Some people go through life complaining about the weather, complaining about the economy, complaining about the neighborhood, even complaining when there’s isn’t enough to complain about! They moan and groan about anything and everything and nothing at all. Their complaints quickly become the sound of nails on chalk boards, their voices shrill with the whine of helplessness. It can be raining gold coins in their backyard and they’ll complain about the flowers crushed by the falling wealth. Stop it!

Happiness is not about trying to make you feel good all the time. It doesn’t always feel good to climb mountains over rugged terrain. Legs burn. Arms ache. Shins bloody. Feet blister. Toes bruise. Shoulders knot and backs grow weary. But that’s how you get to mountaintops. Happiness is not always in the valley. Quite often, it’s at the summit after a long climb. This is a post meant to get you climbing again.

Something deep inside me yearns to reach millions, to extend the message of happiness to every corner of the globe. Not being one to sit around and wait for things to happen, I’m launching The Happiness Movement. Check it out and take a look at the special invite/offer to bloggers.

Are your goals in harmony with your faith, beliefs and values? If not, you may find yourself fighting an internal battle that can’t be won, a bit like arm wrestling yourself. No matter who wins, you lose. Learn to set sticky goals instead, that become reflections of the deepest part of you, making them near inevitabilities.

What separates you from the realization of your goals is nothing more than a series of decisions made consistently over time. 92% of those who set goals fail to achieve them. Become the 8% by doing what the 8% do!

We are what we think about over time. We are the accumulation of all our attitudes, beliefs, fears, hopes and dreams, all the thoughts that fill our minds on a regular basis. We are our own self-fulfilling prophesy. Our thoughts are the prisons we condemn ourselves to or they are the keys we use to unlock possibility and potential. There are ways to unleash that potential and live a life of deeply rewarding happiness.

Have you ever gotten just plain sick and tired of those repeating, annoying parts of yourself you wish would just pack up and leave town? It just may set the ball rolling in the right direction if you start with a break-up letter. To yourself. Read a sample break-up letter here.

Are you bored? Has life lost some of its excitement and interest? Boredom is a pernicious thief of happiness, stealing joy from the moments a life is made of. It is a symptom of something misaligned in our lives. Learn how to end boredom forever with just a few simple changes and begin to enjoy a happier, more rewarding life.

In celebration of the life of the man who most personified the 1960s US Civil Rights movement, whose name is almost synonymous with that era, who risked everything and consecrated the movement he helped start with his blood, I give you 5 life-changing quotes by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve collected 5 of the scariest words I know. These are words that are deadlier than they seem. Their poison infects the mind and turns the heart cold and fragile. So approach with caution and use sparingly. Remember, poison taken in small enough doses builds immunity to its lethal toxicity. But if taken in larger doses will kill you. So will these words.

Are you a Personal Development Junkie? Do you surf the web in search of your next high, the next blog with the newest twist or next fix to your personal development needs? There is a lot to choose from. Some are decent. Most fall somewhere below average. Some may be doing you more harm than good. Check out the 5 signs personal development blogs may be damaging your life.

Intolerance has a bad reputation. And with good reason too. Still, I’m not so sure it should be thrown out with the bathwater. The thing is I’m actually an advocate for having a good healthy dose of it. Surprised? Keep reading. I think you’ll agree with me. You see, the problem with intolerance is not so much the intolerance per se as much as what our intolerance is directed at.

Guest post by Tim Brownson of A Daring Adventure: Our self-talk can build and lift or it can trap, undermine and cripple. There are ways we can learn to change the very language we use to describe the obstacles we have to the life we dream of living. Try this simple change of language to experience a quantum change in your life. Self-talk matters. Come see why.

The reasons for change are endless: A new career. An old habit. A new one. Acquiring a skill. Overcoming a fear. Ending procrastination. Becoming happier. But no matter the reason or the kind, all change has a starting point. This post is a tribute to the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey. Change is made possible by understanding the principles undergirding change. Covey taught those principles.

Not everyone’s depression is exactly the same. The causes of it, the way it’s felt and experienced and those steps and ideas that will ultimately help to lift the cloud of depression will be in some combination different for each person struggling with that challenge. So what I’ve done is to write a sort of suicide note … in reverse. There are reasons to choose to live that may be enough to spark that same desire in someone else. My hope is that it does.

Friendships are organic things. They live and grow and sometimes wilt and decay. They take something of us to maintain and nourish. Neglect can kill a relationship just as fast as it can a houseplant. At some level, we like to think there is nothing that could end a true friendship. But in the real world, there are many poisons that quickly sink deep into the bloodstream of even our most cherished relationships, infecting them with deadly toxins. Come in and see what those deadly toxins are!

Anyone can influence change in one person. So why not two? Or ten? Or more? Even if I only help 10 people make life-altering changes, that’s 10 of 7 billion people who change. You see, by changing any part of the world, I’ve changed the world itself just as changing an ingredient in a cake, changes the cake. And even 1/7,000,000,000th of a change is still a change. So let’s go change the world! We only need one thing. Come see what it is!

Ideas matter. They have consequences. They lead to great civilizations doing great things or to human depravity on monumental scales. They also change us on a personal level as we discover what they are and apply them to how we live, how we think, what we do, what and how we believe. The following ideas are some of those that can change your life. Forever.

While a new year is a nice benchmark of sorts, its really only one day after the day before. It holds no magic. Perhaps better than endless New Years Resolutions that seem so often to start and stop and start and flounder and start and end, would be to daily resolve to live that one 24-hour chunk of time to its fullest. Maybe by carving out an amazing day, all those amazingly meaningful days would add up to an amazingly beautiful life.

Second in an ongoing feature here, excerpts from comments left by readers are used to introduce topics. My readers comments are about as eloquent and insightful and pithy as the most famously quoted. Come see what I mean and discover the passion to live higher and bolder, taking action in your life to build something out of the clay of your life that will be richly rewarding, deeply happy and profound.