Healthy Living

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The Happiness Test
By Dan Langerock

How happy are you? Have you ever thought about the subject of happiness over the span of your lifetime? Sometimes, we just live our lives and don't realize how we project ourselves to others. We can get in a rut of unhappiness that permeates the rest of our existence. Here are some questions to help you assess your level of happiness:

1) Would you characterize your life as a happy one? What contributed to this? Or if you are not happy, what overarching event started you on the road to unhappiness?

2) Is your normal mode of life to complain? Does anything turn the tide of your complaining to a positive response?

3) How do you respond when others try to cheer you up? Do you accept their cheer or do you remain in the "gutter" of negativism?

4) What would it take to make you happy consistently? If this event were to happen, would you recognize it as what you asked for?

5) How do you treat others who are happy around you? Do you wish you could be happy also? Do you make a comment in an effort to deflate their happiness?

6) Do you blame your state of mind on others or accept responsibility for it yourself?

7) If someone told you that many times your attitude about your life is linked to your spiritual condition, how would you react? Would you dismiss it as folklore? Would you start World War III? Would you be introspective about it and seek to look into the causes of why you are unhappy?

8) Are you reliant on others to entertain you and do things for you to make you happy? Are you able to do things that will bring happiness to yourself?

9) Would you say most of the people you know are happy or unhappy? Have you ever analyzed what causes others to be one way or the other, and then applied those findings to your own life?

10) Someone said to me once:, "No one can make you happy. It has to come from inside yourself." Do you agree or disagree with this statement, and why?

Everyone is unhappy at some point in their life, whether they admit it or not. If this attitude continues over a long period of time, then it is time to look into the matter and find out why? Some people live this way all their lives without seeking to correct it. Are you one of these?

Be honest with yourself and assess what is happening in your life and why? If you are passive on this subject, you will always stay in this mode of life. Someone once said, "If you always do what you've always done, you will always be what you've always been."

Only you can make the decision to change things in your life. There is help for you if you don't know how to do it on your own. Don't let the "germ" of unhappiness infect your life. Recognize your unhappiness as a symptom of something else causing it, then analyze your life to find what that something is. Once you have found the answer, deal with it so you may be happy again.

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