Based on your life experience, what is the key to happiness? Here are some popular contenders:

- Having whatever you want
- Becoming rich and famous
- Attaining wealth and power
- Having a positive attitude
- Attaining freedom from external control
- Doing what you love for a living
- Being true to yourself
- Having lots of good caring friends
- Having romantic love
- Having sex with different women
- Receiving public recognition and praise for your accomplishments
- Rising to the top of your career ladder
- Becoming successful in business or career
- Becoming self-aware and spiritual
- Doing creative work
- Peace of mind and good health
- Helping others
- Giving love and receiving love
- Raising a happy family in a good home

What do you think? What's the most important out of all those?

What has been the key to your happiness? What do you think is the ideal path to happiness?


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Happier Abroad Grand Ebook
Meet Foreign Women

"It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards." - Harry Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Winston wrote:

Based on your life experience, what is the key to happiness? Here are some popular contenders:

- Having whatever you want
- Becoming rich and famous
- Attaining wealth and power
- Having a positive attitude
- Attaining freedom from external control
- Doing what you love for a living
- Being true to yourself
- Having lots of good caring friends
- Having romantic love
- Having sex with different women
- Receiving public recognition and praise for your accomplishments
- Rising to the top of your career ladder
- Becoming successful in business or career
- Becoming self-aware and spiritual
- Doing creative work
- Peace of mind and good health
- Helping others
- Giving love and receiving love
- Raising a happy family in a good home

What do you think? What's the most important out of all those?

What has been the key to your happiness? What do you think is the ideal path to happiness?

The answer is E. none of the above.

I've had a lot of time to think about this personally and have watched my 16 year old son drink the American coolaid and believe its all about money and power. I tell him that we all know many people who have the attributes listed above and yet are not happy. We also know happy people who have none of the above. One of the extraordinary things about traveling abroad that is rarely mentioned is that in many cultures people have nothing and yet are happier than Westerners. And often Westerners go to those cultures but bring their Western baggage and are never happy. Frankly this sounds like some members here.

Happiness or unhappiness is in fact - a choice. No I don't mean simple positive thinking, though that may be an element of it. We can choose to enjoy life or hate it till the day we die. We can go on our adventures abroad and soak up extraordinary experiences or travel and complain about what we see, and hate our lives.

I'm not suggesting blind acceptance. There's a Buddhist term I have always loved, Honin'myo, which roughly means fresh start. I am suggesting that every morning we each get up and have a decision to make - a fresh start. Make it a good one. Decide to be happy!

Attaining freedom from external control
Peace of mind and good health

-dancing
-workout, moving
-singing
-reading
-writing

People fear and don't acknowledge their own vulnerability. That is why they are prone to anger and revenge.

People can choose the attitude they want for the day. They can choose to be happy and at peace or they can be mean and self-destructive.

How you treat others is a reflection of your inner state. If you don't respect others, you don't respect yourself. It is the same as if you eat junk food, you become what you eat.

Happiness is like philosophy, it is difficult to grasp, but its beautiful suffering pushes us to become more aware of the world and ourselves.

My main one is: people I trust. Unfortunately there are none. Of the two I trusted most, one killed himself and the other tried to screw my wife. I dream of being Noah. Still, there are some sources of happiness: my family, church service, sex, food, hot showers, and chocolate.


_________________
ActBiblically.org

fschmidt wrote:

My main one is: people I trust. Unfortunately there are none. Of the two I trusted most, one killed himself and the other tried to screw my wife. I dream of being Noah. Still, there are some sources of happiness: my family, church service, sex, food, hot showers, and chocolate.

Yikes, Fschimdt! Sorry to hear that about your life. Yeah, I agree it's tough to trust people since many of them are so self-serving and greedy. There are people out there that aren't like that thankfully.

fschmidt wrote:

My main one is: people I trust. Unfortunately there are none. Of the two I trusted most, one killed himself and the other tried to screw my wife. I dream of being Noah. Still, there are some sources of happiness: my family, church service, sex, food, hot showers, and chocolate.

I have already resigned myself into believing that it's alone at the top, and that the only thing I can truly trust is myself, and money, because they are the only two things I have full control over.

Can humans be more compassionate? Sure. Could I be more trusting of humans. Sure. But the problem is that I live in modernized society where I have no choice but to distrust others and look after my own a** because everybody else is doing the same thing.

Trust me, I have given people chances, and was deceived in major ways, so enough was enough and it's Machiavelli time for me.

Here is the deal though, it's not that bad of a life to live. I'm just working, saving money, and looking after MYSELF. Sure, it's lonely at times, but at the same time it's peaceful because know I'm not living a lie.

davewe wrote:

The answer is E. none of the above.

I've had a lot of time to think about this personally and have watched my 16 year old son drink the American coolaid and believe its all about money and power. I tell him that we all know many people who have the attributes listed above and yet are not happy. We also know happy people who have none of the above. One of the extraordinary things about traveling abroad that is rarely mentioned is that in many cultures people have nothing and yet are happier than Westerners. And often Westerners go to those cultures but bring their Western baggage and are never happy. Frankly this sounds like some members here.

Happiness or unhappiness is in fact - a choice. No I don't mean simple positive thinking, though that may be an element of it. We can choose to enjoy life or hate it till the day we die. We can go on our adventures abroad and soak up extraordinary experiences or travel and complain about what we see, and hate our lives.

I'm not suggesting blind acceptance. There's a Buddhist term I have always loved, Honin'myo, which roughly means fresh start. I am suggesting that every morning we each get up and have a decision to make - a fresh start. Make it a good one. Decide to be happy!

Yea, I hear ya. I have contacts with rich guys who have the blond trophy wife, the million dollar homes, and the exotic toys to go along with it, and I can assure you they DON'T look happy. Some of these guys don't even smile and they look miserable.

The truly happy men I have met in my life were the poor to moderately successful Mexican men.

None of the above. Happiness is a thoroughly individual state, and getting there is as different for each as his face.

For me, happiness is having attained the financial wherewithal to experience life abroad and knowing that my personal hell in the US is not a life-sentence.

I'm sure having relatively good health is a factor and looking younger than my 45 years as well.

Having foreign female friends who I love and consider my family ranks high on my list also.

America is done, and had I not known life away from this country, I might have driven my car off a cliff!


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Feel free to visit my sites and to leave your respected words of wisdom:

http://thedeclineofmyamerica.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ContrarianExpatriate

1. Work to live for self & family. Not "live to work".
2. Good food and wine (bring on the Armand de Brignac, ditch the Cristal).
3. Living near the ocean or lakes with good fishing opportunities.


This would be a bonus: