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Morris, a LifeReboot.com reader, recently left a comment saying “People live their life in fear and warp their actions and behavior on this fear that others will disapprove or belittle them… I, as an artist especially have learned that you will always piss someone off. You can’t make everyone happy.”

There is much truth in his statement. In this article, I will describe my own experiences from which I’ve learned you can’t make everyone happy, and tell you why that’s alright.

I dunno. Seems like the usual ‘Get off your duff and wealth and happiness will follow’ type website. By someone neither wealthy, nor happy.

The reason geeks don’t have lives is that their social skills are underdeveloped. This is the same reason that the guy in the story is addressed as “the computer guy” by the little kid in the story. He seems not to have any other interesting characteristics — whose fault is that?

Hey, moron, if you don’t like the reaction you get when you tell people you work in computer support, stop telling people you work in computer support.

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\\ tags: Happy

This is something I’ve been wanting to write for some time — a Handbook for Life. Now, is there any handbook that can be a guide to every single person? Of course not. This is just a list of tips that I think will help many people in life — some of them common-sense tips that we often forget about. Consider this guide a reminder.

It’ll also become apparent from the links in this handbook that I’ve written about this stuff before. In essence, this site is a bigger version of this handbook. But I wanted to put them all in one place, as a handy little guide. I hope you find it useful.

How to use this handbook
This handbook is not meant to be a step-by-step guide, nor should you adopt all the tips below. Certainly not all at once. That would be overwhelming. Here are a couple tips for adopting the tips:

• Pick and choose the tips that will be most useful to you. There are 52 tips here — not every single one will be useful to every person. I hope you’ll find 10 that are useful, or that are reminders of something you’ve been wanting to do.
• Don’t do them all at once. Choose one tip to do first, and then do them one at a time. Focus on one first, and then the next. It’s too hard to try to adopt a bunch of changes at once.
• Experiment. Try out a tip, and if it doesn’t work, try another. Life is an experiment, after all.
• None are guaranteed. But many are very likely to bring happiness.
• Also, these are not in any order. Some of the most important are buried below.

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Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. – George Burns

Money can’t buy you love. It can’t buy you happiness either.

Today’s materialistic world often urges us to buy the coolest gadgets, the trendiest clothes, bigger and better things, but research shows that possessions and purchases don’t buy us happiness. According to an article on CNN:

By and large, money buys happiness only for those who lack the basic needs. Once you pass an income of $50,000, more money doesn’t buy much more happiness, [according to a happiness studies].

So while we are being pushed towards materialism, it’s for monetary gain by corporations, not for our own happiness. Unfortunately, it’s hard to escape the trap of materialism, and find happiness in other ways than buying stuff online or finding joy in the mall.

But it’s possible. Here’s a guide to finding a materialism-free life and discovering true happiness.

Escaping Materialism
All around us, there are messages telling us to buy stuff. On the Internet (blogs included), we see continuous advertising trying to get us to purchase a product or service. It’s the main reason for television, and movies are continually made with products placed throughout, so that we aren’t always sure what is advertising and what was put in there by the director.

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A little trick I like to use to make my days much more pleasant is to find little, simple pleasures and sprinkle them throughout my day.

They’re not big things, but they each simple pleasure can translate to a great day if you use them right.

So in the morning, I might have a cup of coffee, and sip it slowly to enjoy it fully. I might read a gripping novel, and revel in the world of fiction. I might watch the sun come up, and marvel at the world in pastel hues.

For breakfast, I might put berries on my cereal … and I just love berries. I savor each one, closing my eyes. In the shower, I might also close my eyes, and just let the cool water run over me (I live on a tropical island, so cool water is a nice thing).

You get the idea — these are little things, and don’t really cost a thing (or not much, anyway), but they are tremendously satisfying. I’ve just described some of the things I might do to start off my day, but the possibilities are endless, and can be done throughout the day.

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I drive slower these days. While I used to be a bit of a driving maniac (ask my wife), passing everybody and stepping hard on my accelerator, I would also get increasingly frustrated when people would drive slow and keep me from driving fast, or cut me off. Driving was a stressful experience.

Not anymore. These days, driving is a much more calm, serene experience, and I enjoy it much more.

I look around at other drivers and wonder whether they really need to get to where they’re going so fast, and whether they’ll slow down when they get there. I wonder if it’s really worth burning all that gas and getting so angry and risking so many lives. And then I think about other things, because driving for me has become a time of contemplation.

I heartily recommend driving slower — for many reasons, but one of the best reasons is that it has made me a much happier person. It’s such a simple step to take, but it makes an incredibly big difference.

Recently a reader named Vadim wrote to me with the following comment on speeding:

I have recently acquired a TomTom GPS in car navigator. Amongst its many astonishing features, it has a display on it that shows you your estimated arrival time for the route you are traveling … Now here is the kicker; I used to routinely travel at 130% of the speed limit everywhere … I thought that I was keeping myself alert and saving time. My TomTom, however, disagreed. In fact anywhere I traveled (and I routinely drive more than 100 miles) I would only shave off 5-10 minutes of the estimated arrival time! 5-10minuts of time that is then wasted because I wasn’t late to start off with!

Since then, I adopted a new way of driving, I never speed.

I love this comment, and it inspired me to write this post. People often think they’re saving time by driving faster, but it’s not very much time, and it’s not worth your sanity or safety.

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Every day, I get emails and comments that are amazingly positive and encouraging, and in truth these messages are the very thing that sustains my blogging. However, I also get negative comments now and then: criticism of my writing, and not nice criticism either.

How do you deal with criticism? I think the first reaction for most of us is to defend ourselves, or worse yet to lash back.

And yet, while criticism can be taken as hurtful and demoralizing, it can also be viewed in a positive way: it is honesty, and it can spur us to do better. It’s an opportunity to improve.

Recently, I ran an “Ask the Readers” post asking for suggestions for improvement, after receiving a few critical emails and comments. I responded to one of the critics with a “thank you” and asked him to comment in the Ask the Readers thread.

The reader emailed me back, and here was his response:

After sending my email, I felt I might have been a little harsh. But now, after reading your response, I think you would have the perfect qualities to write an article or two about taking criticism with grace and appreciation.

I really liked that thought, so here is that post he suggested: how to take criticism with grace and appreciation.

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Even the most motivated of us — you, me, Tony Robbins — can feel unmotivated at times. In fact, sometimes we get into such a slump that even thinking about making positive changes seems too difficult.

But it’s not hopeless: with some small steps, baby ones in fact, you can get started down the road to positive change.

Yes, I know, it seems impossible at times. You don’t feel like doing anything. I’ve been there, and in fact I still feel that way from time to time. You’re not alone. But I’ve learned a few ways to break out of a slump, and we’ll take a look at those today.

This post was inspired by reader Roy C. Carlson, who asked:

“I was wondering if you could do a piece on why it can be hard for someone to change direction and start taking control of their life. I have to say I’m in this boat and advice on getting out of my slump would be great.”

Roy is just one of many with a slump like that. Again, I feel that way sometimes myself, and in fact sometimes I struggle to motivate myself to exercise — and I’ll use that as an example of how to break out of the slump.

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