happy for no reason.

there's this book called "happy for no reason" that I started reading after graduation. Let's just say it help me get through this summer, and brought me back to how I used to be before getting caught up in situations that were unlikely for me to be in. I wanna share some words that enlightened me. I added them to my list of realizations, and well yeah, that mess is way to long, and I've lost count at what number I'm at sooo yeah...bullet points it is haha.

• "happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence"-aristotle
• ""things do not change; we change." -H.D. Thoreau
• When youre caught up in i'll-be-happy-when, happiness is always off in the future, while in truth, the only time you can actually experience happiness is right here in this moment.
• Many of us spend tremendous amount of energy being upset and resisting life. When you take the view that there are no mistakes and accept what is, you can use your energy instead to deal effectively with the situation now.
• "Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
• events + response = outcome
• "...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
• "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't Complain." - Maya Angelou
• "The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny." - Dr. Albert Ellis
• "We can never obtain inner peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves." -Dalai Lama
• "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven." -John Milton
• Don't believe everything you think.
• There is only cause of unhappiness; the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.
• "...Look at the situation differently, see the truth and the suffering is less."
• ...when events happen to us, we react by creating a story in our heads about those events. It's not actually the events that make us suffer; ot's our story about the events that produces the suffering. So when we find ourselves unhappy about something that's happened, it's important to question our story to see if it's true.
• "We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens." -Epictetus
• Most of us live in our thoughts, pictures, and stories about the past and the future, rather than being aware of how we actually feel in this moment. The only time that we can actually do anything about the way we feel is NOW.
• story: One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between the two 'wolves' that live inside us all. One is unhappiness. It is fear, worry, anger, jealousy, sorrow, self-pitty, resentment, and inferiority. The other is happiness. It is joy, love, hope, serenity, kindness, generosity, truth, and compassion." The grand son thought about it for a minute and the asked his grandfather, "which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "the one you feed."
• "forgiveness is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness."
• Forgiveness isn't about the person or people being forgiven--it's a gift you give yourself that allows your heart to stop being contracted. When you forgive you release the toxic resentment and anger youre holding in your heart, finally freeing yourself to get on with your life.
• "I believe with every fiber of my being that every human being has the right to live without the pain of the past....
• When you understand the suffering of others, like magic, it transforms your negative feelings into compassion, and sets the stage for forgiveness to occur.

this is for the pessimists, the down-in-the-dumps, the stuck-in-a-ruts & the glass-half-empty-people, but it's especially for the people that genuinely want to be happy.