There is nothing new in the search for happiness.

Neither is there any “secret” doctrine or teachings that will give you instant happiness. There are however many clues left by ancient and modern wise individuals giving a little insight and showing us the way to leading happier lives. Some of those sayings are so old that their origins are lost in antiquity. This doesn’t seem to matter, there are still as valid today as they were originally.

Old proverbs and sayings can be the key to happiness, they are little pieces of wisdom to remind us of what is important. More often than not we will remember some little piece of wisdom dispensed when we were children, it is usually meant as a reminder for deeper thinking.

IT IS NOT SELF INDULGENT TO SEEK HAPPINESS BUT A HUMAN DUTY, a happy life is what we should all seek, not through a filling of the senses but as a ” way of being” .

I selected a few of the proverbs that I grew up with and a few that seem to have come up since [Yoda]. Old proverbs and saying have a way of being in fashion for a time then return to obscurity for a while. A lot of the more modern sayings are just recycled ancient ones adapted to fit our times.

 Here is an example of the recycled saying:

• “Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within”. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

• “There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”. Hamlet [Act 2 scene2]

• As man thinketh so he is

• You are what you think you are

These are the more common proverbs and sayings I came accross. Stay tuned for my interpretation of those sayings in a later posting. I added the origins of the saying wherever I could do so, but I think at lot of the more common ones have been appropriated or adapted somewhere along the line.

• “The one being carried does not realize how far away the town is.” [Nigeria]

• All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are moveable, and those that move. [Arab]

• Throw dirt enough, and some will stick.

• Trust in God, but tie your camel. (Arabian)

• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. Confucius

• Half a loaf is still better than no bread” Irish

• “Put a silk dress on a goat and it remains a goat” Irish

• “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leasds to suffering” Yoda

• “Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin, the fear of loss is the path to the dark side” yoda

• Never look a gift horse in the mouth

• Cut your coat according to the cloth

• Never let the sun set on angry heart

• In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

• It is no use crying over spilt milk.

• Old friends and old wine are best

• Too many cooks spoil the broth.

• What can’t be cured must be endured.

• It is better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

• A stitch in time saves nine

• There’s no use in flogging (beating)a dead horse.

• Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.

• Respect yourself and others will respect you. Confucius

• A fool despises good counsel, but a wise man takes it to heart. Confucius

• A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Lao Tzu

As if global warming was not enough he tells us about all the other threats facing us, most of them are a certainty, the only unsure factor is: when will it happen?

Here is a short list of the threats:

This is not even including the more esoteric threats such as:

I am just naming a few here, these are all genuine doomsday scenarios and if I am to take any of this too seriously, I think I would need serious medication.
Don’t get me wrong, these are major threats, well most of them anyway, and they are a little meatier than the problem of flatulent cows causing a build up of methane and therefore warming of the climate.

What can we possibly do to minimize the impact of any of those events should they happen in our lifetime? I mean should we head for the hills now or join the ranks of the gun toting survivalists and be ready for global meltdown. Having said that preparing a little couldn’t hurt, we had our share of severe storms already and power cuts, surely a little preparedness cannot , it would be better than that awful feeling of sticking my head in the sand and ending up as a speed bump.

Then of course there are all those predictions about the Mayan Calender ending just on December 21st 2012, not to mention all those other prophesies, enough to make one’s head spin just like that chick in “The exorcist”.
Maybe nothing will happen on December the 21st in a little less then 2 years now, and as a child mentioned recently: “Maybe the Mayans ran out of stone tablets”, cute.

Still, I saw the movie and it ain’t pretty, it was quite tragic too [the movie, I mean].

A little bit of foresight cannot hurt, my Grandma used to stock up on everything: food, candles, firewood, woolen blankets, anything she thought she may need in case of another war. I remember raiding her cellar and seeing those shelves upon shelves of home made preserves, heaven until I got caught!

Today I purchased an emergency gas stove and a crank up flashlight, who knows I may end up with one of those bug out bags and army rations….
Uhmm, I will need to make some space for all that gear.

Armageddon can come, I will be prepared, I think…

Here are some tips to stay healthy while you blog:

1. Get a timer and stop every hour for ten minutes, get up, stretch walk outside and rest your eyes a bit.

2. Drink at least 3 litres of water

3. Replace your coffee with green tea, it contains caffeine as well but is also packed with antioxidants.

4. Stop every 2 hours and exercise for at least ten minutes, do some squats or push ups, go outside and focus on some distant objects.

5. Take a daily multi vitamin and some fish oil capsules

6. Get 8 hours sleep every day, I even got into having a little nap if I stayed up late.

7. Exercise every day for at least 40 minutes.

8. Get into healthy snacks, cut up some raw vegetables and fruit and keep them next to you to munch on. Try some raw nuts and dates.

9. Have a work schedule, just because you work from home does not mean you should be a haphazard blogger.

10. Prioritize your tasks, answering your email or mucking around on Facebook should not be the first thing on your list, divide the tasks into smaller chunks, they become a lot easier this way.

Blogging can be detrimental to your health if you do not discipline yourself, the worst part of it is that if you let your body suffer, you will find that your thinking and your creative juices also tend to dry up.
Stay healthy while you blog and you will be a much better blogger.

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Being a sheep is fine, you may prefer to be led and told how to live your life, it is usually the easiest path and just like the sheep you can run with the flock and keep on grazing the ever green pastures.

Now if you decide you want to be a wolf this is altogether very different. As a wolf you can run over a wider range of territory and although you can run with the pack, you will often run alone as well. The wolf is very individual and will do just as she  pleases, she is fast, cunning, intelligent and creative.

When a sheep encounters a wolf it will see only danger and run in fear, when the wolf meets a sheep however she sees lunch.

You see a wolf may go about in sheep’s clothing but have you ever heard of a sheep in wolf’s clothing? Not very likely.

Someone I trust once told me:

“Be a wolf and you will be free, life will not always be easy and you may go hungry at times but there is nothing to compare with being free”.

a blogger's life

I blame it all on Tim Ferriss and hisThe 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, there are many others but somehow the idea of working for one morning a week and enjoying the rest of my time chilling out really appealed to me.
My start was so very timid, I set up an account with Blogger but then again did not go further, Squidoo followed. It took six month of serious nail biting until I set up my first lens on Squidoo. When you want to build your first lens there are so many ideas floating around, what are my interests? Which of those interests could make a lens that someone else wants to read?
It took a while but my very first lens is “Ten steps to develop your psychic intuition”,.I did not know anything about HTML, and I still don’t.
Since then I discovered Blogger and I haven’t looked back, Blogger is so much more user friendly even I could use it without any trouble. With Squidoo you need to add your own HTML to change fonts, add colored backgrounds, change picture size etc. Blogger does it all for you and the beauty is you can learn to tweak the templates and personalize them as you wish all from the user friendly dashboard.
If you are starting out as a blogger and you wish to monetize your blogs, try one of the many free courses available, the web is a giant community and there are a lot of people wanting to help out the newbies, also join one of the many forums and get immediate feedback on just about any difficulty you may encounter.

All in all, I am grateful to all those internet giants who are willing to help people like me for free. I am in the process of doing the 30 Day Challenge with Ed Dale again, I find that there is so much to take in that it is very easy to give it all up.

The trick is not to get discouraged, if Tim Ferriss can do it so can I.

Someone suggested that small lies don’t hurt anyone but big ones do, this sounds fair, but say that you have a lot of small lies and those lies become huge:
“no I did not have sexual relations with that woman” comes to mind.

I would like to say I never lied, or never will lie again but I can’t, I may lie to save myself from some sticky situation or because the truth could be too hurtful, let the one who never ever lied cast the first stone.

What I can make sure of is that I will endeavor to be as honest as possible without compromising my safety, “Do I look good in this?” one question I would rather answer with a lie if I have to.
We all tell lies, small itty bitty ones on a daily basis, if someone asks you:
“How are you today” do you answer
” I feel awful, my head hurts and I just don’t really want to talk to you, also I think my boss wants to fire me…” no, you wouldn’t dump like this on anyone, you just smile and say:
“I am very well, thank you”.
In this case are you an awful liar or just being sociable?

We seem to accept that it is OK for some people to lie to us, politicians, people in the media and advertising, after all you can’t really believe that you will end up looking like Paris Hilton if you buy her perfume, or that you will be dating that super model what’s her name if you use a certain deodorant. We are sold lies and we know they are lies, but we like to pretend otherwise.

Mobile phone is under the cabbages

Leaving a mobile on to ring while at a performance or in a restaurant is the height of bad manners, you not only will spoil it for your companion [s] but also for everyone else, it is definitely uncool. The right thing to do is to show good manners and switch off the phone or alternatively put it on vibrate, if you must answer it, excuse yourself and step outside.

Unless you have blue tooth or a hands free device, driving while talking on a mobile phone is totally stupid, you have one hand holding the phone and you are driving at speed, you will be distracted. This is illegal in most countries, and so it should be.
This of course goes also for texting while driving
I recently was on the city bus when i could not help but overhear a phone conversation, a young woman was telling her friend about her antics of the night before, it was very entertaining, it should have been Xrated but all the bus passengers got a good earful and a good chuckle. What shocked me the most is that she was totally oblivious to the effect her phone conversation was having, when she got off the bus many people commented on her conversationin a very unflattering way. Nobody told her to keep her voice down, this would not do and I suppose most thought that maybe she wanted us all to hear it!
The young woman may have thought she was so cool.
We have become so dependent on our mobile phones, I know a few people who just panic when they misplace their phone, all the phone numbers and addresses are in there as well as a lot of other information.
I have slowly been weaning myself off, no mobile on the week end and I switch it on silent most of the time unless I expect a call.
Phones are becoming smaller and have so many more applications, there is always the push to get the latest and most expensive device, why?
I traveled in Vietnam and mobile phones were everywhere there too, I even saw an older lady in the traditional peasant dress carrying a long bamboo pole and her two baskets of vegetables, when out of nowhere i heard a Xmas jingle [Rudolf the reindeer], she pulled her mobile out from under her vegetables and started talking.

Not so easy, I has taken me months to have the courage to post anything more than other peoples quotes [they are famous, so what] and I am at the point of getting royally pissed off with all those get rich quick schemes found on the internet. Everywhere I look someone has made millions in a week and is living the high life on some exotic island, drives a huge car and is raking in the big buckaroos. How do they do it?
They get people like me to buy their programs, you know the ones I mean: join and the money will just fall into your lap, the only lap the money falls into is theirs!
Why pay someone hundreds of dollars every month when all the information you need is available for free?
There are a few internet coaching programs out there that give good value, but it is a little bit of hit and miss finding the right one.
If like me your internet knowledge could fit on the head of a pin read on. I am more than happy to share how I go about it, just don’t follow me too closely as I don’t know where I am going either.
There are literally thousands of internet coaching programs out there, I would love to be able to say this one is good, this one is a stinker but alas, my funds will not stretch to check them all out. Some promise fortunes to be made in a day, or a week, or a month, most of them will guarantee you a fortune and early retirement, be wary, approach it all from the point of view that if the offer sounds too good to be true it generally is.
Start of your internet marketing [IM] journey by exploring the various free options found on the net, one I would recommend is the 30 Day Challenge , it is run by Ed Dale, a very engaging Aussie. The whole 30 days program is totally free and you get a chance to learn all you need to know to become a marketing guru, the program has just stated again and this is my second go, the first time around I slacked off and by week 2 I thought I knew it all. My daughter continued on and as a result she is doing quite well and has been making some money through her websites.
By joining the 30 Day Challenge you get access to all the videos and transcripts of the course as well as access to the forum.
All for free, and the beauty is you can opt out whenever you want, just as I did when I did it the first time around. It has cost me nothing but I have learned a lot about the internet marketing business.
P.S: the 30 day challenge can now be accessed via Facebook, I can’t wait to check it out.

What To Expect In The Thirty Day Challenge