- “Marriage consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives.” — Anonymous
- “Happiness is nothing more than good health and poor memory” — Albert Schweitzer
- “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” — G.K. Chesterton
- “God didn’t create us to see through each other, but to see each other through.” —Anonymous
- “The ego is that which is in love with the self and with the self alone.” — Donald DeMarco
- “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” — Oscar Wilde
- ‘Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired’ —Robert Frost
- Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. ~Leo
Tolstoy - We can do no great things, only small things with great love. ~Mother Teresa
- No man stands so straight as when he stoops to help a boy. ~Knights of Pythagoras
- “Happiness is like a butterfly which, if pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”- Nathanial Hawthorne. [Conversely, those who are always grasping for all they want will never be able to receive the gift of what they want.]
- “Happiness is something that ‘happens’ when we are pursuing something else.”-Donald DeMarco
- “Happiness is the by product of trying to make someone else happy.” Gretta Palmer, Permanent Marriage.
- “Strictly speaking, will power belongs to fantasy, and willfulness belongs to psychopathology; but willingness belongs to the world of real values and real people.” – Donald DeMarco in Architects of the Culture of Death
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“One cannot make others good by dominating their wills.” — Richard Purtill
- I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. ~Mother Teresa
- “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” –Antoine de Saint Exupéry
- “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abe Lincoln
- “Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them.” — Jonas Salk
- “When a woman behaves like a man why doesn’t she behave like a nice man.” — Dame Edith Evans
- “We have all had experiences that wounded us deeply and caused us to react to certain situations in certain ways. But we can change . . . to become better-versions-of-ourselves . . . . Mediocrity is almost always accompanied by attitudes of entitlement and victimhood. The first step toward becoming a dynamic choice maker is taking ownership of our faults, fears, and failures.”–Matthew Kelly
- “Love is never something ready made, something merely ‘given’ to man and woman, it is always at the same time a ‘task’ which they are set. Love should be seen as something which in a sense never ‘is’ but is always only ‘becoming’, and what it becomes depends up on the contribution of both persons and the depth of their commitment.” ― Pope John Paul II, Love and Responsibility
- “Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally…. Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves….The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else’s story.”― Don Miguel Ruiz
- “[O]ur beliefs are only a relative truth that’s always going to be distorted by all the knowledge we have stored in our memory…. Don’t make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama…. When we respect everybody around us, we are in peace with everybody around us…. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.”―Don Miguel Ruiz
- “God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, “I love you, God,” is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, “Thank you, God,” is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now.”―Don Miguel Ruiz
- “I no longer agree to treat myself with disrespect. Every time a self-critical thought comes to mind, I will forgive the Judge and follow this comment with words of praise, self-acceptance, and love.” ―Don Miguel Ruiz
- “When we respect everybody around us, we are in peace with everybody around us.”―Don Miguel Ruiz
- “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”―Melody Beattie
- “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”―The Dalai Lama
- “True nobility it is not about being better than anyone else. It is about being better than you used to be.”―Wayne Dyer
- “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”―Goethe
- Research shows that “Being able to hold your tongue rather than say something nasty or spiteful will do much more for your relationship than a good word or deed.”(1)
- “Mental chemistry generates interest. Emotional chemistry generates affection. Physical chemistry generates desire. Spiritual chemistry creates love.”―John Gray in Mars and Venus on a Date
- “She answered that she loved to read novels. The Rebbe responded that as novels are fiction, what you read in them is not necessarily what happens in real life. It’s not as if two people meet and there is a sudden, blinding storm of passion. That’s not what love or life is, or should be, about. Rather, he said, two people meet and there might be a glimmer of understanding, like a tiny flame. And then, as these people decide to build a home together, and raise a family, and go through the everyday activities and daily tribulations of life, this little flame grows even brighter and develops into a much bigger flame until these two people, who started out as virtual strangers, become intertwined to such a point that neither of them can think of life without the other. This is what true love is about, the Rebbe told Sharfstein. “It’s the small acts that you do on a daily basis that turn two people from a ‘you and I’ into an ‘us.” ― Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History
ARTICLES TO READ
“If you want to be happy, embrace the fact that only two comparisons matter. First, compare who you are today with who you were in the past. That will remind you — and allow you to feel proud — of just how far you’ve come.
Then compare who you are today with who you hope to someday become. Because that will keep you focused on having, and doing, what truly matters to you.”
Joy versus Happiness
Joy is what we experience from things, activities, and even adventures. But true happiness comes from relationships.
Joys are passing. That’s why we are constantly seeking new joys.
True happiness, by contrast, is marked by a deep sense of peace or contentment, which in turn is dependent on feeling safely connected to other persons by whom we feel loved and love in return. These other persons may be family, friends or God . . . and to some degree, even pets.
Here’s the proof. A person who has experienced great joys in his collection of mementos, cars, or travels does not receive comfort on his death bed by asking for the things or distractions that gave him joy. He receives comfort by asking for the people in his life who were the source of his true happiness.
Here’s another proof. No one who feels entirely isolated from meaningful relationships is happy. Loneliness is the antithesis of happiness. The lonely may experience joys, but they are not happy. They do not feel socially connected and socially rooted. We are all psychically built to be social creatures. When there is a lack of sufficient social connection we are not fully the social beings we are meant to be and therefore lack a fullness of happiness.
In short, we can only find true happiness in relationships with others. Indeed, it can be argued that the whole purpose and meaning of life is to develop relationships and thereby understand and mirror that Divine relationship which is the very nature of the Trinity. One of the ways we are made in the image and likeness of God is to be in relationship with others like ourselves.
From these insights we can see that key to experiencing and deepening true happiness in our lives is to focus on nurturing our relationships with others, including God, parents, siblings, spouse, children and friends.
Everything you do to nurture and restore relationships (including seeking and offering forgiveness, comfort, and support) will contribute to your happiness and the happiness of others.
From this same line of reasoning we should also be aware that the temptation to seek individual joys in things and experiences, especially at the expense of our relationships, is like overindulging on sugar at the expense of good vegetables and protein. Whenever our pursuit of joys lead us to neglect our relationships, this will diminish our happiness, not feed it. So be careful of pursuing the excitement of material joys at the expense of your relationships.
Unwise Words to Ponder: “He is learning to love me unconditionally, under all my conditions.”
Okay, the is not a recommended way to approach relationships. In fact, it’s just an ironic line from Amy, the deeply troubled, manipulative, self absorbed, murderous sociopath in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn describing her triumph over her husband.
But sadly, Amy’s line may actually reflect a bit of truth about how some peoples sometimes perceive a victory in getting what they want.
Describing her husband’s “reform” following her manipulations, Amy is proud to declare: “He is learning to love me unconditionally, under all my conditions.”
Now stop a minute and think about this.
Do you have conditions on accepting your spouse’s love? If so, are they perhaps actually obstacles, rather than aides, to his or her giving you the unconditional love you really desire?
And vice versa. Is your spouse erecting conditions around accepting your efforts to love him or her which are undermining your ability and desire to love him or her unconditionally? If so, is there some way for you to help him or her see that these conditions are counterproductive?
Conditions on love are actually the antithesis of unconditional love. Surely we need to encourage and strive for unconditional love. But putting conditions on it is a sure fire way to thwart it.
Research Notes:
- A retrospective study found that couples who argued about money early in their relationships — regardless of their income, debt or net worth — were at a greater risk for divorce. (Read more at Psychcentral and Huffington Post.
- How We Really Pick Our Romantic Partners: Balancing what you can give with what you can get. by Dr. Hal Shorey examines the differences between secure attachment styles and insecure attachment styles.
- Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by Amir Levine, Rachel S.F. Heller examines how attachment research relative to children also sheds light on attachment styles…and issues…in adult relationships. According to the authors, ANXIOUS people are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back, while AVOIDANT people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness, and SECURE people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving. The authors offer advice on how readers can better understand and navigate their relationships given their attachment style and that of their partner.
Wise Words to Ponder