Monday, August 16, 2010

Motivational Monday #15 - Finding Happiness

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort."

I have been reading "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert and that sentence stopped me in my tracks. It made me think and it made me squirm a little. I'm not sure how much personal effort I put into the act of happiness.

If you think about it, most of society is based on "more." More stuff, more house, more vacations, more friends, more money, thus more work. In my experience, happiness is vary rarely found in the word more.  It might be found in "contentment" or "peace" or "balance," but I have never seen it in "more."

So how do we seek out happiness?  How do we put in personal effort to find and keep happiness?  What is happiness really in our lives?

Today is a Motivational Monday, and thus my goal is to motivate. Today what I want to motivate you to do is think about that first statement. How much effort do you put into happiness, not entertainment or frivolity, but happiness.  Then determine if it is enough.

We may not all be able to spend a year soul searching and traveling the world to find happiness, but we can all look within. The last I checked, that didn't require a passport.

2 comments:

  1. The thoughts you share are very relevant Laura. Societal pressures make being present in yourself and discovering what happiness is for ourselves very challenging. I found personally absorbing from the book The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle over a period of 6 months and really getting my mind in a zone of being present in the moment allowed me to find a sense of inner peace. I keep saying, it is time for me to read the book again. Your post is inspiring me to do just that.

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  2. Laura,

    I'm glad you enjoyed the post. Finding a book that can speak to your soul is a gift, and I'm glad you feel motivated to read it again. Enjoy!

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