Cultivate The Happiness Habit

I think the three greatest blessings that a person can ever have on this earth are: the privilege of rendering some useful service which will help others; keeping our own mind busy working toward a worthy ideal; and being in good health both mind and body.

I think it's actually good for someone to be unemployed at one time in his or her life, because it teaches you what a real blessing a meaningful job really is.

When you find a career that you really love and want to put your whole heart and soul into, one that is truly making a positive difference in this world, then, you have found life's greatest gift, happiness!

No man or woman can be happy unless he or she is engaged in some sort of work that he or she likes. A person who is working just to collect a paycheck may seem to be happy, but he or she isn't. If that person smiles at all, it doesn't come from the heart.

Too many people have the mistaken notion that money brings happiness. It doesn't; at least not to the person who quits working because he or she has an abundance of money and material possessions.

Happiness does not come from having, but from working. It is not the mere possession of wealth that makes a person happy. It is the enjoyment a person receives from pursuing, working and achieving; from using wealth in the endeavor to multiply it; it is the game and not the tools with which the game is played that brings happiness.

There would be very little fun in a long, tapered hardwood stick if it were not for the baseball that goes with it and the game which is played with it.

Likewise, there would be very little fun in just hitting the lottery if it were not for the great game of work that you could play with the winnings.

What a wonderful blessing it would be if we could all learn to stop cheating and backstabbing other people just to get a raise or a promotion in the belief that it is essential for happiness.

Find happiness in you daily work, whatever it may be, and it will make little difference to you whether you succeed in piling up few or many dollars.

I have never hit the lottery, inherited any wealth or hit it rich overnight in business or an investment, but I've know people who have. Those people have never felt very comfortable until they adjusted themselves to this new environment and some of them lost all their wealth because they never adjusted.

Happiness is not an exclusive something that is just for a chosen few. It is accessible to all, regardless of age or condition, who will extend themselves a little and strive for it.

Discovering Opportunity In Adversity

My first job as an advertising copywriter was for a small agency that handled mostly car dealer and radio station advertising. Their ads up to that point were not very creative so I made it my first priority to improve them. Every time I got an assignment, I wrote two commercials: one the way the agency had always done it and a second that was more creative and exciting.

Every time I presented the commercials for approval, they always chose the one that was just like what they had always done, stuffy and boring. Their attitude was that if they had not done it before, they weren't going to try it.

I would have gotten depressed, but I had a good friend who had been in the business a long time and he kept telling me that every defeat sowed the seeds of success for the future. I became determined to wear them down. I tried even harder. If they saw my “better” commercials enough, eventually they would see the light and start to use them. I had been with them for a year now and I would give it just one more year.

As it turned out, they never once used one of my “better” ads. They never even showed a single one to any of their clients to see how they might react to them. It was a tough year, but by the end of it I had built up quite a portfolio.

Armed with my new portfolio, I arranged interviews with some of the biggest advertising agencies in the country. One of them loved my commercials and offered me a job on the spot, at almost twice the salary I was earning at my current job.

When I informed my boss that I would be leaving, he told me that while I was a nice enough guy, he didn't give me a year at my new job, because the agency I was going to was much too big and competitive for me. He said I stuck to my own ideas too much and that would get me nowhere. He said big companies like people who go along and don't make waves.

To make a long story short, it's been over twenty five years since I left and I'm doing great, but today that small agency is out of business. As a matter of fact a few years after I left the company I learned that many of the agency's clients had left them for one simple reason: They felt that they were getting the same old thing year after year, and they wanted fresh and original commercials, something I had tried to convince them to do for the two years I worked there.

If my friend had not given me the courage to believe in myself and my ideas, I would have never kept writing commercials the way I believed they should be done. I would have given in to their way of thinking. I would not have developed a portfolio that allowed me to find a better job and I would never have started and built the successful business that I have today.