The guru says:

Don’t forget to think of all the good things about your life while you are working for improvements. We don’t want the search for a better life to mean only focusing on what needs to be changed. Some things about yourself are cause for rejoicing. Do it, for goodness’ sake.

Before embarking on a mission to extend the values of your life, why not take stock of what you have got? Even in its poorest phase, life has many blessings. The soldiers in the Hell of mud and slaughter in the trenches of World War 1 were still able to find poetry about poppies, courage and memories of home. Do not worry that this course is about merely distracting you from the problems that need solving; we intend to show you how to deal with the difficulties. But by the same rationale, it would be wrong to draw your attention away from the good things in your life. That would be equally false and misleading.

As soon as is convenient after reading this section, get yourself some paper or a note book and start writing:

Write down all the good things you can think of in your life right now. You don’t have to do the New Agey thing of telling yourself that horrible things are really good for you (“All miseries are just lessons” and that stuff). List genuine pleasures, quiet satisfactions and the many many things that you surely have achieved in your life. Count your blessings, as the Christians say. Well, why not?

It’s a god idea to take inventory in this way. Because it helps to balance your life and sanity is mainly about being balanced: right brain-left brain; positive and negative; male-female; yin and yang. There are things you want to change; we’ll talk about that in other sections. But write down the things that you wouldn’t want to change.

Talk yourself into it this way:

If you were granted the wish of changing anything in your life that you wanted to, rewriting your own history, what would you leave just the way it is? Surely those are the good things; the ones you are proud of; the moments of real happiness.

Write them down. The act of committing them to paper acknowledges their worth, makes a concreteness out of the abstraction we are referring to here. It is, in a way, an act of self-love. Most of us don’t like the way we are too much. That’s why we are unhappy. But the search for happiness begins with self-love. Remember the dictum of Aristotle that it is man’s duty to be happy. That begins with self-worth; self-love. No-one can be happy without a sense of pride in who we are and what we have achieved. This isn’t an ego trip. Or rather it IS an ego trip; but not the pathological controlling kind. More the quiet hymn of praise to your own Being.

You might feel a bit depressed; that all the good things that happened in your life seem to be long ago, out of reach. Well, that’s fairly normal. As we get older, we tend to withdraw, through bruises, failures and uncertainty. We reach out less and so do less. We sort of lose our way and let go of issues that once were valuable to us and gave meaning to our lives.

Don’t be too fearful on this point. We can bring all that back. You are still YOU and whatever was true for you then can still be true today. You just need to know the way back. And that we can help with. We specialize in maps; especially mental maps!

Just make up a list of good things about yourself to celebrate. Then rejoice! It may be a sensible idea to keep your list secret; particularly if you live in a threatening environment or meet with a lot of cynicism. It’s only for yourself. But take it out now and again and have a look at it. This should give you a nice little glow each time to review it.

The Good Things In Life

Another list to complement your self-celebration is to write down lots of things that you still enjoy, you still believe in and find comfort from. As Norman Vincent Peale says in his book Joy and Enthusiasm: “Life, even with all its woes, frustrations and difficulties, is still a wonderful experience”.

He quotes a few words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) American Essayist & Poet

This probably puts you in mind of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’. Pre-written lists of good things like this are a fine thing in their way. But we think it is better to make up your own list of inspiring ideas and achievements, especially related to things that happened to YOU. The results may not have the same literary merit but it’s more personal and more likely to have an impact for you. The task of writing down such a list has important psychological potential for you.

Important Note: We are not asking you to write down personal goals and desires here. There’s a whole section for that later. Just things you (still) find pleasurable. If you can’t get started any other way, write down things that you have really enjoyed doing or seeing in the last 12 months.

If there is nothing on the list, you had better keep on coming back to this blog till you get up to speed! But try!