happiness

Perspective Is Everything

by

It’s TED Talk Tuesday on 350orbust, and Rory Sutherland the Ad Man is back. His message is essentially the same as in his 2009 TED Talk, but it bears repeating that our perception of an event or a circumstance is more important than the “reality”:

The circumstances of our lives may matter less than how we see them, says Rory Sutherland. At TEDxAthens, he makes a compelling case for how reframing is the key to happiness.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iueVZJVEmEs]

Take Time To Renew Your Spirit

by

The kind of hope I often think about …is, I believe, a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t. Hope is not a prognostication — it’s an orientation of the spirit. Each of us must find real, fundamental hope within himself. You can’t delegate that to anyone else.

Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope.

Vaclav Havel, in Never Hope Against Hope, Esquire.com

Memorial gathering for Václav Havel in Wenceslas Square in Prague on the day of his death on 18 December 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Take Time To Renew Your Spirit

by

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitation, to waste a moment on yesterdays.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

early morning on Mexican Hat Lake, Woodland Caribou Park, Ontario

 

Friday At The Movies

by

Happy people dancing on Planet Earth, from Matt Harding’s “Where The Hell is Matt?” YouTube video series. Touching and fun. Humans the world over have more in common than we have differences.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwe-pA6TaZk&feature=player_embedded]

*

To read Matt’s interesting story, go to the Where The Hell is Matt? website.

*Okay, I know the world is confusing enough much of the time without having blog postings entitled “Saturday At The Movies” going up on Friday!  Thanks to Donna, faithful reader and kindred spirit, for the heads up on the mix-up. Happy FRIDAY everyone!*