CH 5: Smell the Roses
Overview
Sometimes it may be tough to live in the moment, but the more you fight the urge to live in the past and to worry about the future, the more you will enjoy the journey. You will also find more happiness in your life when being grateful for the day that is given to you. After appreciating all that you have in the present moment, try to focus on giving to others. This chapter helps you realize how good you got it and how satisfied you can become when giving others your time and money.
Exercise
You don’t want to get to the very end of your life, make truckloads of money, out-achieve everyone you know and realize that you didn’t enjoy the journey. As an overachiever, taking the time to slow down and smell the roses isn’t in your nature. You think that stopping to appreciate your hard work is for lazy people.
This exercise is designed to get you focused on one of the strategies that’s proven to add more satisfaction to your life: giving back to others.
Here’s how this works:
- First, clarify your passions. One way to do this is to identify if there are any non-profits that have made a significant difference in your life.
- Next, ask yourself what are the biggest challenges facing your community that resonate with you.
- Identify one non-profit that could use your help. Once this is complete, contact this organization and offer to help financially or with your time. I highly recommend that you make a commitment to do this more than once.
Click here to download a pdf of the Smell the Roses exercise.
TED Talk
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Templates
- Stress Assessment: Here you can realize what types of things may be causing stress in your life and hindering your ways of seeing the good in the world.
- Gratitude Journal: You can keep a journal to help count your blessing and reflect on how good your life truly is.
- Freedom.to: With this resource, you can “lock” yourself out from using your email, internet, texting, etc. You can choose for how long you want to be locked out and start enjoying the real things that life has to offer.
- Charity Navigator: This, along with the following resources, will help you decide which types of organizations you may want to support.
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Books
- Stumbling on Happiness
- Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
- Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving
- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams
- The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian
- The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus
- 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually works–A True Story
- Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
- The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
- The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion, and Hope Can Get Us Through Hard Times
- How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living
- Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
- Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
- Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence
