, with no end in sight can be a pretty demoralizing existence. After some time, the thought of living a life of pain becomes so much it hardly seems worth the effort.

After a time people start to react to their environment. For some, their way of dealing with their problems is hard to detect. Way down inside they have come to terms with the idea that this is the best it is going to get and they blunt themselves to the future in a fugue of apathy.

Others escape into what starts out as a great way to escape, usually some form of reality altering brought about in the form of an ingested substance. For a short period all their troubles seem to disappear. Then they realize they have compounded their problems by adding another big problem to their life.

A small few decide their life in the state it is, is not worth living. Unfortunately, they are so overwhelmed they can imagine no other alternative than throwing in the imaginary towel, with the thought that whatever happens can not be any worse than what they are going trough at the moment.

The idea I read about was another form of leaving your problems behind. Instead of opting out, and ending it all, or practicing substance abuse, how about realizing that life is really all in the perception?

If your life stinks, quit living that way! Decide that from this moment on, your problems are all behind you. From this moment on you are trading in your old life for a new one. No longer will the pressures of your old life keep you down and wear you out. From this moment forward you are going to start living the life you want to live!

Sounds really good to this point this starting a new life. Just walk away and start living the life you want to live. The problem in this simplistic thought is there is no place you can walk to in leaving your old life behind. So what to do to start living a new and improved life? How does one go from the depths of despair to the upper side and enjoy the good life?

The answer is not really as difficult as it may seem. Start living someone else’s life! Quit living in the same downward spiral pattern of failure that leads to the bottom, and start living life as someone with a future lives their life.

Start living life as a new person, who inherited for the short term someone else’s problems. It really is not that difficult. All it takes is a little imagination, and a little willingness to be different.

Wake up the next day and know that all those problems that were dragging you down are now someone else’s problems. You no longer have those problems in your life. You have agreed to help out a struggling friend by taking on their problems and working towards a solution for them so they can get on with their real life.

All the unsuccessful behaviors they have, you do not. Those behaviors belong to another, not to you. You have agreed to help them because they need help and no one else is willing to lend a hand.

Start working on a new way of living. Look at each new day as a day of new possibility and not a day of same old. Reach out and give the old you a hand, and help them start living the life they want to live instead the life they are living.

It will not happen in one day, one week, or in one month. Reaching your hand back to your old self to find a new and better life is better than letting your old self keep you from enjoying a life lived the way life should be lived. Turn around, reach back and take the hand of the old you, and start leading the old you into a new life.

Behaviors which some see as negative, anti-social, career limiting, whatever one chooses to call them, are behaviors which work for the individual at some level. These behaviors are tried and true, modified and tuned through the preceding years. When these behaviors are used they achieve the expected outcome. If these behaviors did not work for an individual they would have been modified out of existence.

What does one do if they are seen as, or they feel they have behaviors which hold them back from achieving their goals? Behavior substitution is the most promoted course of action. Substitute a limiting behavior for a behavior that is more accepted and helps achieve the desired result. That is what many experts say.

Take that behavior which is causing problems and replace it with a better behavior. For some people this is a healthy and positive way to fix whatever is wrong. The positive reinforcement of changed behavior should solidify and promote the use of the new behavior.

The only problem is it does not work for many people. People modify or replace one or more behaviors they feel are holding them back in some way. They adopt what they believe are more acceptable behaviors. Often just like the weight loss panacea, they find that after really trying and working on change for weeks or months, nothing changes.

Behavior based rewards are either non-existent, or not present in enough quantity to help the individual want to keep using modified or replaced behaviors. Little by little, just as lost pounds are regained, old behaviors start re-appearing.

Instead of enjoying all the benefits of everything one hoped would happen with behavior modification, the individual finds themselves back in the same rut they thought they were digging themselves out from. A  lot of work and effort and nothing really changed.

Maybe the problem is not in the behaviors themselves? Unless they are criminal or otherwise unlawful, maybe the behaviors are not the problem? After all these behaviors are part of the individuals personality and to some extent make them what they are.

Maybe the problem is using the behaviors at the wrong time, place, or manner? There are hundreds of jobs in multiple career fields where people use behaviors which do not work well in general social settings, and they use them successfully! Instead of trying to become someone else, be creative and look for opportunities, both social and career oriented where bad behaviors are both rewarded and encouraged.

Take those seemingly negative behaviors out, polish them up, and look for opportunities where they can be rewarded and not punished. With some tuning and polish, behaviors that many people want to change can be a fast track to success. It is more pleasant to look in the mirror and think, “This is who I am”, than look in the mirror and think, “This is me acting like someone else.”

The catch in this way of thinking, and there is always a catch, is self acceptance. Accepting who we are what we are, and knowing we are perfect for us is easier said than done. One has to throw away our families implanted ideas of who we are and look for our real self. We are what we are, and accepting ourselves is where our focus should be. We should not be focused on some ideal that we know we will never meet, or become.

Once self acceptance is second nature, it is time to find an outlet where we can be rewarded for how we are. Dismiss limiting beliefs about what we think we should be doing, for finding a lifestyle and career where we are acknowledged and rewarded for who we really are.

This takes effort and searching. The possibilities are real, they exist. Other people just like us are benefiting being themselves, doing work we can only guess at. All we need to do is be willing to break the mold we never fit in to start with, and get out there and find what we were created for and meant to do with our life.

Self help is a space filler of hollow promises promoted by people chasing a fast profit. Perusing the internet for unhappy self help victims one can find many instances where the promise was not only not filled, but not even partially filled. Of course there are no refunds which further sparks the fire and fans the flames.

Go into the local bookstore and shelves are filled with books claiming they can help you make your life better. If you have read the ‘about’ page of this blog, you read a similar thought there. here is a quote from my about page, “I have a lot of life experience, so I feel I have something to share with you, that you may enjoy or benefit from. “

If you believe that nothing anyone writes, said to you, or tries to sell you, will make your life any different, you are absolutely correct. Nothing you read or hear will likely make any changes in your life. The idea of any self help material, no matter the source helping anyone is an illusion.

It does not matter if you manage to bring Lester Levenson back as your personal advisor, the Roman Catholic Pope moves in next door to be closer to you, Lillith appears because she is going to be your personal mentor, or the Dali Llama agrees to be your life guide. Anything anyone could provide for you is only so many words or ideas.

This is the plain and ugly truth about self help. Nothing you can read or hear will help you. Your life is what it is and that is the end of it. Writing this certainly clears the air. Someone at last admits that every written or produced to improve your life is wasted effort. I am glad I went ahead and made this statement. If you are in agreement there is no need to read any farther. Nothing anyone can say will change your life.

However, I am glad for the person last week who took the time to make those comments. Perhaps this is the moment that needed to be said to me. Was I wrong seeking a way of living which improves my life? Maybe it was a mistake to get beyond anger, blame, and dislike. Maybe living my life would have been more rewarding by not trying to change it.

If I was happy living a life of anger, blame, and dislike, I think I would not have decided there was a better way to live and I was going to find it, or die trying. This beginning was frustrating and difficult. What books I read where written by people who never seemed to have to struggle once in their life, with the exception of the bible and we all know what happened there. What little changes I decided I could make in my own life seemed trivial and petty, and of no consequence.

I did not have a clue on how to make my life better. I started at the very beginning. The first thing I did was I admitted I knew nothing about living a happy contented life. Starting here I made small changes I hoped would make a difference in my life.

When I spoke with people who seemed to live a better life than I did, I listened to what they said about their life. I paid attention to their outlook, and expectations for their life. I especially listened to what they thought about themselves and other people in their daily life.

Life is a struggle from the moment of our conception. We struggle to grow enough to be born, we fight off disease when we have few tools to fight with. We struggle from the moment we drop onto the bed sheet. We struggle to learn how to take our first breath.

Life is a challenge, a struggle, an adventure, or an experience. Wether we are happy and enjoy our life or not, we are the person living it. We have the power to change our life, reshape, and remold it into a life we want.

All anyone has to do, is for a split second seriously ponder if there is a better way to live. That is the seed that starts the process of changing ones life into something we want to live. One second of wondering if there is a better way opens a portal, allowing all the help in universe to offer you a helping hand. Open your mind, reach out your arm, stretch out your hand and grab on, your new life is waiting.

What is wrong is a tough message to hear. It happens to us who had no close by adult role models who we want to be like. What is wrong is you are trying to be an adult using the same tools in the same way you did as a child.

If you read on that sentence will make sense, and you will know what you have to do if you want to be happy and successful as an adult. Until now it did not really matter who you played with. If you hung around with friends who were in trouble often, and you did not do the things they did, they got into trouble, and you did not. If you hung around with people who had no ambition, did as little as possible, and acted up, it did not matter.

Your life away from your home until now was always changing, but you came home to the routine of your life, whatever that may be. Now something is not working, and it does not make sense when you think about, because until now life was good, and it makes no sense all of a sudden.

When you start living on your own, there is no more routine or parents to go home to. What you do in or with your life is your choice, and other than your family, nobody cares whether you live your life well, or trash it completely.

Have you noticed the people you hang around with are getting expensive? They have no plans for their life, and they have little ambition while you want to have a better life than you have up to this point. Having a better life never has entered your friends thoughts. They think life is good just the way it is.

I know you do not think your friends are costing you much, but think about it. How many problems have you had over the last months while with your friends? How many times do you find yourself paying for something for them. I know you don’t think it is much, maybe a coke now and then, but if you watch closely you will see it is a lot more. Also what about the problems in your life that keep popping up? That stupid stuff that should not have happened but it does? Have you noticed your friends are always around when problems happen?

I am sure you have not really noticed, but other people they hang with are worse than they are. The people they hang with that you are starting to know have some pretty bad habits, to doing some things that will get them sent to prison some day, if they have not been in jail or something like it already.

You have to decide where you want your life to go, even if you do not know how to get there. You can no longer hang around with people who’s lives are going nowhere and expect your life to be different. The plain simple boring truth is: “You are who your friends are”, and there is no way around it. If you hang with people who’s lives are going nowhere fast, your life is not changing either except you are getting older. Notice how the people you admire are moving out of your life.

You are who your friends are because you start thinking more like them ever day. You do not notice that you are slipping when you want to move ahead. It is easier and less scary to do what you have been doing and not admit it is not working, and it is your doing. But that is exactly what you need to do. Take responsibility for your life, and the direction it is going. No one else runs your life any longer.

If you want to go nowhere in life, then think I do not know what I am talking about. It is a lot easier than the other choice. The better choice is start making choices that move your life forward. That is a painful choice because you don’t know how. You do not need to know what or how, all you need to do is decide not to. Decide not to hang with friends who have no interest in a better life. Decide not to be with people who want to be children in adult bodies. Make the right choice, and better thing will come your way.

This is a moment when you really want to stand up and shout, “I fooled you all, I pwn (own) you! You didn’t have a clue!” What you do instead is sit quietly and stack chips looking as uninterested as possible. After all the people who lost money the hand are momentarily bitter about it, and you do not want to do anything to make their mood worse. Doing so however is not in your best interest.

This behavior is not limited to the poker tables. It happens at the dinner table, office meetings, church services, driving, just about anywhere two or more people gather to decide something, or compete for something. You can not stop or control this behavior until you know how.

What can be controlled is how it affects you as an individual. Do you find yourself angry in certain situations without understanding the reasons why? Do you suddenly lose your temper and make remarks or do something you later regret? If this sounds like your day, I know a few tricks that may help you.

Pay attention to the people around you when these ‘anger’ moods suddenly come upon you. Do you notice a pattern? Were you in a good mood until you spoke with one or two certain people. Afterward, you find yourself angry or lashing out about something that you did not care about thirty seconds before the conversation? Do people say things to push your buttons?

It is important to know there are people in everyone’s social group who love to spend their day making others angry, then walk away. If you call them on it, they will act innocent, pretending they do not know what they are doing to you. Then, same as the person stacking everyone else’s chips at the poker table, they let an almost undetectable smirk cross their face for an instant. It happens so quick, you may not realize it happened. They are getting in one last button press before they leave you alone for the day.

You can protect yourself from these situations easily once you realize they are happening. The secret is simple. Once you know that one or more people in your social group are trying to manipulate you, you are ready for them. When they stop by and start what appears to be an innocent conversation, ask yourself, ‘what is the purpose of this conversation?’ If you listen for the purpose of finding the reason they are talking with you, it is easy to spot what they are doing.

Do they want you to do something they would not do themselves? Perhaps they are trying to anger you into confronting someone they are angry with? Do they enjoy it when they make you angry? Do they use you as a tool to fix their problems?

Knowing the hidden reason for a particular conversation, you are empowered to act, or better still, not act on what you hear. Some people, who make other people angry, do so without any intention of doing it; it is rare, but it happens. They may see you as a good listener, an empathetic ear, or someone they feel they can safely blow off steam to, or a victim.

No matter what the real reason for someone trying to manipulate you, once you know what is happening, and you do not follow through doing what they intended, the other person(s) will come to realize that you are no longer their property. They no longer own (pwn) you, and they can no longer create a situation where you find yourself doing what they will not do themselves.

Ready?

Find a piece of paper and something to write with, or open up notepad or whatever you use to write notes with on your computer.

Without thinking about it, start writing or typing words and short phrases you think describe happiness in your life that have meaning to you.

Pause for a few seconds when you are done. Use the backside of your piece of paper, or open a new notepad while leaving your first notepad open. If you do not know how to do that, hit return seven or eight times so you have a new space to type on.

Now think of the happiest person or people you know. Start writing or typing words or phrases to describe them, pretend you are telling someone else about them.

When you are done, compare your phrases and words. How do the words and phrases you use to describe yourself compare to the words and phrases you use to describe your happy person?

Are they the same type of words, or are they distinct and different? Can you tell what words describe you and what words are describing your happy person?

Did you use words and phrases such as: content, happy, filled with joy, peaceful, or friendly to describe those really happy people you know?

Did you use words, such as: worried, bored, anxious, lost, empty, or wondering, to describe yourself?

Perhaps you used a mix of words that move back and forth across an imaginary happiness line?

If the words you use to describe yourself are not similar to the words you used to describe the happy person(s), how are they different?

Happiness does not happen on its own. Happiness needs help to take root and thrive in your life. You can make happiness happen if you want to.

Pause and reflect and decide if you want to make a happiness change in your life? Some people really do not want to make changes in their lives even though they talk about it.

If you want to make a change to bring more happiness in your life, start using those words and phrases you used to describe the happiest person you know to describe you.

Tell yourself at every opportunity, how happy you are. Using the happiness defining words you used to describe your happy person to validate yourself.

You should do this many times a day, at least every hour for the first days, until you start to believe it. It is very important to do this when you first wake up, and before you go to sleep.

When you meet someone new, or see someone you have not seen in a while, let them know you are a happy person, and you like people. Use some of your new words on them when you talk about yourself. It will feel funny at first, but you will get over it quickly and it will start to be a conversation ice breaker before you realize it.

Change does not happen over night, but if you keep at it you will wake one morning and you will be the happiest person you know!

What I enjoy about the song, is the different ways the man asks the same question. If I were a carpenter, tinsmith, so on and so forth will she still love him? It may seem that the man is not sure that the woman would love him and be with him, so he keeps asking to make sure the answer stay the same.

And of course the answers are the same throughout the song. June Carter sings that, yes, she would still love him and support him at whatever he does. That is a pretty strong bond the man and woman have between them, and her validation that she will and would love him no matter what came down the pipeline shows how sure they are of their relationship.

I think this song has a lot of relevance today with our world as it is. For some of us, this is our second, third, or maybe fourth major career change in the making between the job we were going to do the rest of our lives and today. For others the track record is the same in the relationship department. It seems many of those truths we were given as children are no longer true. Rarely is there a one lifetime job, or a lifetime long relationship.

Where is the balance in our lives? How do we as individuals meld our personal values, wants, and needs into something that fits our life, where not everything is forever any more? How can we go through a lifetime full of ups and downs, where the downside brings up stressors and pressures that ripple out and back, rocking our personal values, wants, and needs to there very core?

Most of us follow some variation of two main methods. One group tries to maintain order in their life, and the other group takes life as it happens. The key of course is balance. If a healthy balance is maintained between being a control freak, and letting life take you this way and that, it is possible to live a happy contented life most of the time.

In the song, what the man does for a living is not important. The relationship between the man and the woman has nothing to do with his past, present, or future career(s). The relationship is not centered on money. The relationship does not revolve around what they have or do not have. The relationship does not center on how they look, or how witty they are. The relationship is centered on the love each has for the other. As long as love is the center of their relationship, nothing else matters.

Nothing else matters to the couple in the song. They know what is important for them and why. They know that not compromising what is most important to them by life’s other distractions brings them the most happiness possible. Letting yourself be distracted away from what is most important to you is the second biggest cause of unhappiness. The biggest cause of discontent and unhappiness is not knowing what is most important in your life until after you have given it away, or otherwise compromised it.

Take time at the end of each day before you fall asleep and review at what you are doing with your life. Is what you are doing bringing you closer or farther from what you truly want? Is what you are doing making you happy, or does it tug on you, stealing a little of your happiness away every day? Decide what is most important to you each night, and start each day trying to make it happen. Before you know it, you will wake up and realize you are there!

Being accepted and approved of by those around us is very important to our well being. It is what makes society function from a tribal setting to a country of billions. If we are not accepted by those around us for who we are, it is hard to be happy.

Often we take the need to be accepted farther than we should. We do certain things or perform certain acts, not because we want to, but because it is something we think we need to do to receive acceptance from those around us.

Often those rituals we are performing are restrictions we place upon ourselves. Dressing a certain way is a good example. When we are children it never enters our minds how we are dressed. It is only when others in our social circle start to notice what we are wearing that our clothing becomes important to us.

This forming and changing to conform rules our life throughout our high school and early adult years. We conform and change so often we are not even aware we are doing it, and have been doing it. As we change, we change our speech, our taste in television, books, and other entertainment, and opinions of people and the world.

We wake each day and put a happy face on for the world to see, showing everyone we come into contact with how much like them we are. We observe certain few people who seem to be naturals in our chosen circle and emulate them. We also start feeling less than because we are not that talented and natural at being who we want the world to see we are the same as that person or persons.

What would happen if instead of trying to be like everyone else with a few minor differences, we worked on becoming ourselves? Really being who we are, and not settling for being a little bit of who we really are?

Each day we wake, each of us makes almost invisible changes from who everyone thinks we are to who we really are. Most of the time we are not even aware of the process. It may be something as odd as waking up, and wondering why we said what we said to someone the day before. Or maybe why we watched a different television program the night before instead of the program we always watch.

Our inner self knows who and what we really are, and manipulates subtle changes in our lives to help us become us, and not a poor clone of who we think we want to be. Women are the most obvious and successful example during middle age. We men go through a major process too, but we are not as successful as women are in identifying and becoming the real us.

Those people we tried to emulate all those years, were themselves, and they were comfortable with who they were. The real us is perfect too once we remove all the additions and subtractions we made to ourself to fit in. The real us is the person who has stripped away all expectations belonging to others about us, and they become the person they were born to be.

Once we are us, and not an act, we start to have a clear understanding of why we are in this world, and what our true purpose is. At this point we enter in a race against time to accomplish whatever it is we were meant to do.

How much healthier it would be if we did not wait until some future time to become us, stripped away the facade starting right now, and became the real us. How much more we could accomplish as we perfect ourselves along the way instead of going through separate processes. Who am I, and what is my purpose would not be as painful of a process. We need you, start now on the path to finding you.

They were the four windows, pyramids, and there were numerous scales where you could rank your projects, line up you meetings, your day, your life, other peoples lives. I lived in California at the time in the Sierra Nevada mountains. There was only so much to do, and I had a lot of time to read when the money ran out and I was partially homebound.

I read another version about how to live life to its fullest and to get the most out of life explained in a new way. At least if you left off the main purpose of the books and distilled what was left – that is what I came up with.

Except I did not really understand what I was reading…. How could I have a very full day generally doing nothing at all? How was it possible to get up each morning and enjoy one boring day after the next? Some years later I started understanding. I started having little short glimpses of how life is supposed to be.

I think it started with an old worn out man. An old man, and not good for much by a younger man’s standards, and pretty much a waste of space by an average teenager’s view of the world. But he had something I had never seen before. This old man who could not walk twenty feet, enjoyed going outside every day, sliding around on his butt and taking care of his yard!

An old happy man sliding around the grass digging up dandelions and tending flowers, drinking a beer, and not really caring that he could barely walk, I was curious enough to spend some time with him – an hour a week maybe spread across summer afternoons.

He used to tell me about when he was a younger man and able to do more. He said he lived pretty much the same as everyone else. He told me he thought life was okay back then, but nothing to get overly excited about. He said he drank a few beers, smoked cigarettes, and went through the motions of raising a family.

Eventually the kids grew up and started their own lives, his wife eventually took ill and died. His only boy left in town did not spend much time with him, had his own family. He figured that was pretty much the way life went.

Then he told me he became ill himself. He was in the hospital for a while, I am not sure with what, but as he lay in his bed, he started thinking about his life and how special it was even though by everyday standards it was pretty simple and common. Work, eat, sometimes sex with the wife, and sleep. Do it again, play with the kids on Saturday, and go to church on Sunday.

Somewhere in thinking about his routine he said he realized just how special those days were. He told me of those days were special, and every day was special, even if it was spent in a hospital bed. As time went on, I found a few more people like him, men and women both. Usually older, but they all understood just how precious their life was, even if it seemed dull and average looking in. It was the only life they were going to get, and they looked at the world with new eyes each day.

I know some of what they learned rubbed off on me, because eventually I too started to find life more exciting. I could even enjoy going to work most days! My life is what I choose to make of it. Once I decided to enjoy mine, time became short and precious. Now even the simplest things are more enjoyable, although my time is much more precious than I ever thought possible.

For most of us, it is not until our kids leave home, or we are cruising through our forties when we realize we really do not know a lot about us. We know what our beliefs are, and what our likes and dislikes are, but most of us we have no real idea why they are who we are. We only really know that we have been this way all our lives. It is during this period when we really start to find out about ourselves. Some of us like what we find and some do not, but it is generally a time of both inner and outer exploration.

A lucky or perhaps not so lucky minority of people go through this stage early in life. Perhaps in their teens or early twenties. It is much harder to explore yourself when you are younger because a number of life’s tools that come from living are not present. To compound the difficulty many common ideas in the adult world are still new to us, and we think we invented or discovered them for the first time. For anyone who finds themselves in this position, it is best to remember that what you are learning is new for you, but perhaps not new to others.

One area we exploration is finding how we think about the world and our place in it. When we are growing how the world effects us, and our immediate family. People who hold a world view that encompasses the world first, and not themselves are a rare prize. Generally, great struggles have gone on within their core being before they found this new plateau of seeing the world and their place in it.

This is only a minor example of how we change as our life unravels. There is a good learning here that applies to all areas of our lives. If you have ever heard or read the story of the blind men and the elephant you may already know how and why our views change. In the story, some blind men all examine different parts of an elephant and have different ideas of what an elephant looks like.

Whether you are one of the few who have more advanced ideas on the world and your place in it, or are just starting out on the journey and have no idea of how you fit into the world remember everything is perfect in this moment and time, all is as it should be. All roads lead to Rome as the ancient saying proclaims. What is important to remember is that unless you and the person you are discussing life with are touching the same spot on the elephant, your views will be different, and that is okay. Of course each of you will grow at different rates and your views will cease to be the similar, and that is how it should be too.

Conflict in these situations starts when one party forgets that neither party holds the correct view. The correct view is still somewhere ahead on the path of life. As soon as one party involved remembers either holding that view in the past, or that the other person is speaking from a experience level they have not arrived at conflict goes away. We can not pull or force another into our level of life. We can only hope that we are on the right path ourselves, and eventually others will join us.