LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

By Lionel Ketchian

The three most important things about real estate are LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION! It's just as true when it applies to your HAPPINESS.

Like most people, you're probably looking for happiness. Our country is founded on the principle of the "pursuit of happiness." We have grown up being told, and believed, that happiness is out there...somewhere. Happiness cannot be found "out there," because it's within you! Happiness is a matter of LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION! If you cannot find happiness where you are right now, where are you going to find it?

The pursuit of happiness is wonderful way of finding happiness. You must pursue happiness is the right way. Often it leads you to the very opposite, which is unhappiness. As long as you think someone else will make you happy, you have taken the power away from yourself to make it happen.

If you are waiting for the right things to happen, so you can finally be happy, then you are losing valuable days of your life. You are waiting to finish school, so you can get on with your life, and get a good job so you can pay for your education and make a living. You're waiting to find someone nice, so you can have a loving partner and get married, and have kids. Then. you wait for the kids to grow up, catch up on the bills for the kids, and the house, so you can be happy. You hope the kids finally leave the house so you can be happy. You try to make enough money for retirement so you can finally be happy. Happiness has somehow eluded you.

Happiness will not be your mate, your marriage, your kids, your house or your money! Happiness is not found outside of yourself. Happiness can only be accomplished from the inside out. When you need reasons to be happy, you end up with reasons to be unhappy. Why does that happen each and every time? Life will never be perfect enough for you to be happy. You must first be happy, for everything else to finally be perfect enough.

Once again, happiness is a matter of location. As long as you put your power outside yourself, you allow someone, or some thing else to have power over you. You will not be happy. The same is true of allowing yourself to be happy when the situation gets better. Great! Now you're happy because things are finally going the way you want. However, just as soon as the situation becomes worse, you become unhappy again. You must ask yourself is if you were ever happy to begin with.

Many times you end up getting the situation you desire in life, and yet you are still unhappy. Worrying about losing something prevents you from being happy. It's strange, because you get what you want, than worry about losing it. This is the way millions of people live their lives. They just don't know where happiness is located.

Why give people, events, situations and even serious illness power over you? Change what you can, and don't give the things you can't change power over you. Happiness is an issue of power. When you give your power away to any of life's situations, you lose your happiness. It is so important to not give up your power, which is your happiness. Think about it, if something makes you unhappy, it has power over you, right? If a person makes you unhappy, it's an issue of power. They seem to have the power to make you unhappy, the truth is, you have given them your power. Remember to take it back, it belongs to you!

We think we have to get loud and angry or get mad, get sad, or get even, to change things. In other words, we think we have to become unhappy to get what we want. It is a current belief that acting unhappy is a powerful way to change things that you don't like. Actually the opposite is true. When you stay happy, you are exercising your power. Staying happy allows you access to your wisdom. Stay with your happiness, it's what you want. Think about a time when you were unhappy. Take a good look at how you felt when you were unhappy. Is it worth feeling like that for anything? No, of course not! Staying happy will get you what you want much quicker, and better than unhappiness ever will.

In the book, As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen, he says, "Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life." Remember that what has happened is not as important as what you do about what has happened.

The next time someone asks, "Where do you find happiness?" Tell them it is all about location, location, location. Tell them they are standing on the very spot for finding happiness...it is right there within themselves.

THE HEART OF HAPPINESS!

By Lionel Ketchian

We recently celebrated Valentine's Day, so let's talk about matters of the heart. On Valentine's Day you think of love. But let me ask you this question; what is love? Of course it is about your feelings for another person. Where does love come from? I'll tell you where! Love comes from your happiness. Think about it for a minute. We talk about finding the love of our lives and living happily ever after. Do you know anyone that wants to get married so they can live unhappily ever after? I don't think so. Although many people fall in love to become happy, many eventually become unhappy nevertheless.

A happy heart is a loving heart! Happiness is where love comes from. When you are happy love is there. When you first fall in love, the other person seems so perfect. You don't see any faults, you see only beauty and you're in touch with only wonderful feelings for them. It may take days, months, or years, but you begin to wonder what happened to this person you fell in love with. Why have they changed so much? Did you really know them in the first place? What happened to them? Maybe it's you? Maybe you changed your expectations of them. Maybe, you fell out of happiness!

You cannot feel love toward another unless you are happy. Happiness is the foundation for love. Much of the time people want to be loved. They want to be loved because they do not love themselves. The reason for that is they are just not happy. If you can begin living your life with happiness, love would find you so fast, you would not believe what happened. The way it seems to happen is we are unhappy, so we need someone in our life to fill the void.

We go out and look for someone to love, desperately. Even if someone would, or could love us in that state we would still soon be unhappy. This is because we are unhappy and we are looking for someone to make us happy. Even if the other person you loved were happy it would not be enough to make you both happy.

We need to learn the art of Being Happy. Once we are happy we will go out and attract, or be attracted to someone who is sincerely happy. Instead of being unhappy and finding someone to fill the void, being happy allows us to find someone to share our joy. WOW! What a winning combination that would be. Two people who are happy could really find and share love, and it would be the real thing. Love can only grow in a happy environment, which is part of your very soul.

What is happiness? It is unconditional acceptance of life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Once we can understand unconditional happiness we can love, and be loved. Part of what I am talking about is accepting yourself for all your parts, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Once you do that you realize you are good enough. In fact you're perfect! When you feel good about yourself it is then that you can improve yourself. In fact Being Happy is the best self-improvement exercise that I know of.

How many times have you heard that you need to learn to love yourself? People ask me if it is self-centered to love yourself. The answer is no! When you love yourself you are gentle on yourself, and you can more easily be that way with others. It's when you are self-centered, rather than self-loving that the problems start.

Self-centered people want to talk about themselves all the time. They don't really care about others. This is what a self centered person might say: "Oh, here I am talking about nothing but myself, I have been talking about myself for twenty minutes, enough of that. OK, it's your turn to talk about me." This is a joke of course, but there is a lot of truth to it.

Self-centered people want everyone else to tell him or her how great they are. They want other people to love them, but they can't love back. Why? The reason is; they are just not happy. A person who is self-centered is not Being Happy and must constantly look for happiness. Self-centered people have no love for themselves so they have none to give others.

A self-loving person is happy and wants to share their happiness and love with other people. Self-loving people love themselves, so they are in touch with love within themselves. That is where they get the love they have to give others. When you love yourself, you are connected to yourself. You know yourself, and you have healthy self-esteem. You love others as much as you love yourself.

It is so important to be happy. We must learn to detach our sense of worth from outside things and place it within ourselves for a real sense of worth. After all, how can you give love unless you have love to give? How can you give happiness, unless you have happiness? When you have happiness within you, you can reach within and give love to another.

If you want to live happily ever after, then be happy now. This is the way to real love. People stop loving because they decide things that have happened are more important than their happiness. If you want to love forever than don't give up your happiness. Allow Being Happy to show you the way to deal with obstacles and the problems that get in your way in life.

Remember no one is perfect. We are all doing the very best we can. Though it does not look like people are doing their best...they are. It may not be the best you can do, but given their life experience, fears, hopes, and thinking, it is the best they can do at the time. Let's not be too hasty to judge others, especially the ones we love.

Love flourishes in happiness, love multiplies and overflows in a rich and happy heart! Have a heart - Be Happy, and you will be more loving. Happy Valentine's Day! I Love You with a happy heart.

Lighten Up! Be Happy!

By Lionel Ketchian

How are those New Year's resolutions you made going for you? You may have made it through the first week and now you realize you're not keeping them. Don't be hard on yourself; Lighten Up! Be Happy! You say you would like to be happy, but you have problems. Guess what, everyone has problems. Stop letting your problems affect you.

Are you worrying about your problems? Most people allow worry to get the best of them. Worrying is not going to solve your problems. In fact, worrying is just another problem for you to deal with. Thinking about your problem is not worrying. That's because thinking is directed toward solving the problem. Think about the solutions you have available to you. When you come up with solutions, you will not need to worry about your problems.

According to one survey of white-collar workers, most of them have or would have made reducing stress their number one resolution, they felt that it was even more important to them than losing those extra pounds or to stop smoking.

Lighten Up! Be Happy and you will reduce stress in you life as well as find solutions to your problems faster. You will even find better solutions because you will be in a better frame of mind. Lighten Up! Change your attitude. Your attitude is a part of your problem. Attitude has a dramatic effect on your problems and your life. How does lightening up and being happy have a positive affect on you life? I'll tell you the secret if you promise to tell everyone. It is all about POWER. Energy is power that you have control over. Energy is Power and Happiness is Power. Happiness is energy of the highest order. Happiness is your power source, get connected! As a source of power it can produce energy. Energy is all around us, so it's not about finding energy and using the energy, it's about tapping into your power supply.

Your connection is happiness. To prove it to you look at the opposite, which is unhappiness. Unhappiness is a feeling of being disconnected. Unhappiness is about being cut off from the energy that we feel when we are happy. Look at how we describe both states of being. We describe unhappiness as being down and out or feeling low. We describe happiness as feeling high or being in the flow. Happiness is our connection to power. Happiness is our connection to one another. When we experience happiness with another human being we feel connected. Laughter produces the same results, and as an aspect of happiness, it makes us feel better. It's an energy producer, and it is a source of power because it brings people together.

Remember the old saying, "Laughter is the best medicine?" A medicine changes a weakened state into a healthy, more powerful state. To be able to lighten up and laugh may be one of the most powerful things you can do, especially when things are not going well. When a family member, a friend or you are not feeling well, or maybe are fighting a serious illness, how can lightening up and being happy change such a serious situation? Lightening up can be the most powerful thing you can do in a serious situation. The reason is that you are taking control of yourself. That is real power! To laugh often and much, especially at your self, can create the energy you need to help you have the power and energy to overcome the illness.

Whether you have medical, financial or relationships problems, Lighten Up and Be Happy and notice the positive benefits. What are they? Being happy when everything looks bad makes you take charge of the situation and yourself. You are not allowing the situation to tell you what to do. Once you become unhappy, you are letting the problem tell you what to think and how to act. When you can be happy in the worst situation you, become the most powerful person in the world. You become who you really are. Problems do not make you; they reveal who you really are.

Everyone wants to be happy. To really be happy, you must learn happiness is a cause, not an effect. Almost everyone lives his or her life with happiness as an effect. People want happiness, and hope it comes to them in their day to day lives. People wake up in the morning hoping it will be there in a compliment or in something that happens to them during the day. The problem with happiness as effect is no matter how many"good things" happen, you will let the smallest "bad thing" takes it all away. This is the real reason most people do not find happiness "out there."

There is another way to live your life. Live your life with "Happiness as a Cause." OK but how do you do that? Decide to be happy -- no matter what. You wake up in the morning and decide to be happy. You go through the day and experience people and events that would make most people unhappy, Not You! You're too smart for that. You know that you, and only you, are in charge of your happiness, no one else is. You wouldn't want anyone else to be in charge of your happiness.

The secret to living your life is to: "Lighten Up! Be Happy!" This is your power source for energy, rarely experienced by most people. Yes, it does take discipline to stick to the resolution to be happy. It is worth it, believe me. Nothing makes more sense than Being Happy. It will carry you from the valleys of despair to the mountaintop of joy.

You have a right to be unhappy. I cannot talk you out of it. Most people have allowed unhappiness to be the strategy to living their life. Does it feel right to you? Of course not! There is another way. Lighten Up! Be Happy and you will be the cause of what you experience. No one can change your attitude without your permission. Sometimes things will go your way and sometimes they won't. You may not always get to choose what happens, but you always get to decide how you will think about what happens.

Lighten Up! Be Happy. Become the most powerful person you have ever known. Another important key is that you must want happiness even more than you want to get rid of your problem. Happiness will give you the energy to overcome your problem, if it is at all possible. Control your power and you control your problem. Happiness is the power you have, choose it and use it well. The real secret to happiness is don't wait for it to happen, make it part of your life.