Adam’s Peace

Here are some simple steps to grow how much joy you have. When you have joy, you don’t pursue pleasure quite as single-mindedly, which leaves you open to make some truly amazing changing in your life and the world around you. You don’t need to take these steps in order, but the first one builds on all of the rest.

Take Responsibility

It is possible to find some measure of joy when we don’t take responsibility, but that joy is magnified incredibly when we are being responsible. This is, perhaps, the corner stone of living a joyful life. The key here is to be able to identify what you are responsible for. The general rules is, if you can affect something, then you are responsible for it. If you see trash on the ground, then it doesn’t matter who put it there, you are responsible for it the moment that you realize it is there and are able to move it. Similarly, if you see something good in this world, you are responsible for keeping it that way. Most importantly of all, you are responsible for your own thoughts. If you are already at peace and are experiencing joy, then increase that joy by recognizing that you are the one who brought peace into your life. If your thoughts are troubled, then take joy in knowing that you can change your thoughts and bring even more peace into your life. (more…)

Any fan of Spider Robinson should instantly recognize the quote that makes up the title of this post. Hopefully a few of those people have read the short story which also bears that name. This is the question of joy v.s. pleasure, and goes down to the fundamental core of why people pursue personal development.

So, why am I saying that God is an iron? Isn’t that a bit blasphemous? Well, in a way, it is, but no more blasphemous than any other religion giving God imperfect qualities, such as anger or jealousy. I’m talking about human nature, and the division between pleasure and joy.

Let’s assume for a moment that there is a creator, and by looking at that creator’s works, we can infer something about its personality. As humans, we are that creator’s works, and we have some peculiar properties. The most distinct of those qualities is our tendency to do things that, in the long term, hurt us. (more…)

Simply put, having fun is doing anything which causes us happiness. I don’t want to tell anybody what to do in order to have fun, because what causes happiness in me could be torment to someone else. I think that wading through database relationships, figuring out how to join pieces of information together to get something meaningful together is a good way to spend an afternoon. Others would be begging for some sort of physical torture after an hour of this type of work. To each their own, I suppose.

I have a friend who works at a bar in Vegas. Her idea of fun is wildly different from mine. If you don’t mind crude language and sarcasm that oozes out of every word, you can get an idea of her style of fun over at her blog. I can barely manage the polite customers that I was charged with helping at grocery stores, so how would I enjoy working with rowdy bar patrons?

There are some very common misconceptions about how to gain happiness, though. We don’t gain any happiness from having something. We only gain happiness from doing something. (more…)