Sometimes I see books promising a happy, abundant life that seem kind of complicated to me. As we move into 2012 I offer a recipe for a happy life that is simple and straightforward — but which I guarantee works. I know it works because I’ve proven it in my own life, and I’ve seen its results in the lives of countless other people over the ages.

Just two ingredients — courage and compassion

There are only two ingredients for this recipe I’m going to share with you today, and they are courage and compassion. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this recipe is too simple to be any good. It actually requires considerable skill and attention to do it properly.

For example, it is important to make sure that you apply these two ingredients of courage and compassion in precisely the right proportion according to the need of the moment. One circumstance may be so gut-wrenching that it demands an immediate expression of courage on our part. Nothing else will do.

But then, as we all know, another moment may come along that doesn’t especially call for courage. It calls for a change of heart so that we can see another person’s point of view in a difficult situation. Or feel the pain of another person, or of nature — or our own pain – and act with new understanding and love.

 Personally, I think one of the hardest things in life is to be truly kind to ourselves. Let me remember the gift of compassion given freely to each of us at our birth, and if I am pushing myself too hard — as perhaps I am beginning to do right now — let me realize that and offer kindness and compassion into the situation so that balance is restored in my experience.

I have learned in nearly 80 years that these two virtues of courage and compassion are one. They are always together. They are the core of true character and we separate them — or attempt to separate them — at our peril. “A house divided cannot stand,” it was said long ago, and the words are as true today as they ever were.

I wish you success and joy as you meet the challenges and opportunities of the year to come. One of my own hopes or goals for 2012, by the way, is to get to know you better. What a pleasure this will be. Surely whoever we are, and wherever we live, we are all in this together.

PS JoAnn and I will be traveling south to the balmy (I hope) shores of Mexico for a few days this weekend. I will publish a new post after we return. Please know I love you and care for you and am delighted to hear from you anytime about anything.

If you enjoyed this post please share it with a friend.

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How to make your life soar is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

I wish you a Happy New Year. Such a special opportunity we have at this time to consider how we can change our lives — and perhaps the lives of others — for the better.

Life doesn’t ask for much, but it does ask that we participate with life in making all things new. It asks that we cooperate in the process of change that is at work constantly in our little corner of the universe and throughout the entire cosmos.

We don’t HAVE to participate in this process of course. We can dig in our heels and hunker down in the supposed comfort of old ways and opinions.

But as I continue in the aging process I realize more and more vividly how enjoyable it is to consciously invite change in my life.

It’s fun to express myself in new ways that perhaps I didn’t realize even existed in an earlier phase of my life. To be more playful, perhaps, for example. Or even, once in awhile (I love surprising JoAnn with this) to be more succinct.

It’s fun to open myself to new perspectives and embrace new attitudes. It transforms everything. It even transforms how I experience aging. My goodness, what’s not to like?

As 2011 draws to a close, and we cross the threshold into 2012, by all means let us make some New Year’s resolutions. I’ve made one or two. But whether we make resolutions for 2012 or not, what will truly ennoble and change our lives in the coming year is to give increased expression to the beautiful qualities of our own true character.

Qualities I did my best to encapsulate a few years back in the following poem:

Character

An ancient song stirs in my memory like wildflowers shouting on a hill, and it says: “Not a leaf astir upon the tree, Not a ripple on the surface of the shining pool. Silence is the cornerstone of true character.”

I guess the mountain thinks so as it breathes out its majesty with every breath, and the prairie also, stretching forever beyond gray city walls.

Yet there are times when silence is not true character, and life makes a strong wind blow on the prairie or in the human heart. It demands that a human mouth speak, maybe yours, maybe mine, and say the thing that must be said if truth and love and kindness are to have their way.

What is it, this thing called character? Only my heart knows, as it turns to a light so close and yet so illimitable I’m not sure it really has a name.

Thank you for your interest and support and I wish you a beautiful, truly fulfilling New Year. Any thoughts you’d like to share? Please send them in. God bless.

Photo credit ken berg

Welcome a New Year, welcome a New You is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

This is a guest post by Daniel Offer. Daniel manages an interesting Facebook application called Emoinstaller. Emoinstaller allows you to add extra Facebook emoticons as well as Facebook smileys to your Facebook chat experience in just a couple of clicks.

Do you tend to beat yourself up by bringing past personal mistakes or shortfalls into the present? Do you tend to live with a lot of regrets or wish you could have a do-over in life?

If so, you aren’t alone. Most people have experienced embarrassing moments and have made a few mistakes along the way—it’s part of life. Unfortunately, it’s easy for thoughts of past negative experiences to pop into a person’s mind when they least expect it which can cause havoc for living successfully in the present.

While reliving past mistakes can seem like a form of penance, rehearsing regrets will never repair things or help you feel better. Constantly re-living bad experiences can chip away at self-confidence and undermine new risk taking opportunities.

When less than perfect things happen in your life, you can choose to either dwell on them or let them go. There’s a lesson to be learned in every experience, good or bad.

Since going back in time or having a do-over isn’t an option, you’d might as well learn the lessons and move on. You’ll be mentally healthier and emotionally happier if you do.

How to Let Go of Regrets

Since you can’t change the past, try to let go of it and the corresponding regrets with these tools:

• As soon as feelings of regret and self-doubt appear dismiss them, unless there is something within your power to repair a situation.

• Don’t base what you do today on mistakes of yesterday.

• Don’t treasure hunt through your past, or anyone else’s, looking for problems.

• Don’t use your past as an excuse.

• Forgive people. Every person is a product of his own past that has little to do with you. Don’t get wounded by another person’s stuff.

• Give up habits that aren’t serving you well.

• Stay away from toxic people such as those who are still reliving the past and attempting to bring you into it.

How to move forward

Everyone has the opportunity to start fresh every single day. If you are committed to stop living in regret and to begin living a fresh life, consider your answers to these questions:

• How will you say no to things you should say no to, and yes to new adventures?

• What habits need to be broken?

• What negatives might crop up in the future and how are you prepared to deal with them?

• What or who might you need to let go of?

• Who do you need to forgive?

Choosing to change your thought processes and habits makes a positive difference.

New Steps to Take

Picture the life you want to have. How will it be different starting today? How can you make today more meaningful so that you don’t regret missed opportunities tomorrow?

Here are a few ideas to consider:

• Appreciate your job and the people therein more, or make a leap for the job you’d rather have.

• Clean up your language and temper.

• Close the office door and take a vacation without a cell phone or laptop.

• Entertain more.

• Exercise more often.

• Hug family members frequently.

• Invest in a personal hobby.

• Participate in charities, church events or say yes to other invitations instead of isolating.

• Say kind words to your family members and others.

• Spend more time with your spouse and family.

• Stop complaining or criticizing. Adopt a happy spirit.

• Visit extended family more.

You can’t have a do-over in life, but you can try to live your best life now. Let go of regrets. Be a guardian of your own life by saying no to events or people that might cause you to have future regrets.

Be intentional about carving out important habits now so that at the end of your life you won’t look back in regret. Be confident of your choices and decide that if you do make a mistake, embarrass yourself or have something else go wrong that you will learn from the experience and pick yourself back up.

That is how to live a life with no regrets.

Any thoughts on this post? Please share.

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How to live with no regrets is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

If you were invited to choose between one of the following two options, which would you choose?

1.  A check for $500 million, made out to you personally. The IRS isn’t going to touch it. It’s absolutely free and clear, and of course, would get you well on the way to being a billionaire.

2.  An increasing sense of the timelessness and immortality of your own being. Caution. You’re still going to lose your physical body somewhere along the line, mind you, in this deal.

Personally, I’d go for #2.

Personally, I’d go for #2. Here are some of my reasons.

It’s true that I could probably think of some ways to spend that kind of money, or some of it. I could see JoAnn and me on a nice world cruise, for example. I could see myself at the wheel of a shiny new Jaguar motor car, like the one in the picture. Fresh from Britain maybe, or maybe not.

It would be colored British racing green of course, and I admit I’d be thrilled to bits for awhile anyway. I mean, think about it. The comfort and elegance. The speed of it. The luxury of it. The Englishness of it.

I suppose I could become a philanthropist, too, come to that. But here’s what concerns me about #1. At the end of the day, I worry if the $500 million in cash would make me truly happy and meaningful. If it would make me whole. If it would make me free, and fulfill my destiny.

The world needs a calm center

In these dangerous times, the world needs a calm center more than ever before. We ourselves need a calm center more than ever before. And the only place I know where true calm exists is in the eternal love and truth of my own timeless Being.

I find that when I am still, heart opened to the truth of my existence, I sense the presence of true meaning and happiness that is limitless. I realize anew that happiness already exists. I realize that peace and freedom already exist.

It is my own happiness. It is the happiness of my own Being and it is already free, and whole, and at peace. This is what I want to offer and share and experience more than anything else. What is worth trading for this?

What is worth trading for “Intimations of immortality,” as I think the poet William Wordsworth named his famous poem? 

The truth of you doesn’t age at all

As I think about these things, some words from the British poet, Rupert Brooke, that I read long ago, come to my mind. The young handsome poet wrote these words shortly before his untimely death in World War I:

“We have built a house that is not for time’s throwing. We have gained a peace unshaken by pain forever. War knows no power. Safe shall be my going, secretly armed against all death’s endeavour; Safe though all safety’s lost; Safe where men fall; And if these poor limbs should die, safest of all.”

The true promise of aging

I think this is one of the profound privileges of aging — the true promise of aging – the opportunity to connect more deeply with the truth of our existence.

When we think of aging, we sometimes become anxious at the thought of becoming increasingly decrepit, perhaps dependent on others. 

But ”Be still,” it was said, “and know that I am God.”

When we are willing to set aside, for a moment, our busy thoughts and preoccupations, and simply “be still,” as it was put, we discover what these words really mean.

We find the truth that sets us free. Not an external truth, but the truth of our own being.

I’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you may have on this post.

Bye for now, and God bless.

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$500 million or a sense of immortality? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

“I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.” – The Dalai Lama

First, a bunny update: The bunny that lives under our big blue spruce tree is alive and well, I’m happy to report. Hadn’t seen him for awhile, and since we border open space, I was concerned because we have various predators in the area. Anyway, with the snow quickly disappearing, bunny is chowing down on some grass as I start this post.

I’m 78, the world’s oldest, newest blogger, and I assert with confidence that one of the joys of aging is developing a greater appreciation for the mystery Carl Jung called synchronicity.

Synchronicity touched my life in an extraordinary way last week and I’m still drunk with the happiness of it all.

A fable about the hero’s journey

I had been invited to a private school called the HomeSpun Academy in Loveland, Colorado, to speak about a book I self published a few years ago entitled The Raven Who Spoke with God.

The book is a fable about integrity and the “hero’s journey.” I wrote it at a Starbucks soon after moving to Denver to marry JoAnn. It describes how a young raven named Joshua feels a sense of destiny in life and follows his mission regardless of the many challenges that confront him.

Goodness knows, I didn’t plan it this way. But the book came out on 9/11. It was translated into 11 foreign-language editions during the years following 9/11, but about two years ago it seemed to me it had run its course. Since we were planning to move to Denver I decided to give away some copies to Habitat before we moved.

Life had other ideas for my book

As I say, I thought my book had reached the end of its natural life span. Little did I know that life had other ideas for The Raven Who Spoke With God.

The principal of the HomeSpun Academy, Beth Sowders, saw a box of the books for sale for a few dollars at Habitat and decided to buy them.

But the box of books remained unopened on a shelf until August 2010, when Beth, facing a big challenge in her life, decided to read a copy. As she told me during my visit — the book changed her life.

Enrollment at HomeSpun had dropped and she was wondering whether it was the right thing to continue her work with the school. The story of a young raven who was true to his mission despite major challenges inspired her so much she knew it was the right thing to keep the school going.

“I couldn’t stop crying”

“By the end of the book, I couldn’t stop crying,” Sowders said to her students when she introduced me to them. “God showed me my destiny is to be a teacher.”

She had made the book part of the school curriculum. So when I arrived at the school last Wednesday I had the immense pleasure of meeting a group of students aged about 10 to 18 who loved the book and had been inspired by it to think more deeply about their lives.

Each of the students wrote me a note of appreciation.

Said one: “This book was very inspirational to me in some things that I was going through. I enjoyed having a character like Joshua, who goes through a very hard time at the beginning, but it got better along the way. I’m really happy that you wrote this book, because it showed me that even in the hardest of times God is always there to help you get through it.”

Being open to synchronicity

Synchronicity is another word for grace, as far as I’m concerned. I believe that like grace, it is always ready to bring happiness and healing into our lives — but of course we have to play our part.

We have to be open to its guidance, as the Dalai Lama points out. We have to listen to the little nudges that life brings to us, and act on the wisdom of our own heart.

Meeting Beth Sowders and her students last week was one of the greatest joys and fulfillments of my life for I had always hoped my raven book would help to remind people of any age of the unique destiny we each have to fulfill.

But suppose Beth had not bought the box of books I had more or less abandoned? Or suppose she simply left the book unread? Then the synchronicity I experienced last week would never have happened.

And I would never have met a wonderful group of young people whose passion and love for truth will inspire me for a long time.

Don’t give up on your dreams

Don’t be too quick to give up on your dreams — synchronicty can touch your life at any time and at any age in ways you perhaps could never imagine.

By the way, the Loveland Reporter-Herald carried a fine article about my visit to the HomeSpun Academy. Just in case you’d like to read it, here’s a link:

http://www.reporterherald.com/news_story.asp?ID=30802

Got a story about synchronicity you’d like to share? Please send it — I’d love to hear from you. Meanwhile, blessings from me, JoAnn, and bunny.

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The magic of synchronicity is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age