The Key to
Happiness
By Brian Tracy
March 2, 2008
Excerpt From: Personal
Success
Your ability to achieve your
own happiness is the key measure of your success, of how
well you are doing as a person.
You learn the key to happiness
that has been the same through all of history. You learn
how to dispel the two myths that may be holding you back
and how to achieve more happiness in everything you
do.
Dedicate Yourself to Your
Best Talents
The key to happiness is this:
dedicate yourself to the development of your natural
talents and abilities by doing what you love to do, and
doing it better and better in the service of a cause that
is greater than yourself.
This is a big statement and a
big commitment. Being happy requires that you define your
life in your own terms and then throw your whole heart into
living your life to the fullest. In a way, happiness
requires that you be perfectly selfish in order to develop
yourself to a point where you can be unselfish for the rest
of your life.
Imagine if you could become
a millionaire today!
Your life would be easier and
more fun. You could be taking more vacations, and spending
the kind of time with your family that you really
want.
Please Yourself
First
In Edmond Rostand’s play
Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano is asked why he is so intensely
individualistic and unconcerned with the opinions and
judgments of others. He replies with these wonderful words:
“I am what I am because early in life I decided that I
would please at least myself in all things.”
Your happiness likewise
depends upon your ability to please at least yourself in
all things. You can be happy only when you are living your
life in the very best way possible. No one can define
happiness for you. Only you know what makes you happy.
Happiness is an inside job.
Your Happiness is Up to
You
The biggest myth about
happiness is when people say that it is not legitimate or
correct for you to put your happiness ahead of everyone
else’s. Throughout my life, I’ve met people who have said
that it is more important to make other people happy than
it is to make yourself happy. This is nonsense.
The fact is that you can’t
give away to anyone else what you don’t have for yourself.
Just as you can’t give money to the poor if you don’t have
any, you can’t make someone else happy if you yourself are
miserable.
The very best way to assure
the happiness of others is to be happy yourself and then to
share your happiness with them. Suffering and
self-sacrifice merely depress and discourage other people.
If you want to make others happy, start by living the kind
of life and doing the kind of things that make you
happy.
Action
Exercises
Here are three steps you can
take immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, define for yourself the
activities that you really love and enjoy, at home and
work, and then organize your life so you do more of
them.
Second, believe in yourself
and trust your own feelings. Then, please at least yourself
in all things.
Third, determine what it is
that you do that brings the most happiness to others and
then organize your life so that you can do more of
it.
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