It seems there are about as many definitions of happiness as there are people who spend any time talking about it. But some of the definitions leave us wondering whether we would even recognize the thing if it were to hit us between the eyes in broad daylight. So what is it? When we know what it is (and isn’t), we will better know how to find it and how to keep it.

Fire burns. But it also cleans, purifies and refines. Heat melts. But out of that act of melted elements, steal is born and titanium is created. Pressure crushes. But it also produces diamonds.

Relationships can get complicated. And communication fumbles can further complicate them. I know. I’ve complicated mine more times than I want to admit. But the good news is that effective, even intimate, communication can be learned, broken relationships healed, happiness returned and love restored.

Have you ever felt frustrated that you weren’t as happy as you thought you should be, that you were stuck on some evil treadmill of unhappiness or that every time you thought you were feeling happy, something pulled the rug out from under your feet? Learning what to stop doing to be happy is as valuable as learning what to do. Come see if you agree…

Indifference puts a slow stranglehold on the throat of potential. It is what separates those who accomplish great things in life from those who wait for governments or luck to give them what they lack. It is the difference between those who are self-directed and those who see themselves as victims to a hostile world or painful personal history or the vagaries of fortune.

“Happy people are happy people because they do what happy people do.” Those people we Read More.

An amateur is a person on the way up, a person working to do what they have not yet been recognized for doing. It is a person who gives their dreams everything they have and everything they are. And in the process, they break new ground and forge new paths and discover new territory.

Today’s post was written by Akash Gautam, a motivational speaker in India. Too many of us spend too little time on developing our faculties and just expect things to fall in place. Your external situation is merely a reflection of your mindset. When you develop and understand your mind, you change everything.

If you’re like 92% of those who set any goals at all, you’re looking in the mirror right about now feeling guilty and disappointed with the person you didn’t quite become. With goal-setting odds stacked overwhelmingly against you (all but a mere 8% crash and burn somewhere between January’s excitement and December’s memory lapse), it’s easy to feel those nasty little joy-suckers of shame, disappointment and regret. But maybe you don;t have to feel that way…

How many dreams have been still-born by a single rejection letter or a bad interview or a critical co-worker? How many dreams have never even been inseminated by the fertilizing agent of action because of doubt and the lack of conviction or the pull of the status quo or just plain laziness? And most importantly, what quality is missing in such circumstances and how do we develop it?

Gratitude is not reflected in what happens to us, or how others treat us, or in the good deed someone does for us. It is something we carry with us into every moment of life. It’s an attitude, a way of looking at the world and interpreting events and interacting with others. Here are ways to grow your gratitude today.

Have you searched for and grasped at happiness and found it fleeting and inconsistent? Are you tired of the effort, disappointment and frustration? Perhaps you’ve already come to the same conclusion I have, that happiness is just not for you, that, indeed, it was never meant for you. Now, before you jump to conclusions here, keep reading to see what I mean.

If you have a passion for something, pursue it! If it courses in your veins, give it life. Develop your talents. Become great at what you do. There is beauty and life and happiness and meaning in it irrespective of the dollar value others will or will not pay you to express it.

It’s not that people who do great things are great people and the rest of us shmoes are the gray residue stuck at the bottom of the ordinary barrel. It’s that they are willing to …

To attack corporate greed while living in your own world of personal greed is to throw stones at a giant for doing on a large scale what you’re doing on a smaller one. The difference is in degree, not kind. First, remove yourself from the problem to have the credibility to call others to action.

Honesty, of the “my-word-is-my-bond” variety, seems to be an endangered species. But it shouldn’t be. It should be protected more actively than any species on the brink of extinction. Here’s why…

Would you consider yourself a loyal friend? If so, to what are you loyal? To the friendship? Or to the person you are friends with? Do you see the difference?

Life is in constant flux. Its in constant motion, growing and shrinking, lifting and falling in undulating waves of constant change. To simply stay on course, therefore, requires internal mobility—a willingness to bend and adapt, to learn and grow.

What would you do if you were guaranteed success? What would you start if you knew you could not fail? What dream has been wet down and stuffed in the back of the closet because you were afraid you would never be able to reach it? Here’s the problem …

Circumstances less often create the person as they reveal who we already are. Certainly, they help shape us over time. But at any particular moment, trying circumstances show us a truer mirror than we may want to peer into. This is why…