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a simple turth about happiness

If you choose to find the positive in virtually every situation, you will be blessed.
I was not a particularly happy child, and like most teenagers I reveled in my angst. One day, however, it occurred to me that I was taking the easy way out. Anyone could be unhappy. It took no courage or effort. True challenge lay in struggling to be happy.
The notion that we have to work at happiness comes as news to many people. We assume it’s a feeling that comes as a result of good things that just happen to us, things over which we have little or no control.
But the opposite is true: happiness is largely under our control. It is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be awaited.
To achieve a happier life, it’s necessary to overcome some stumbling blocks, three of which are:
1. Comparison with Others.
Most of us compare ourselves with anyone we think is happier—a relative, an acquaintance or, often, someone we barely know. I once met a young man who struck me as particularly successful and happy. He spoke of his love for his beautiful wife and their daughters, and of his joy at being a radio talk-show host in a city he loved. I remember thinking he was one of those lucky few for whom everything goes effortlessly right.
Then we started talking about the Internet. He blessed its existence he told me, because he could look up information on multiple sclerosis—the terrible disease afflicting his wife. I felt like a fool for assuming nothing unhappy existed in his life.
2.Images of Perfection.
Almost ay of us have images of how life should be. The problem, of course, is that only rarely do people’s jobs, spouses and children live up to these imagined ideals.
Here’s a personal example: No one in my family had ever divorced. I assumed that marriage was for life. So when my wife and I divorced three years after the birth of our son, my world caved in. I was a failure in my own eyes.
I later remarried but confided to my wife, from that I couldn’t shake the feeling that my family life had failed. She asked me what was wrong with our family now (which included her daughter from a previous marriage and my son). I had to admit that, aside from the pain of being with my son only half the time (9my ex-wife and shared custody), our family life was wonderful.
“ Then why don’t you celebrate it?” she asked.
That’s what I decided to do. But first I had to get rid of the image of a “perfect” family.
3.“Missing Tile” Syndrome
One effective way of sabotaging happiness is to look at something and be fixated on even the smallest flaw. It’s like looking up at a filed ceiling and concentrating on the space where one tile is missing. As a bald man told me,“ Whenever I enter a room, all I see is hair.”
Once you’ve determined what your missing tile is, explore whether acquiring it will really make you happy. Then do one of three things: get it, replace it with a different tile, or forget about it and focus on the tiles in your life that are not missing.
I’ve spent years studying happiness, and one of the most significant conclusions I’ve drawn is this: there is little correlation between the circumstances of people’s lives and how happy they are. A moment’s reflection should make this obvious. We all know people who have had a relatively easy life yet are essentially unhappy. And we know people who have suffered a great deal but generally remain happy.
The first secret is gratitude. All happy people ate grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it’s true to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy.
The second secret is realizing that happiness is a by-product of something else. The most obvious sources are those insects to playing baseball. The more passions we have, the more happiness we’re likely to experience.
Finally, the belief that something permanent transcends us and that our existence has some larger meaning can help us be happier. We need a spiritual or religious faith, or a philosophy of life.
Your philosophy should encompass this truism. If you choose to find the positive in virtually every situation, you will be blessed. As with happiness itself, this is largely your decision to make.

a simple turth about happiness

能不能在编辑一下，有点看串了~~

a simple turth about happiness

是呀,整理一下吧.