52 Tips for (Yech!) Happiness
Don’t be confused by the title of this post. I’m all in favor of happiness. But when someone offers tips on how to be happy I feel the urge to strangle that person. My inner A.D.D. child screams, “WAKE UP! THERE’S A WORLD OF PROBLEMS THAT NEED TO BE SOLVED.” This inner scream is often accompanied by the memory of a trip to Manhattan when, on a cold and windy winter day, a group of Hare Krishnas wearing nothing more than some dirty rags, were jumping up and down in the freezing cold while chanting “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare” and playing finger cymbals. I’d look at their shaved heads, their flowing rags, their incessant jumping and their tiny cymbals and think, “Sure they are happy. They’re nuts!” So for much of my life I’ve associated “happiness” with self-delusion and these freezing, jumping lunatics who are oblivious to their surroundings.
With this in mind, I now present to you the Handbook for Life: 52 Tips for Happiness and Productivity. The most important tip in this “handbook” is not even a part of the handbook but is part of the introduction to the handbook.
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.
As an A.D.D.er, this is one that really jumped out at me.
No. 35: Be present. Time can go by extremely quickly. Before you know it, your life has passed you by. Your kids are grown and your youth is gone. Don’t let your life slip by — enjoy it while it’s here. Instead of dwelling in the past or thinking about the future, practice being in the here and now.
RSS Feed
