Step to change Dicatat oleh salmah salleh , Ahad, 16 Januari 2011 at 4:52 PG, in

It’s All in Your Head

• Happiness doesn’t come from actions, it comes from attitudes.
The secrets to happiness are all in your head.

• We confuse pleasure with happiness. The former is sensual and
temporary, the latter is spiritual and permanent.

• You have the tools to be happy today. All it takes is changing
your attitudes toward yourself and your place in the world.

• The secrets are also already in your head, since they’re eternal
truths we’ve learned and either ignored or forgotten.

• Instead of thinking ourselves to unhappiness by living out
harmful attitudes, we can think ourselves to happiness by
adopting healthy attitudes.

• Don’t compare yourself to others. You’re just where you’re
supposed to be.

• Don’t be pessimistic about the future. Things get better.

• Stop being your own worst enemy: Own your success.

• Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness: You don’t have to go it
alone.

• Don’t wait for the best or right time: There’s no time like now, so
take the action.

• You don’t need the best: Your best is enough.

• Stop looking backward in anger and regret: The past is past.

• Stop living in the future: Tomorrow is too late.

You’re Just Where You’re Supposed to Be

• We compare ourselves to others in dozens of ways, from the
sublime to the ridiculous: how much we earn, the size of our
homes, the cost of our cars, the extent of our social lives, our
appearance, and many others.

• We’re taught this behavior by our parents, who are pressured
into it by a society that for better or worse uses economic,
material, and external factors as yardsticks.

• Comparing ourselves to others will, little by little, year by year,
destroy our chances for happiness in life. It’s a race we can
never win.

• Instead, we need to pursue those things that bring us pleasure,
not the things others pursue or things we think should make us
happy.

• We need to base decisions on our own lives, the lives we want to
lead, not other people’s lives or the lives others think we should
lead.

• God (Allaah) wants us to realize we are all incomparable.


It Gets Better

• We let tipping points in our lives shift our attitude from hopeful
to depressed, from optimistic to pessimistic.

• Cultivate the attitude that the passage of time is a positive force
in your life, not a negative force.

• Time leads to wisdom and happiness.

• Time eases pain.

• Time lessens anger.

• Time adds perspective.

• Fight against time and your life will get worse; embrace the
passage of time and your life will improve and you’ll be happy.

• Start taking small, simple, concrete steps in the direction you
want and you’ll find your attitude changing.


Own Your Success

• We do things to ourselves we’d never let others get away with
and think things about ourselves we’d never let others say
without challenge.

• This isn’t criticism designed for self-improvement, it’s
denigration designed to beat ourselves up for not meeting our
own impossible standards.

• We need to own our success as well as our failures in order to
live life to the fullest and be happy.

• To do that, we need to get out from between our ears and see
ourselves realistically. We need to cultivate an attitude of
humility.

• That comes by surrendering, placing ourselves in situations
where we’re clearly not the center of the universe. Through
surrender we increase self-esteem.


You Don’t Have to Go It Alone

• Getting help is the easiest way for you to leverage your time,
money, and knowledge.

• People think they should be able to do things on their own or
that others won’t help them.

• Both rationalizations are wrong. Rugged individualism is a myth,
and God (Allaahu) has programmed people to be helpful.

• Make it easier for people to help you by offering ways to
overcome their obstacles, explaining why you’re approaching
them, and framing your request as help for a specific problem.

• Practice asking for help as much as you can, and help others
whenever you can.


There’s No Time Like Now, So Take the Action

• We all hesitate to take actions or make decisions, in matters
large and small, occasionally or regularly, and as a result delay
potential success and freeze our fears in place.

• Sometimes we hesitate because we believe there’s a perfect time
to take an action. But we’ll never know the perfect time until it
has passed.

• Other times we hesitate because we’re afraid of failure or the
unknown. But hesitancy only locks fear in place, leading to
chronic emotional, psychological, and spiritual pain.

• We need to stop expecting perfection in timing or results; it’s
imperfection that makes us human. Fear of failure is fear of
living. When we give ourselves permission to fail, we give
ourselves permission to succeed.

• The moment we realize we’re hesitating to take an action, we
need to take that action. We need to make action habitual.

• We needn’t try to be fearless—fear is part of life. Instead, we
need to be dauntless



Your Best Is Enough

• Try to have everything and you’ll end up with nothing.
Contentment comes from having a well-rounded life.

• Because the baby boom generation was so large, and because
our wealthy and powerful society catered to its needs and wants,
boomers were raised to believe they could do and have anything.
That belief has now spread throughout society.

• But even though the barriers to individual advancement and
achievement have been broken down so you can achieve
anything, you simply don’t have enough time and/or money to
have everything.

• That’s okay, because a multifaceted life is more likely to provide
fulfillment than a life devoted to only one pursuit.

• Rein in your dreams and expand their reach by exploring all
your varied dreams and compromising so as to achieve as many
of them in as many different aspects of your life as you can.

• Miracles, and happiness, come to those who do the best they can.


The Past Is Past

• We spend inordinate amounts of time looking in life’s rearview
mirror.

• Most often it’s because we’re angry with someone else for
something they did to us or failed to do for us.

• Sometimes it’s because we regret something we did or
something we didn’t do.

• The past cannot be undone. Whatever the cause, looking
backward does nothing but perpetuate your pain. It locks you
into a prison of victimhood.

• It’s okay to glance backward to learn, just don’t stare.

• It’s also okay to glance backward at happy times, just don’t let it
turn into nostalgia.

• To transform your past from a burden to a resource, you need to
forgive others or yourself.

• Forgiveness comes only in time, but you can lay the foundation,
realizing grudges are useless and apologizing for your own
mistakes.

• Stop living in the past and you can embrace the image of
yourself as an empowered individual


Tomorrow Is Too Late

• Too many of us spend our lives planning and hoping and
dreaming about how wonderful our lives could be in the future.
As a result, we fail to see how wonderful life is today.

• Take responsibility for your own happiness and start living in the
now. Tomorrow is too late. You can be happy today.

• When you look at the present in terms of time, it becomes
infinitesimal and blurry. Instead, look at the present as an
experience, as a state of mind.

• The present is the experience of living, not remembering or
hoping.

• Prudent planning is fine, but there’s a big difference between
planning for the future and living in it.

• Take inventory of all the things for which you’re grateful: the
people you love, the places you enjoy, the things that bring you
pleasure.

• Don’t defer happiness to some nonexistent tomorrow. Let
yourself be happy today