25 Thoughts That Will Get You Happy Now!

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1. Acquire the habit of expecting success, of believing in happiness. Nothing succeeds like success; nothing makes happiness like happiness.
2. So long as you retain your happiness you will retain all your power; and all the power that is in you is sufficient to overcome every obstacle, conquer every adversity and turn every circumstance to good account.
3. The cheerful person makes a cheerful world.
4. Happiness is a very beautiful thing,—the most beautiful and heavenly thing in the world,—but it is a result, a spiritual condition, and is not predetermined by your bank account or by the flattering incense of praise.
5. To live, we must conquer incessantly; we must have the courage to be happy.
6. To make much of little, to find reasons of interest in common things, to develop a sensibility to mild enjoyments, to inspire the imagination, to throw a charm upon homely and familiar things, will constitute a man master of his own happiness.
7. The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.
8. Diamonds of shining joy lie glittering in every way we pass daily, but most of the passers-by only stub their toes against them.
9. “Mental sunshine not only attracts the best from without, but it also causes the best to grow from within. We all prefer the sunshine, and we are naturally attracted wherever a sunbeam is in evidence.”
10. If you feel cheerful and happy, it is very natural for you to laugh. And if you will laugh a little, you will begin to feel bright and cheerful.
11. Probably the most lasting source of happiness is found in unselfish love. This keeps alive a constant interest in those who are the objects of affection, which, in turn, is naturally reflected into the relations of life.
12. Few of us appreciate the number of our everyday blessings; we think they are little things, and yet little things are what life is made of.
13. A serene face helps to make a serene soul; a smile on the lips induces a smile in the heart.
14. If one would be happy, let him forget himself and go about making someone else happy.
15. Look steadily on the bright side of life. Cultivate the grace of a good hope. Imitate the fine optimism of those of whom it is said that they can see stars where others saw only an unbroken expanse of cloud.
16. Happiness is the result of God’s will for us, and not of our will for ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in submission and obedience, to the control of God.
17. To believe and go forward is the key to success and to happiness.
18. They who minister to their neighbours exercise one of the normal human functions, and enter thereby into the joy of a larger life.
19. Write it in your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
20. The first step toward happiness is to determine to be happy.
21. If a man is unhappy, this must be his own fault; for God made all men to be happy.
22. Happiness is discovered in many unsuspected places.
23. Joy is not in things, it is in us, and I hold to the belief that the causes of our present unrest, of this contagious discontent spreading everywhere, are in us at least as much as in exterior conditions.
24. Happy is that person who feels that God cares for him, that he journeys forward under divine convoy, that his Father is regent of universal wisdom, and represents the whole commonwealth of love, who is all Nature, and who commands all Nature to serve His child.
25. It is no use to grumble and complain; It’s just as cheap and easy to rejoice

11 Relationships and Marriage Killers

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Why do relationships and marriages fail? It amazes me how a couple that can’t take their eyes off each other, will suddenly now can’t stand each other. While there are many different reasons as to why most relationships and marriages end, here are 11 “Marriage killers” shared by D. James Dobson, Relationship expert and Author of many books including, “Love for a lifetime”:

1. Over commitment and physical exhaustion. Beware of this danger. It is especially insidious for young couples who are trying to get started in a profession or in school. Do not try to go to college, work full-time, have a baby, manage a toddler, fix up a house and start a business at the same time. It sounds ridiculous, but many young couples do just that and are surprised when their marriage falls apart. Why wouldn’t it? The only time they see each other is when they are worn out! It is especially dangerous to have the husband vastly overcommitted and the wife staying home with a preschooler. Her profound loneliness builds discontent and depression, and we all know where that leads. You must reserve time for one another if you want to keep your love alive.

2. Excessive credit and conflict over how money will be spent. We’ve said it before: Pay cash for consumable items or don’t buy. Don’t spend more for a house or car than you can afford, leaving too few resources for dating, short trips, baby sitters and so on. Allocate your funds with the wisdom of Solomon.
3. Selfishness. There are two kinds of people in the world, the givers and the takers. A marriage between two givers can be a beautiful thing. Friction is the order of the day, however, for a giver and a taker. But two takers can claw each other to pieces within a period of six weeks. In short, selfishness will devastate a marriage every time.

4. Interference from in-laws. If husbands or wives have not been full emancipated from their parents, it is best not to live near them. Autonomy is difficult for some mothers (and fathers) to grant, and close proximity is built for trouble.

5. Unrealistic expectations. Some couples come into marriage anticipating rose-covered cottages, walks down primrose lanes, and uninterrupted joy. Counsellor Jean Lush believed, and I agree, that this romantic illusion is particularly characteristic of American women who expect more from their husbands than they are capable of delivering. The consequent disappointment is an emotional trap. Bring your expectations in line with reality.
6. Space invaders. This killer will be difficult to describe or understand in such a brief context, but I’ll try. By space invaders, I am not referring to aliens from Mars. Rather, my concern is for those who violate the breathing room needed by their partners, quickly suffocating them and destroying the attraction between them. Jealousy is one way this phenomenon manifests itself. Another is low self-esteem which leads the insecure spouse to trample the territory of the other. Love must be free and it must be confident.

The Main Reason You Don’t Reach Your Goals

It’s a new year and almost everyone has been making his or her new year resolution s or setting the goals they plan to achieve this year. But all too often we discover that many of us abandon our goals before the end of the year. Some don’t even make it to the end of the first quarter. We go back to the old us.

But why is it so? Why is that we find it hard to stick to our resolutions? One of the main reasons we don’t reach our goals in my opinion is that our goals, resolutions are usually too big. Don’t get me wrong, I like big goals. I encourage people to dream big, and aspire to reach great heights in life, but I don’t encourage vague dreams and goals.

We are all entitled to our dreams and goals, whatever they may be, as there are no bad dreams and goals. But maybe you are not yet in the right position to achieve those dreams. Folks all successful people, and top achievers understand something about goal setting that most of us don’t. they understand that in order to achieve goals, “Your goals must be  big enough to motivate you, yet small enough for you to believe them.”

You see, that is where many of us fail. Our goals are too big, we can’t believe them. And you can’t possibly achieve what you don’t believe, because even Christ tells us in Mark gospel that, when we pray to God, we must believe that we have received our answers. Our believe is what produces the results for us.

How Do I Let Go?

We’ve been told, that to be truly happy in life, we need to let go of our past hurts, failures, disappointments, challenges, misfortunes, or whatever else that is holding us back. But many times a lot of us struggle with the feelings, and are unable to let go, maybe because we don’t know what it really means to let go of someone or a situation. In other to help deal with these struggles, I want to share the true meaning of Letting Go as defined by Charles R. Swindoll. I hope it helps us in our journey towards living our greatest lives:

To let go does not mean to stop caring; it means I can’t do it for someone else.

To let go is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization that I can’t control another

To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To let go is not to try to change or blame another, I can only change myself.

To let go is not to care for, but to care about.

Speak only Beauty

Every word or thought that you express will return to you. Knowing this, never say anything to make others discouraged or unhappy; it will come back to you. When you give unhappiness to others, you are giving unhappiness to yourself. When you add to the joy of others, you are adding to your own joy. Say only good about others. Look at the beautiful side of others. Everyone has a beautiful side, find it and think of that only. – So many marriages and relationships will still be existing today, if we had practised this. Remember all our words and actions are seeds, they will surely grow and yield fruits no matter how long it takes. Sow joy and happiness, and you will be reaping a harvest of joy in your life.

Self-consciousness a Killer of Dreams

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“For God has not given us a spirit of timidity but one or power, love, and self-discipline.”

We all of have lofty dreams, vision, plans, desires, of doing great things with our lives, but so many of us are held back from undertaking what we long to do, and are stuck where we are, unable to make our dreams come true because we are shy of facing people, or we are too sensitive of what others may say about us, or we think we are not good enough.  Thus our lofty plans exist only in our minds.

Self- consciousness and timidity are great enemies of success. A lot of men and women have missed great opportunities in life because of these two.  So many potential award winning singers and artists have died without the world benefiting from their talents because of timidity and self-consciousness. They had great dreams and talents, but they never trusted their dreams to the real world of action, because they were afraid of failure, and of how people will react to them.

“A sensitive person feels that, whatever he does, wherever he goes, or whatever he says, he is the centre of observation. He imagines that people are criticizing his movements, making fun at his expense, or analyzing his character, when they are probably not thinking of him at all.  He does not realize that other people are too busy and too much interested in themselves and other things to devote to him any of their time beyond what is absolutely necessary.”

Self-consciousness leads to mediocrity because no one ever does anything, until he or she feels that they are a part of something greater than themselves. Folks, self-consciousness isn’t humility. If you think always hiding in the crowd and not giving your life an expression is a show of humility, you are wrong. “Humility isn’t does not require mediocrity.” By insisting that you are just this or that, or that you will never amount to anything much, in the name of humility you talk yourself down to a state of non-accomplishment

Forget The Past and Move On

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“Remember you not the former things, neither consider the things of old.” A lot of us are being haunted by our past. We allow our previous actions, decisions, and misfortunes control our present and shape our future. Take for instance; you had a bad relationship or marriage, and this won’t allow you to move on, to trust again and allow your heart to find love. We keep asking ourselves, what if my heart is broken again. What if I am incapable of giving love and so on? Or maybe you grew up in an unsupportive environment, and you were told you won’t amount to anything, and these thoughts are getting you disillusioned, and you can’t see a brighter future, you can’t seem to see yourself rising above where you are at the moment.

There isn’t anyone without a past, for some of us our past may be very horrible, but everyone who has ever succeeded in life, have had to rise above his or her past. They took these words to heart; “Remember you not the former things, neither consider the things of old”. If you keep remembering the hurts, failures, and tragedies of the past, you will be held back by them. Don’t let your past define you, destroy you, deter you, or stop you from living your greatest life.

You may be reading this and say, Vincent you don’t know how it hurts me, how it embarrassed me, you don’t know the pain I feel in losing a beloved one, but you see tragedies, failures, sicknesses, setbacks, do happen in everyone’s life, we can discover the reason, blame others, imagine how different our lives would be had they not occurred. But none of that is important: they did occur, and so be it. From there onward we must put aside the fear that they awoke in us, untie the chains we’ve been tied with and begin to rebuild our lives.

Don’t Put Off Living

Many of us believe that we will be happy once we achieve some specific goals that we have set for ourselves. Maybe the goal is getting a promotion at work, getting a new job, getting married, driving a nicer car, and so on. But too often, we discover that even after attaining those goals, we still aren’t happy with our lives. Dale Carnegie once wrote; “one of the most tragic things I know about the human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of engaging the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”

Let us not put off living today, and be like “the child who says ‘Someday when I am a big boy.’ The big boy says ‘Some day when I grow up.’ And then grown up he says ‘Someday when I get married.’ After he is married, the thought changes to ‘Someday when I am able to retire.’ And then when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seem to sweep over it, somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone. Life, we learn too late, is in the living in the tissue of everyday and hour.” – Dale Carnegie

Folks let us be appreciative of where we are, what we have right now. Don’t put off being happy today until tomorrow, or until you have certain goals or success, because while you will be happy when your goals, and dreams have been realized, you will discover that the happiness is only momentarily and then you are off again to seek further sources of happiness.

“By continuously engaging in the cycle of longing, you never actually allow yourself to be in the present. You end up living your life at some point just off in the future. You only have one moment – the one right here, right now. If you skip over ‘here’ in your rush to get ‘there’, you deny yourself the full range of feelings and sensations that can only be experienced in the present moment.” – Cherie Carter – Scott.

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of….Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden…when all is said and done, now is all there is, and all there ever has been. – Dr. Wayne Dyer

Powerful, Positive Confessions

When you are faced with a problem all you need do is seek for the solution. But too often when we are faced with life’s difficulties and challenges, rather than seek a way out, many of us increase these negative situations through the words we confess with our mouth. We amplify our challenges, problems, negative circumstances, sicknesses by confessing them in the state they are.

Folks we create our world with the words we speak. If you want to have a world filled with happiness, then we have to think happy thoughts and speak happiness to ourselves and others.
As Christians we see that When God was faced with a challenge during creation, He spoke what he wanted into existence. We can do the same, by applying the principles found the Bible, to recreate our circumstances.

Here are selected Bible passages we can use, to inspire and help us surmount defeat, fear, doubts, worry and anxiety, weaknesses that we may encounter in our daily lives as we journey towards greatness. Study them, confess them daily and see your life transformed. Remember “what we confess we possess.”:

When you are facing defeat confess:

1. “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37)

2. “…God…always causeth us to triumph in Christ…” (2 Corinthians 2:14)

3. “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13 )

4. “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4)

5. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:13)

6. “The horse is prepared for the day of battle, But victory belongs to the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31)

When you are afraid confess:

1. “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7)

2. “Fear thou not; for I [am] with thee: be not dismayed; for I [am] thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10)

3. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalms 23:4)

4. “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4)

When you are in doubt and lack faith, confess:

1. “…God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Romans 12:3

2. “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

3. “Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things [are] possible to him that believeth.” (Mark 9:23 )

4. “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Ephesians 6:16)

5. “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed” (James 1:6)

When you are weak confess:

1. “…The Lord is the strength of my life…” (Ps. 27:1)

2. “…The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits” (Dan. 11:32)

3. “Fear thou not; for I [am] with thee: be not dismayed; for I [am] thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10 )

4. “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness…” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

5. “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak” (Isaiah 40:29)

When you are overcome with worry and anxiety confess:

1. “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved (Psalm 55:22)
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee (Isaiah 26:3-4)
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
2. “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)
3. Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” (Philippians 4:6)
4. “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” (Matthew 6:25)