Hacking Happiness: 2016

10 things that are important to give up so you can be happier

We are born into a state of total bliss and happiness, Babies are happiness.

From that moment life begins to condition so many of us out of that state of happiness, life begins to shape us in the way it deems fit.

Do this not that, stop that do this, wear this, go there, don't do that or people wont like you.

Go to school, study hard, work first then play, buy this and that and you will be happier.

Conform or you wont be popular.

Before we reach adulthood we have already lost a sense of who and what we are as a being that is here to enjoy life and be in a state of happiness and this is replaced by a neurosis of concern about fitting in and conforming to some notion of what is "right". An obsession with material things that are meant to make us happier, but like all drugs only seem to have a hit for a short while.

Of course the irony of this is the very people who have shaped our lives are themselves struggling with the very same issues of neurosis. Being coached on how to be happy by people who themselves don't know how to be happy, by people who have deep concerns about their own self worth and esteem.

Would you take lessons on business success from a person who couldn't even pay their own bills?

So having lost the ability to be spontaneously happy we spend the rest of our lives looking for the way back, spending all that hard earned cash in the pursuit of happiness and peace of mind. Taking exotic and expensive holidays in far flung destinations in order to de-stress and detox. surrounding ourselves with ever more luxurious and expensive items as if in some way this will be the magic pill to make us happier.

The road to happiness is not in having more or in looking outside for the answer.

Its about letting go of the very conditioning that causes us to be unhappy. Its about having less not more.

These 10 things are some of the common reasons that cause us to be less happy than we could be. By letting go we can find our way back to that state of blissful happiness that you see in the eyes of every healthy baby.

10 things that are important to give up so you can be happier

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, by Aristotle

anxiety

How a few words of inspiration can make such a difference in the way you feel at any moment

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, by Aristotle

advertising

Insidious - The story of how a man you have never heard of, designed your life

Excerpt

............... Bernays studied a copy of 'General Introduction to Psychoanalysis' by his uncle Sigmund Freud. In this book Bernays discovered that in people’s minds there were irrational forces driving them and their behavior.

People were primarily driven towards pleasure and away from pain, even if what they were doing were completely irrational. They would respond more readily to what they wanted rather than what was sensible.

Bernays began working on how he could use these irrational driving forces. If he could harness them in individuals then he might also be able to direct groups in the same way.

In fact he recognized that crowds have their own rationale, and that people who normally remain rational can get caught up in the frenzy of a crowd. There is an infectious element that grows as the crowd grows.

It occurred to him that if you could link a product to one of these deeply-held desires, you could motivate the individual to buy that product and thereby satisfy their own unconscious desires.

Bernays also realized that the dynamic of crowds meant that once a critical mass was achieved, people not associated with these crowds would be influenced by the publicity surrounding the crowd and would also join in.

Of course we now know this as safety in numbers. If everybody is doing this then it must be OK. It's the very basis of mass hysteria in stock markets and politics. Very few people feel comfortable being on the outside and our unconscious drives us towards comfort.

There is a great story about how Bernays was approached by the head of a large American tobacco company. They wanted to build their market, but they had a problem. In those days there was a social taboo about women smoking, and this was effectively cutting their market in half. They asked if Bernays could help. He agreed to see what he could do.

He approached A A Brill, one of the leading psychoanalysts of the day and asked him to find out what cigarettes meant to women.

Brill conducted extensive research into this subject and eventually reported back that because only men were allowed to smoke, women thought of cigarettes as a penis and a symbol of the power of men.

Bernays approached a group of militant debutante ladies and suggested that on the annual Easter Day parade in New York City they should go to the parade with hidden cigarettes, and they should make a great display of lighting them up and smoking in public.

Unbeknown to them, he informed the press that a group of suffragettes would be making a protest by lighting cigarettes, using these cigarettes as a symbol like “Torches of Freedom“ in their campaign for female emancipation.

On the day all the main news agencies and cameras were there to record the event, which created a great deal of excitement. News cameras filmed attractive and wealthy young women daring to smoke in full public gaze. This made news right across America.

Bernays had brilliantly linked together the ideals of “The Emancipation of Women” and “The Statue of Liberty,” the symbol of America, holding aloft the “Torch of Freedom” and his client's product, the cigarette.

Nobody could now stand against the idea of the Torch of Freedom, the symbol on which America and its army of immigrants had founded the country and freed themselves from British rule.

The taboo was broken forever. Bernays had demonstrated perfectly how he could control mass thinking and opinions using an illogical idea yet making it seem absolutely logical and rational.

The very idea that smoking in any way gave women any more power, freedom or emancipation is clearly illogical. The only thing it is ever likely to give them is bad breath and cancer.

Edward Bernays had demonstrated that by linking a product to an idea and an emotion you can motivate large groups of people to buy that product.

Smoking never gave American women more power or influence, but the act of smoking made them FEEL as if it did, and that made them feel good about themselves. That emotion motivated them to take up a completely irrational practice.

What Bernays had done may have been the first time that anybody had actively and consciously set out to alter people’s buying behavior by linking it to an emotion in their unconscious mind.

From that day sales of cigarettes to women began to rise, not only in America but across the world.

This event heralded a complete change in how companies advertised their products. Now they switched their entire sales and marketing to this new form of sales motivation.

Buy a copy on Amazon or Smashwords

http://www.amazon.com/Insidious-Pete-Gable-ebook/dp/B0067XU3VA

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107625

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, by Aristotle

big pharma

Vexxed - Robert de Niro muscled out at Tribeca

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, by Aristotle

How can you turn clay into gold?

A long long time ago there was once a small village that had a wonderful giant golden buddha standing proud under its giant canopy. The village was prosperous as people came from far around to pray at the golden Buddha. One day the word came that an invading army was coming and they would pillage everything of value that the village had.

The villagers gathered together and using mud from the river bank hurriedly covered the whole buddha from top to toe. The invading army came and seeing only a clay buddha, left without touching it. When they had departed the villagers left it covered as they feared the army might return one day.

Many years passed and in time everyone who knew about the Buddha’s secret died and the whole story was forgotten. The village grew poor, as no visitors came to pray anymore. As the years passed generations of villagers cursed their luck that they should have inherited a worthless buddha made of clay.

Several hundred years later a young local monk was preying at the foot of the buddha when a small piece of clay fell to the ground in front of him. He looked up to see a gap left by the clay chip and when he looked into he gap, he saw the gold hidden inside.

He ran excitedly through the village and everyone came to see. Together they carefully chipped the clay off to reveal the magnificent giant golden buddha once more. The villagers danced and sang and in time the village became prosperous again as word spread of what they had forgotten and then rediscovered.

The Demon of Socrates was a Daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle.” You may not be aware that the word Demon is said by mythology to have come from the word Daemon or Daimonion.

We often struggle with our own inner demons, the strongest of which is our own fears. Our fears are the single biggest thing that blocks us on our path to what we desire.
We are told to either ignore our fears or fight them and they will go away, but actually we tend to shrink back from fear and try to avoid it.

There may be a third way.

It's possible that by just examining our fears, gaining the courage to face up to them instead of fighting them, we can dissipate them. When we fight them, we are in fact fighting a part of us. Its a normal part that is designed to keep us safe. Whenever we fight an enemy that is much bigger and stronger than us, we normally lose.

By gaining the courage to surrender the urge to fight our fears, instead, being curious about them, even trying to make friends with them, we can begin to understand them and then we can completely disarm them.

Knowledge is after all, great power and strength in itself.

Our inner demons can become great teachers if we summon the courage to look at them with curiosity, we can gain great value from something we previously felt was worthless.

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, by Aristotle

Automated or Conscious? - Unconscious or Aware?

Mindfulness

First of all theres mindfulness, which most people think is a from of meditation.

You know what I mean. Sitting in a pose watching your breath for as long as you can take it. Many of you will either have tried it and failed and then given up or many of you will have heard about it and wondered what all the fuss was about. Some of you may still be practicing it. Personally Ive always found it difficult.

Sometime back I learned about another sort of mindfulness. This was a mindfulness practice with a difference so lets give it a different label.

Consciousness or Self awareness, either will do.

So whats the difference I hear you wondering. OK let me try and explain it.

Being mindful is consciousness or awareness that arises by:

Paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non judgementally to whats going on right now.

Now thats quite a mouthful, so what does it actually mean?

Paying attention means actually noticing what you are doing in your mind at any specific moment.

Doing it on purpose, means actually taking the trouble to do it

Being in the present moment means, without being distracted by any other thoughts, distractions or fantasies, just focusing it on whats happening right now.

Non judgementally means just observing whats happening without coming to any conclusions for or against.

Now the last bit is difficult because we have a judgement, or an opinion, a like or dislike or an emotion about almost everything, so in this context we just need to “suspend” that opinion for a short while and be open minded and just observe whats actually happening.

All of this adds up to being conscious or self aware

Consciousness is a practice you can engage in any time of the day. Its not meditation, although it can

be if you choose to do it that way. It takes a bit of practice but with the right guidance and a bit of practice its surprisingly easy and even more surprising, it gets easier and easier until you find yourself doing it without realising you were doing it.

OK I hear you say, “So what the point?”

Firstly we need to recognise one thing.

You see contrary to what most of us think, 95% of what we do everyday, 95% of our actions and reactions, opinions, judgements, communications with others, internal feelings, criticisms etc are not based on whats happening right now.

They are in fact based on our pre conditioned ideas based on whats happened to us in the past. Or commonly an idea we have formed, based on a notion we received from somebody else’s experience, commonly our parents.

So what happens when we practice consciousness?

Well the first thing you might notice is just how judgemental we are!

Next you might notice how critical and opinionated we are.

Next you might notice how some of our most negative emotions, like fear, anxiety and stress are based on not what happening now but on our conditioned response from the past or the notion of what might happen in the future. In fact you might begin to notice all sorts of emotions that previously you just had to deal with but now you notice them as they arise.

By being conscious you might notice that lots of these stresses dissipate. By being aware you might notice that theres nothing happening right now to be stressed, anxious or fearful of.

By practicing consciousness, You might find that your communication improves as you now interact based on whats happening now rather than an opinion or reaction to that person based on pre conditioning.

By being mindful you might find you listen better, more attentively, more purposefully and less distracted and because of that you are received better. receiving and being received can do wonders for good communication, at home or at work.

By practicing a wakeful mindfulness you begin to notice old patterns of behaviour in thought or deed and have the opportunity to intercept them and replace them with more positive patterns.

it stops you operating on autopilot and gives you more choices

Heres an example

Lots of people love people watching. John liked watching people come and go at airports and sitting in a street cafe watching them go by. Seems harmless enough. But John wasn't just watching them, actually he was judging them, criticising them, in small or big ways. He put himself above others and in some way making him feel better being a little superior to them.

But by practicing mindfulness he became aware he wasn't just watching people he was judging them. “Why do they do this or that”, “why don't they do this instead”. In his mind he was suggesting himself that their lives might be better if they did as he thought they should.

John also noticed he did the same thing when not just people watching, but at all sorts of times when he interested with people at all levels

So by being mindful he became aware of this and could then stop that thought just as it entered his mind and instead just reminded him self by saying internally “ they are just like me, trying to get through life and be happy, but making a mess of it sometimes, just like I do. I wish them well “

With this mindful practice John has found that he is more compassionate in general, more forgiving of others and less opinionated in general. The benefits have moved way beyond just people watching and out into his general interaction with people.

John also noticed he was much more calm about things, more accepting of what happened in the world around him, more forgiving of the failures of others. I also think he is a little happier within himself.

I learnt my mindful practice with Teamup, an organisation that specialises in helping individuals and companies to learn and practice mindfulness very conveniently through distance learning online in small groups. It can be done to your own schedule from anywhere in the world.

This program came from the work of Brian Bauerle, one of the worlds top one on one executive coaches who does this kind of work wit fortune 500 CEO’s and senior management.

If the benefits of mindful living intrigues you, have a further look here.

http://goo.gl/hhg6yF

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, by Aristotle

anxiety

The best kept health secrets you never knew

Health begins with Heal.

There are two ways of looking at good health.

Allopathic, When I have a symptom I'll go see a doctor to get something to help get rid of it. I have a fever, if I have diarrhoea, I need something for it.

Holistic, If I give my body what it needs everyday it knows how to keep me healthy, its a self regulating system. If I get a fever its the bodies way of reacting and dealing with the infection. If i get diarrhoea its the body dealing with whats wrong in my intestines, it will regulate itself.

Hippocrates , the father of medicine said “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health”. “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease”.

The Allopathic has become the accepted norm for billions of people. The issue is that it takes our self responsibility and gives it away to others who we have been taught, know better than we do.

The holistic way is self responsible, it empowers us to take responsibility for our good health.

Im not suggesting there is not a place for modern medicine but its become the first and only place of intervention and for many a complete abdication of their own self responsibility for their health.

The body is a perfect self healing mechanism.

It is an organic machine perfectly capable of keeping itself operating for over 100 years or more as long as two conditions are met

1. You feed it the right healthy fuel and avoid poisoning it with toxins and it will care for itself.

2. Its physical mechanisms are regularly moved in such a way that it keeps them supple and in condition to do the job they are designed to do.

If we applied this to a motoring metaphor.

If you put old dirty fuel and oil in your car your mechanic would not be surprised when it broke down.

If you don't run your car or leave it parked in the street for a couple of years don't be surprised if when you want to go somewhere, something mechanical will break on it.

Modern medicine seems to have conveniently forgotten this and pays scant attention to good preventative health

Most of us are unaware that the average doctor during their years of training receives less that 25 hours of instruction on nutrition and the effects good nutrition has on the body.

Put simply, most doctors are not trained to prevent, but only to seek solutions, for illness and disease.

This leaves individuals in the dark about the positive effects on their health of eating and drinking the right foods.

Unfortunately that void is filled advertising by food producers, hardly an unimpeachable source of information and education.

Good health is not just physical - Disease is a sense of Dis-Ease

Our psychology or way of thinking about health dictates how our body reacts to its natural healthy cycles, Its rather like the computer in a car that controls all the important functions.

Einstein said “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” I wonder what Einstein knew when he said this, it seems rather random quote from him.

The study of Epigenetic's tells us that our bodies, specifically our cells, live in a state of either growth or defence. Our natural healthy state is to be in growth, where cells split and divide and renew. Every cell in your body is renewed every 7 years so you literally get a new body every 7 years.

We also know from epigenetic's that our cells use their receptors to sense the environment they live in, this environment is not only physical but mental. Our mental processes create chemical changes within our bodies that are sensed by the receptors.

When we are stressed we emit chemicals that tell our bodies we are threatened. The body can only react one way, it must become defensive.

Equally when we look outside ourselves for ways to stay healthy using drugs, detoxing, lotions and potions, we are behaving in a defensive mode. We are saying “I am not good enough to stay healthy on my own.

Help me”.

It therefore spends its time and energies on fighting this perceived danger. all the while it cannot properly do its normal healthy acts of cellular renewal and division. We are literally damaging ourselves and not allowing our bodies to renew themselves. Old un-renewed cells are more likely to mutate into an unhealthy state, creating illness and disease within us.

Its while in growth that good health is natural and easy. In growth your natural organic system keeps you healthy as long as you meet those two conditions.

Eating and consuming foods that have toxins in them is inherently unhealthy and there is no get out clause.

Everything counts.

You body can deal with a certain amount of toxicity, thats what your liver and kidneys are for but they can and do get over overloaded.

Much of the fresh produce you buy is already corrupted with toxins.

These toxins include, pesticides and herbicides sprayed to kill pests but become an inherent part of the product. It might look pretty after spraying but its what you cant see that is dangerous. If it kills insects what do you think its doing to you?

Have you seen what coca cola does to a dirty penny, what do you think its doing in your gut?

Alcohol is a toxin that your body has to fight as are all processed or unnatural foods made from chemicals.

Rather like cheese slices, which have either none or at best 1-5% cheese in them.the rest is chemicals. A quick look at almost any non fresh food will give you some idea that a lot of it is not food at all to at best combined with a toxic blend of chemicals that your body has to deal with.

Meat or no meat, fish or no fish?

The bottom line of not eating meat is this.

Whatever your views on eating meat is you can forget the idea that your meat comes from an animal that lives its life in a comfortable well fed farm before being humanly killed and butchered. Thats become a pure advertising land fantasy.

Today the mass meat, poultry and fish you buy comes from factories. they are born and raised with one goal in mind, maximum weight for minimum cost. They are pumped full of antibiotics to avoid illness. fed growth hormones to raise the weight yield, given pesticides to kill microorganisms that might make them ill. This is not for the long term health of the creature but the maximum yield in its short life.

If you doubt that these chemicals might end up in your bodies and what they can do this is what the Centre for Disease control in the USA says about the risks to factory farm workers.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), farms on which animals are intensively reared can cause adverse health reactions in farm workers. Workers may develop acute and chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal injuries, and may catch infections that transmit from animals to human beings (such as tuberculosis).^{[86] source wikipedia}

Everything counts in your body and your immune system has to fight it day and night.

The secret solution we have always known about

Fresh organic living food is what nature has provided us with for millions of years. It has served us well. It contains all the vital goodness that your body needs and does not add to the stress load you body is already dealing with.

Secondly the air we breathe is essential to good health. breathing city air is inherently bad for us and you do that every second of every day. Your system is literally fighting for your life with each breath.

Regular exercise is essential for the proper working of all our physical parts

Lastly how we view our bodies, the way we consider this organic vessel, Is it friendly or hostile? Do we care for it as well as we would care for an expensive car?

If we treat it well, it will serve us well, for many years.

Sudden serious diagnosis

I am often surprised by how people react when given a diagnosis of a serious illness. They wonder where did it come from, how did I get it.

A friend I knew was diagnosed with an asbestos related cancer. When asked when he had come into contact with asbestos he had to really think back, it was nearly 40 years before.

The truth is these toxic substances can take a long time to make us ill. It might feel like nothing is happening but down at the cellular level the damage is being done. It might be years or decades before we see the final symptoms.

Just because you don't see those symptoms that does not mean nothing is happening.

We all know that clean air, clean water and fresh clean food is really whats good for us, yet so many ignore this everyday for themselves and for their children. yet we have known this for a long time.

It was in 1826 that French physician Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote:

Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”

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, by Aristotle

authenticity

Enlightenment. It may not be what you think

Enlightenment

We often hear about enlightenment, enlightened beings, people becoming enlightened - as if it is somehow moving up to a higher plane. To a place of the gods where the great sages exist.

Enlightenment can in actual fact be not moving up to another plane but staying on this one with with a different perspective on reality.

Enlightenment is actually destructive, a destructive process. Its the stripping away of the untruths that we all hold as truths and as reality in our lives.

Enlightenment is an internal event and it can be that the destruction starts first with ourselves.

The stripping away of the illusions that we have about ourselves and we project out to the world. These illusions are the mask we wear that either protects us or projects a false image to to others,. The image we imagine that is more acceptable to others, making us more acceptable, more popular, more likeable.

The illusion that you are not good enough just as you are, is just that, an illusion. It is founded in your childhood, through your conditioning and your negative experiences. The rejections you suffered, the hurts you felt all led to the illusion that you were not good enough.

The truth is we are all good enough.

Life is not a competition, its a collaboration and its a learning experience, we all have our part to play.

Many live with the illusion of perfection or being good or bad

The truth is:

We are all equal, all imperfect, all the time and its OK to be imperfect.

We are all perfectly imperfect, just as we are.

When we strip away these illusions we can be ourselves, without fear, without the fear of not being good enough or likeable enough.

To walk through life comfortable in our own skin, accepting that we will not always be liked by everyone and being OK with that, actually being more than OK with that, being happy with that.

The mask is a heavy burden to carry. we hide behind it like a frightened child peering out through the small crack at the world beyond.

The process of dropping our illusions, of becoming enlightened, like all destruction can be frightening or painful at first. But the benefits are immeasurable.

When you drop the facade and walk through life as you are, the authentic you, without fears, worries and concerns about yourself, you walk taller, lighter.

This is enlightenment.

This is happiness.

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, by Aristotle

Hacking Happiness

TRANSLATE THIS

10 things that are important to give up so you can be happier

How a few words of inspiration can make such a difference in the way you feel at any moment

Insidious - The story of how a man you have never heard of, designed your life

Vexxed - Robert de Niro muscled out at Tribeca

How can you turn clay into gold?

The villagers gathered together and using mud from the river bank hurriedly covered the whole buddha from top to toe. The invading army came and seeing only a clay buddha, left without touching it. When they had departed the villagers left it covered as they feared the army might return one day.

Several hundred years later a young local monk was preying at the foot of the buddha when a small piece of clay fell to the ground in front of him. He looked up to see a gap left by the clay chip and when he looked into he gap, he saw the gold hidden inside.

The Demon of Socrates was a Daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle.” You may not be aware that the word Demon is said by mythology to have come from the word Daemon or Daimonion.

There may be a third way.

By gaining the courage to surrender the urge to fight our fears, instead, being curious about them, even trying to make friends with them, we can begin to understand them and then we can completely disarm them.

Knowledge is after all, great power and strength in itself.

Our inner demons can become great teachers if we summon the courage to look at them with curiosity, we can gain great value from something we previously felt was worthless.

Automated or Conscious? - Unconscious or Aware?

The best kept health secrets you never knew

Health begins with Heal.

There are two ways of looking at good health.

Enlightenment. It may not be what you think

Enlightenment

This is enlightenment.

This is happiness.

Pete Gable

Blog Archive

TRANSLATE THIS

The villagers gathered together and using mud from the river bank hurriedly covered the whole buddha from top to toe. The invading army came and seeing only a clay buddha, left without touching it. When they had departed the villagers left it covered as they feared the army might return one day.

Several hundred years later a young local monk was preying at the foot of the buddha when a small piece of clay fell to the ground in front of him. He looked up to see a gap left by the clay chip and when he looked into he gap, he saw the gold hidden inside.

The Demon of Socrates was a Daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle.” You may not be aware that the word Demon is said by mythology to have come from the word Daemon or Daimonion.

There may be a third way.

By gaining the courage to surrender the urge to fight our fears, instead, being curious about them, even trying to make friends with them, we can begin to understand them and then we can completely disarm them.

Knowledge is after all, great power and strength in itself.

Our inner demons can become great teachers if we summon the courage to look at them with curiosity, we can gain great value from something we previously felt was worthless.

Health begins with Heal.

There are two ways of looking at good health.

Enlightenment

This is enlightenment. This is happiness.

Pete Gable

Blog Archive

This is enlightenment.

This is happiness.