A Boy Walks Into a Barber Shop…

…and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the
world. Watch while I prove it to you.”

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then
calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”

The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

“What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of
the ice cream store.

“Hey, son! May I ask you a question?

Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”

The boy licked his cone and replied,

“Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over.”

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a

hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” -Abraham
Maslow, ‘Toward a Psychology of Being’
 The 10 Worst Lies Everyone Tells Themselves

“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in

denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this
because we’re afraid. We fear we will not find love, and
when we find it, we fear we’ll lose it. We fear that if we
don’t have love we will be unhappy.” - Richard Bach

By Whitney Anthony

Most of us don’t like liars. In fact, we often feel offended, even angry, when
another person lies to us. But the truth is, we lie to ourselves every day. We
engage in negative self-talk and thought patterns that inhibit our personal
growth and limit our ability to live a full and grounded life. We deserve to live
life fully, to experience all of the joy and mystery that life has to offer. The first
step towards this way of being is awareness. If we can become aware of the
ways in which we are lying to ourselves, we can begin to filter our thoughts in a
productive way. Here I have listed 10 lies that we need to stop telling ourselves
in order to push past our own limitations and begin to enjoy the totality of
living for which we are destined.

1. MY PAST WILL ALWAYS HAUNT ME:

Correction- you’re past can haunt you if you let it. But no, you’re not doomed
to spend the rest of your life desperately seeking love from anyone who will
show it to you because of a parent who never did. The very thing you’re doing
at this moment – self-reflection, questioning old thought patterns – is a great
step in the direction of change. Next time, before you indulge a groundless
belief or fear, ask yourself, “What is the source of my information?” If the
answer is- as it usually is- “I thought it up,” then you should dismiss the idea.
Remember, when you hold onto your history, you do so at the expense of your
destiny.
2. SUCCESS IS THE OPPOSITE OF FAILURE:
There are no failures, just results. Even if things don’t unfold the way you
expected, don’t give up. Learn what you can and keep moving. The one who
continues to advance in this way, one step at a time, is the one who ultimately
wins in the end. The battle is always won long before the final victory. It’s a
mindset. Success is a process that consists of small steps, decisions, and
actions that gradually build upon each other.

3. IF ONLY I HAD (FILL IN BLANK), I WOULD BE HAPPY:

There are two ways of being rich in happiness: One is to have all you want, the
other is to be satisfied with all you have. I’ll give you a hint: both ways are the
same. If you accept and appreciate things now, you’ll find more happiness.
Happiness comes when you stop complaining about the troubles you have and
start offering thanks for all the troubles you don’t have. So next time you catch
yourself thinking about all the things you want that you haven’t gotten, think
instead about all the things you don’t want that you haven’t gotten. And be
grateful.

4. A CRISIS IS A BAD THING:

As John F Kennedy once said, “The Chinese symbol for the word “crisis” is
written using two strokes of a pen. One stroke stands for danger, and the other
for opportunity. In a crisis, beware of the danger, but also recognize the
opportunity.” Life always balances itself out. Every challenge, problem, and
difficulty that arises is simply another opportunity for you to learn and grow.

5. I’M TOO OLD FOR THAT:

You are never too old to go after what you want. Nelson Mandela was 76 when
he became president. Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the
Mona Lisa. Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote The Cat in the Hat. Colonel
Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise. There are countless other
examples. Everyone is on their own timeline. And you are never too old or too
young to fulfill your calling.
6. THAT PERSON (FILL IN THE BLANK) HAS IT SO MUCH EASIER
THAN ME:
So many people believe this. But it’s simply not true. The truth is, you have no
idea what that person’s life is about! Everyone is exploring and struggling in
their own way. Nobody was handed a manual or an instruction guide for life –
everyone is trying to figure it out just the same way you are. I once heard
someone say if we all threw our problems into a pile in the middle of a room
and were forced to choose one, we would scramble to retrieve our own.

7. IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE:

It’s a nice thought and useful if you’re a particularly self-centered individual
but I don’t think it’s true. Maybe we can replace that lie with, “It’s better to
give AND receive.” Because neither is “better” than the other. They are in
balance. It’s simple math, for every giver there must be a receiver. And to take
it one step further, giving is psychologically easier than receiving because
there’s no sense of self-worth needed to give. You can give the best parts of
yourself away because you don’t feel worthy of having them. But to be willing
to receive means you feel worthy of accepting gifts from others.

8. I CAN DO IT TOMORROW:
Maybe one of the most frequent lies we tell ourselves. But we all know it’s not
true! The trouble is, you always think you have more time than you do. But
one day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to work on the
things you’ve always wanted to do. No one knows what the future holds and
what good does it do to live in the “one of these days” mindset? The life you
have is today and the time to live it is now. Besides, if we all waited until we
were ready, we would never get anything done!

9. HAPPINESS IS THE FOUNDATION OF MY WELL-BEING:

We tell ourselves over and over again, “I need to be happy.” We question
ourselves, “Why aren’t you happy?!” But the truth is, emotions are emotions
are emotions. Sad, angry, lonely, scared, they are not bad things! Instead of
telling ourselves we need to stay happy, we ought to be letting ourselves feel
however we do at any given moment. This kind of permission to feel as we feel
— not continuous happiness — is the foundation of your well-being.

10. IT’S WRONG TO BE SELF-CANTERED:

Sometimes being selfish is healthy. We could all learn to say, “No” every now
and then. And stop apologizing all the time. It’s your life! Your emotions! Your
choices! So choose what’s best for you. And stop caring what other people
think about your decisions. If/when it comes down to choosing between
someone else or something else and yourself, always choose yourself.

The Dream of Life

Let’s suppose you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to
dream, and that you could, for example, have the power to dream, in one
night, 75 years’ worth of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And
you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your
wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after
several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say ‘Well, that was
pretty great, but now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t
under control, where something is going to happen to me that I don’t know
what it’s going to be.’

And you would dig that, and come out of it and say ‘That was a close shave,
now wasn’t it?’ Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you
would make further and further gambles as to what you would dream, and
finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of
the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite
multiplicity of the choices you would have. Of playing that you weren’t God.
Because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that
he’s not… So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.
Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the
deep-down basic whatever-there-is.

And you’re ALL that, only you’re pretending you’re not…

~ Alan Watts, from ‘The Nature of Consciousness’, 1960

The Dalai Lama: Why I Laugh

I have been confronted with many difficulties throughout the course of my life,
and my country is going through a critical period. But I laugh often, and my
laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh
now, I reply that I am a professional laugher. [...]

The life of exile is an unfortunate life, but I have always tried to cultivate a
happy state of mind, appreciating the opportunities this existence without a
settled home, far from all protocol, has offered me. This way I have been able
to preserve my inner peace.

If we are content just to think that compassion, rationality, and patience are
good, that is not actually enough to develop these qualities. Difficulties provide
the occasion to put them into practice. Who can make such occasions arise?
Certainly not our friends, but rather our enemies, for they are the ones who
pose the most problems. So that we truly want to progress on the path, we
must regard our enemies as our best teachers.

For whoever holds love and compassion in high esteem, the practice of
tolerance is essential, and it requires an enemy. We must be grateful to our
enemies, then, because they help us best engender a serene mind! Anger and
hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the
“enemies” who appear from time to time in our lives.

Of course it is natural and right that we all want to have friends. I often say
jokingly that a truly selfish person must be altruistic! You have to take care of
others, of their well-being, by helping them and serving them, to have even
more friends and make more smiles blossom. The result? When you yourself
need help, you will find all you need! On the other hand, if you neglect others’
happiness, you will be the loser in the long run. Is friendship born of
arguments, anger, jealousy, and unbridled competition? I don’t think so. Only
affection produces authentic friends. […]

As for me, I always want more friends. I love smiles, and my wish is to see
more smiles, real smiles, for there are many kinds—sarcastic, artificial, or
diplomatic. Some smiles don’t arouse any satisfaction, and some even
engender suspicion or fear. An authentic smile, though, arouses an authentic
feeling of freshness, and I think the smile belongs only to human beings. If we
want those smiles, we must create the reasons that make them appear.

There Are No Wrong Feelings