Choose to be happy

 Most people would like more happiness in their lives. The interesting thing about happiness is how much of it is actually within our control. Researchers have found that about 50 percent of our happiness comes from set points that are genetically determined. Another 10 percent comes from our circumstances in life. The remaining 40 percent of our happiness is determined by our behavior, and it is this 40 percent that we can control. We can choose to be happier by controlling aspects of our lives that promote happiness.

Perhaps one of the primary ways to be happier is to express gratitude for all the things we have. I recently read someone who said that much of the world would love to have your problems. What they meant was that many of the problems we struggle with are first-world problems. We get upset because a car repair cost more than we though it would while much of the world would love to own a car. We get frustrated because the case of bottled water we buy went up 75 cents a case. Much of the world would love to have clean water to drink. You get the idea. We have much for which to be grateful, and we need to learn to be grateful and to express that gratitude to the right people. When you tell someone how much they mean to you both you and that individual are blessed.

A second behavior that promotes happiness is being optimistic. Too many people walk around like Eeyore. They live with a gloom-and-doom attitude. With that kind of attitude it's impossible to be happy. Optimistic people believe in themselves and their abilities. They look forward to the future and believe they have more control over their destiny. They set goals believing they will achieve them, and they often do. Optimism and happiness go hand-in-hand.

Closely related to optimism is positive thinking. Zig Ziglar used to refer to the opposite of positive thinking as stinkin' thinkin'. Positive thinking people believe in the best of others and themselves. They look for the silver lining in every dark cloud. It's very hard for positive thinking people to get down, and if they do get down they don't stay down very long.

We can increase our level of happiness by practicing acts of kindness towards others. Occasionally you will hear of someone in a drive-through restaurant who pays for the meal for the car behind them. I recently read where that happened, and the person who received the free meal paid for the car behind her, and this went on for several cars. Don't you know each of those people left there just a little happier than they were when they pulled into the drive-through lane? There's something about doing something nice for someone that makes you feel better.

While there are many other things we can do to improve our level of happiness we will just mention one more: learning to forgive. So many people carry years of bitterness within themselves. Someone has hurt them, and they cannot forgive that individual. Unforgiveness makes it impossible to be happy. When we refuse to forgive someone we are allowing that person to hurt us a second time, and we should not give them that much control over our lives. Forgiveness is not easy, but we must find a way to forgive others if we want to truly be happy in this life.

If we control 40 percent of our happiness level then we truly can choose to be happy.

We almost always have more than two options

It may be hard for some people to believe since we live in an age of superstores, but I can remember shopping for groceries in a store that had two aisles. You entered through the door and walked down one aisle with shelves on both sides, the meat counter was at the back where you turned and went down the second aisle with shelves on both sides. At the end of that aisle was the cash register. The amazing thing was that you get all the groceries you needed for the week. Now, of course, there were not 15 different choices for ketchup and 100 different flavors of salad dressing, but we didn't expect such a variety of choices back then. We just wanted groceries, and this little store provided that.

Most of us want more options today when we buy groceries than that store could provide, but at the same time we often limit ourselves to two options when we are trying to make a decision about something. We think it has to be this or that. We limit our thinking to either/or and feel trapped when neither choice seems to work or if we really don't like either choice. The fact is, there are almost always more than two options if we take time to think about it.

When we adopt an either/or mindset we really do fall into a trap that often does not end well. Even if one of those options does work, that does not mean that it was the best option. There may have been another choice we could have made that would have worked out even better for us if we had only considered it rather than focusing on the two choices we thought we had.

I suggest that when you are considering a major decision that you spend sufficient time to identify as many options as possible. Talk with trusted friends about the decision you are making and ask for their input. They very well may introduce an option you had not even considered. You can add it to your written list. This might be a good time to bring a life coach into your life to help you identify additional options. When you have compiled a list of several alternatives you are ready to begin giving each of them more thought to identify the one that would be the best choice.

There is a danger in this advice. We can spend too much time doing this and overthink the matter. This is often called "analysis paralysis" where we get so caught up in thinking about a matter that we never made a decision. This can be the result of the fear of making a wrong decision so we overcome that fear by making no decision. This unwillingness to choose is dangerous to anyone but especially for those in leadership positions. There comes a point where one must stop the analysis and make a decision. 

Just don't limit yourself to considering only two options when you need to make a decision about some matter. There are usually more options than that and as you identify them your likelihood of making a better decision will be higher.

College choices matter

With students returning to college campuses there is still much confusion about whether they will actually be in classroom settings, take their classes online or some combination of the two. I find it interesting that during previous pandemics, such as the H1N1 virus in 2009, there were no shut-downs of schools and businesses and the widespread panic that has followed Covid. The CDC estimated that 150,000-575,000 persons died from the H1N1 virus in its first year. To date, the CDC reports 156,000 confirmed OR PROBABLE deaths due to Covid. There has been so much controversy about the actual numbers of persons infected and deaths due to Covid that any number can be disputed. This is not to say that Covid is not a serious problem. It is, but at this point it appears no more deadly than H1N1. Unfortunately, due to political reasons the media has decided to instill fear and panic about this virus in the minds of the public leading officials to take unreasonable measures to control it. However, this is a subject for another post.

As students return to campuses parents need to be asking exactly what are their young people being taught. After all, in many cases the parents are shelling out their hard earned money to provide their children with an education. In other situations the students are racking up thousands of dollars in  student loan debt that they will spend much of their working lives to repay. Is what they are being taught worth that expense? Sadly, in too many cases it is not. Rather than being given an education they are being indoctrinated into a preferred way of thinking that is often diametrically opposed to the values and beliefs of their parents.

A recent report from an economics professor at a major university is a case in point. He has proposed offering an elective class that points out the dangers of Marxism and the damage it has done to those countries that embraced it. The university approved it only for honors students but has denied his request to open it up to any interested student due to the objections of anonymous faculty. No doubt, they extol the Marxist mindset which they teach their students and do not want an opposing view to be presented to the wider student body.

This kind of censorship occurs on numerous university campuses across the country. A conservative speaker is invited to speak to a gathering and later uninvited because students and faculty members do not want to hear someone present material that is different than the liberal mantras being presented on campus. Christian organizations are banned from some campuses. On too many campuses today our young people are being indoctrinated towards a value system that rejects the values that this nation was founded upon. Why would any parent want to pay for that, and why would a young person want to go deep into debt for an education that will not prepare him or her for the real world?

A pastor friend of mine once told me he had three daughters attending a supposedly Christian college. They came home and began to tell him of some of the things one professor was teaching which were contrary to biblical teaching. He wasn't presenting another view for discussion, which would have been fine, but was presenting it as fact while ridiculing what the daughters had been taught. The pastor called the professor and told him he had a problem with what he was teaching. The professor responded that was too bad and there was nothing the pastor could do about it. Actually, there was. The next day the three daughters withdrew from the school and finished their education at another college.

Too many of our young people leave for college and return no longer believing in God or in our historic American values, and we are paying for that. It's time parents take a hard look at what is going on at the schools their young people attend. Higher education is intended to provide an education that prepares young people for the challenges and opportunities they will face, not indoctrinate them with propaganda that will lead them, and ultimately this nation, down a path of destruction.

For me, as a Christian, I believe Christian colleges and universities provide the best option to educate our young people. Even then, as the above example of the pastor's three daughters points out, we need to be careful. Some schools that were once affiliated with denominations and Christianity long ago abandoned any pretense of being a Christian school. Still, there are excellent Christian schools that can provide our young people with the education they need to be successful in life.

Your choice of a college or university does matter. Choices have consequences.  

Choose to live like a millionaire

For those of us who are not millionaires we are likely to have a lot of wrong ideas about how millionaires live. We imagine they live in absolute luxury with the freedom to do anything they please. No doubt wealth does give them opportunities that many of us may never experience, but many of us would be surprised at how many millionaires truly live. There have been some interesting books written about the millionaire lifestyle such as The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy and Stop Acting Rich: ...And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire by Thomas Stanley. Those books, and similar ones, find that most millionaires live well below their means and are much more interested in financial independence than they are in impressing other people.

For instance, they spend far less for clothing, watches, homes and cars that the average person thinks they do. Living on credit and spending more than you make guarantees you will never be wealthy. One does not enjoy financial independence by paying on credit cards every month. Besides, that makes the individual a slave to his or her paycheck which eliminates other opportunities to build wealth. When one lives below their means it gives them margin in their lives so they can make career moves such as starting a new business.

A second characteristic of millionaires is that many of them find side hustles. They may have a hobby that can become income-producing. Some, while working their regular job, begin investing in rental income buying first one property and later adding to that as opportunities present themselves. That can't be done if you are already spending more than you are making. Others find other side jobs that can earn them money that can be invested and benefit from the magic of compound interest.

It is a fact that many millionaires are self-employed with some researchers claiming that over 40 percent of millionaires fall into that category. One researcher found that self-employed millionaires had over 1.5 times the median income that those who work for other people.

Another common trait of millionaires is that they like to read. They do not read much fiction, but instead they focus on reading books that will help them become more successful in their chosen fields. One of the wealthiest men in the world, billionaire Warren Buffett, said when he was starting out he would read 600-1,000 pages a day. Even now he spends as much as 80 percent of his day reading. He advises anyone who wants to be successful to read at least 500 pages a day of books that will help you achieve the goals you want to achieve.

Perhaps you have no interest in being a millionaire. But, I bet you do want financial security in your life. Today, few people approach retirement with enough money to comfortably retire, but that does not have to be you. Follow the examples of those who achieved financial security, and one day you'll be enjoying the benefits of that same security.

I've made a decision about professional sports

I've never been a fan of professional basketball, but I have spent a lot of time watching baseball on TV, especially when the Reds were playing. I've been to the Reds ballpark a number of times even though they haven't been a very good team in recent years. Likewise, I've watched many professional football games on Sunday afternoons. That has all ended since professional sports has decided to no longer honor our flag and support an organization that has brought much damage and violence to our nation.

During the Vietnam war I served four years in the US Navy and was proud to do so. I made two trips to Vietnam on board the USS Enterprise. When I enlisted I took an oath to defend our country and our constitution. I love this country even though it isn't perfect. I also love our flag and all it represents. I have zero respect for those who do not.

It is a shame schools quit teaching American Civics because we now have people who vote who know nothing about how our country is set up and how it functions. We have college graduates who know nothing about our nation's history. They have sat under professors who filled their minds with socialist propaganda and who told them how evil our nation has been since its founding. Socialism has never worked anywhere except in a college classroom, and it never will.

Professional athletes who have been pampered all their lives because of their athletic talents earn millions each year from a society they want to destroy. Those millions will have to come from someone else because I have no intention of buying another ticket or team memorabilia or do anything else that will put a nickle in their coffers. Maybe if enough other people make the same decision, team owners will begin to understand that Americans will not support the things that want to tear down the country we love.

Every organization that sponsors these teams need to know that they don't have to worry about being boycotted. Since we are not watching the games we don't see the commercials. The millions of dollars they spend on advertising is being wasted because many of us don't know who is running ads on these games. I hope advertisers are getting really cheap rates for their commercials since fewer people are seeing them.

As a veteran I defended the rights of people to make decisions about how they would conduct themselves. If you want to kneel during the playing of the national anthem, you have every right to do so, and I would never support any attempt to deny you that right. But, I also have the right to choose how I will respond to you exercising that right, and I choose to ignore you, to write you off as irrelevant to my life.

I choose to support the vast majority of police officers who do a great job of protecting the citizens of this nation. I choose to support those organizations that love our nation and respect what it stands for. When the national anthem is played I will proudly stand and salute our flag and give it the respect it deserves. I choose to vote for persons who are dedicated to making this nation better regardless of their political affiliation. I choose to honor God with my life, and I pray that He will send a revival that will once again turn this nation back to values it once had.

What choices will you make about how you will support this great nation of ours? Just remember, choices have consequences.

Do you prefer healing or helplessness?

There is an interesting story in the Bible about a man who had lived with some infirmity for 38 years. He spent time at the Pool of Bethesda which, according to Jewish legend, would heal the first person who stepped into it when an Angel stirred the water. Jesus met this man there one day and asked what appears to be a rather foolish question: Do you want to be made well?

Why would he not want to be made well? Why else did Jesus think he spent time at this pool? Anyone in their right mind would prefer well-being over illness, wouldn't they? What is really interesting is that the man never answered the question. Rather, he offered an excuse. He didn't have anyone to help him into the pool and someone always got in the water first. He was depending on someone else to help him become well. Frankly, it sounds like a lot of people today.

We live in a land of unbelievable opportunity. We have freedoms that people living in other country will never know. We have opportunities that do not exist anywhere else for people to do amazing things with their lives. But, we have a significant percentage of our population waiting on someone else to take care of them. They depend on a government check to provide them with the bare necessities of life instead of taking advantage of the opportunities available to them to rise about that.

The government is discussing another providing another check to Americans due to so many out of work while at the same time companies are trying hard to hire new workers. People are demanding that additional money be added to unemployment checks which, in many cases, provide more income than they were making when they were working. Exactly how does that provide any incentive for someone to look for a job when they can sit home and make more than they would working. Others are demanding that minimum wage be raised. Why does anyone want to remain in a minimum-wage job anyway? Minimum wage jobs are there to help people get work experience so they can go out and find better employment.

As a senior in high school I started a minimum wage job at .75 an hour. Before graduating I had asked for and received pay raises that increased my salary to 1.25 an hour. Just a few weeks before graduating I requested another .25 an hour which was refused, so I quit and went to work for another business the next week for 1.50 an hour. As soon as I turned 18 I went to work for another company at almost twice that salary. No one needs the government to guarantee them a living wage if they are willing to advance themselves and do what it takes to deserve a higher salary. To break the chains of helplessness one must break his dependence on others to provide for him. Becoming mature occurs when we begin to take responsibility for ourselves.

While many people are dependent on the government for their income, many more are dependent upon credit to maintain their lifestyle. There is a reason it's called Mastercard. As long as one is dependent on credit it will be your master. Talk about helplessness! Look how long it took for the pandemic to cost people their jobs before they began to scream that they couldn't pay their bills, they couldn't pay their mortgage or rent, they couldn't buy groceries. We were in the greatest economic boom in decades, and yet millions of people were living paycheck to paycheck with nothing in reserve. Why? I imagine it was because many of them had more money going out each month than they had coming, and they made up the difference with plastic.

Do you want to be made well? If financial distress is making you feel helpless maybe it's time for plastic surgery. Like a lot of physical healing that occurs, there might be some temporary discomfort, but it will be worth it when you begin to heal financially. If you need help getting out of debt and achieving financial security, check out the plan Dave Ramsey promotes in his best-selling book
The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness. This plan works.

You can go through life feeling helpless or you can find healing for every aspect of your life. The choice is yours, but remember, choices have consequences.

The choices we make, make us

Everyday we make numerous choices about what we will do and how we will act. But, one psychologist believes "that only about 5 percent of what we do in a given day is the outcome of conscious, deliberate choices we make, processed by that snowball on the tip of the iceberg that is human consciousness. The rest of our actions and behaviors are managed below the surface, by all sorts of learned yet now unconscious ways of intending and navigating the world...Aristotle called them 'second nature': because these are ways that we move in the world without thinking about it." This information comes from an excellent book titled You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K. A. Smith.

Earlier in the book Smith quotes another individual who tells us, "Your deepest desire...is the one manifested by your daily life and habits." Smith writes that "This is because our action - our doing - bubbles up from our loves, which, as we've observed, are habits we've acquired through the practices we're immersed in."

Most of the time, when we are confronted with choices to make we will make the ones that bring us the most satisfaction, the most pleasure, the most enjoyment, and we will continue making that choice for the same reasons. Eventually, we no longer have to make a conscious choice about the matter. That choice has become a habit that we now do without giving it much thought. That habit can then begin to control us and shape us into the person we become. This can be either a good thing or a bad thing.

Few, if any, drug addicts woke up one morning and decided to destroy their lives by becoming addicted to drugs. Someone offered them a drug, and they chose to consume it. As they continued to make the decision to use drugs one day they didn't have to make the decision any more. It was made for them the moment they woke up and their body began to cry out for the drug. The same thing occurs any time someone becomes addicted to a substance or a behavior. Perhaps millions of people are as addicted to their electronics and social media as a coke addict is addicted to cocaine.

On the other hand, one can choose to be a person filled with a positive outlook on life. Such a person radiates positive energy towards everyone he or she meets. This person maintains a positive outlook on life. These are choices a person can make, and as this choice is made consistently over time it eventually shapes the person into someone who is generally positive and upbeat about life.

Since our choices can make us into the person we become we need to be very careful about the choices we make. It is equally important to be careful about the people with whom we associate. It's very difficult to consistently make positive choices if we are hanging around with those who are not as careful about the choices they make.

I encourage you to first identify the person you want to be and then determine the choices you need to make to become that person. This will not happen overnight, but eventually the choices you make will make you into the person you will become.