Archive for June, 2010

MORE STUPID IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Posted in IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD on June 20, 2010 by devology

MORE STRANGE BUT TRUE…

AND EVEN MORE USELESS FACTS AND FIGURES!

WHO U CALLNG STUPID?

102. Honolulu is the only place in the United States that has a royal palace!

103. One gallon of used motor oil can ruin approximately one million gallons of fresh water!

104. More money is spent on gardening than on any other hobby!

105. In 32 years there are about 1 billion seconds!

106. Rice paper does not have any rice in it!

107. Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day!

108. In England, in the 1880’s, “Pants” was considered a dirty word!

109. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!

LAUGH WHILE U STILL CAN!

110. The average person laughs 13 times a day!

111. Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women!

112. It is estimated that millions of trees in the world are accidentally planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them!

113. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, “Gadsby”, which contains over 50,000 words — none of them with the letter E!

114. Of all the words in the English language, the word set has the most definitions!

THE SCIENCE & ART OF TOOTH-PICKING

115. A toothpick is the object most often choked on by Americans!

116. Every 45 seconds, a house catches on fire in the United States!

117. Nose prints are used to identify dogs, just like humans use fingerprints!

118. The most used letter in the English alphabet is ‘E’, and ‘Q’ is the least used!

119. There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year!

120. The original name for the butterfly was ‘flutterby’!

121. Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed… or is that paws?!

122. The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven

SO WE HAVE BEEN BULL SHITTING THE BULLS?

123. Bulls are colorblind, therefore will usually charge at a matador’s waving cape no matter what color it is — be it red or neon yellow!

124. Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings!

125. Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight!

126. A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a person realizes it’s there, though!

127. The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons!

128. The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people!

GREEN PISON ARROW FROG MINUS HIS ARROWS

129. A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!

130. After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again!

131. In Texas, it’s against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession.

132. In Philadelphia, you can’t put pretzels in bags based on an Act of 1760.

133. Alaska law says that you can’t look at a moose from an airplane.

134. In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to raise alligators in your home.

135. In Miami, it is forbidden to imitate an animal.

136. It is against the law to mispronounce the name of the State of Arkansas in that State.

MA LOOK, NO WHEELS!

137. In Illinois, the law is that a car must be driven with the steering wheel.

138. California law prohibits a woman from driving a car while dressed in a housecoat.

139. In Memphis, Tennessee, a woman is not to drive a car unless a man warns approaching motorists or pedestrians by walking in front of the car that is being driven.

140. In Tennessee, it is against the law to drive a car while sleeping.

141. In New York, it is against the law for a blind person to drive an automobile.

142. In West Virginia, only babies can ride in a baby carriage.

BUT THE PREM SHRUNK!

143. In Georgia, it is against the law to slap a man on the back or front.

144. A barber is not to advertise prices in the State of Georgia.

145. In Louisiana, a bill was introduced years ago in the State House of Representatives that fixed a ceiling on haircuts for bald men of 25 cents.

146. In Oklahoma, no baseball team can hit the ball over the fence or out of a ballpark.

147. In Rochester, Michigan, the law is that anyone bathing in public must have the bathing suit inspected by a police officer !

ANNUAL FAMILY BATH DAY FESTIVAL

148. In Kentucky, it’s the law that a person must take a bath once a year.

149. In Utah, birds have the right of way on any public highway.

150. In Ohio, one must have a license to keep a bear.

151. In Tennessee, a law exists which prohibits the sale of bologna (sandwich meat) on Sunday.

152. In Virginia, the Code of 1930 has a statute which prohibits corrupt practices or bribery by any person other than political candidates.

153. In Providence, Rhode Island, it is against the law to jump off a bridge.

154. In the State of Kansas, you’re not allowed to drive a buffalo through a street.

I PASSED MY BUFFALO DRIVING TEST

155. In Florida, it is against the law to put livestock on a school bus.

156. In New Jersey, cabbage can’t be sold on Sunday.

157. In Galveston, Texas, it is illegal to have a camel run loose in the street!

158. In North Carolina, it is against the law for dogs and cats to fight.

159. In Singapore, it is illegal to chew gum.

160. In Cleveland, Ohio, it is unlawful to leave chewing gum in public places.

I M KNOCKING OFF. TIME 2 GO HOME.

161. In Virginia, chickens cannot lay eggs before 8:00 a.m., and must be done before 4:00 p.m.

162. In New York, it is against the law for children to pick up or collect cigarette and cigar butts.

163. In Massachusetts, it is against the law to put tomatoes in clam chowder.

164. In Washington State, you can’t carry a concealed weapon that is over 6 feet in length.

165. In San Francisco, there is an ordinance, which bans the picking up and throwing of used confetti.

166. In Kentucky, it is illegal for a merchant to force a person into his place of business for the purpose of making a sale.

167. It is against the law in Connecticut for a man to write love letters to a girl whose mother or father has forbidden the relationship.

168. In Michigan, married couples must live together or be imprisoned.

HONEY, BUT U SAID U WILL STAY ANYWHERE! WITH ME

169. In the state of Colorado, a pet cat, if loose, must have a tail-light.

170. In Phoenix, Arizona, you can’t walk through a hotel lobby with spurs on.

171. In California, a law created in 1925 makes it illegal to wiggle while dancing.

172. In Utah, daylight must be visible between dancing couples.

YES MUM, MY DRESS IS 6 INCHES BELOW MY NAVEL.

173. In Michigan, it is against the law for a lady to lift her skirt more than 6 inches while walking through a mud puddle.

174. In North Carolina, it is against the law for a rabbit to race down the street.

175. In Georgia, it’s against the law to spread a false rumor.

176. In West Virginia, one can’t cook sauerkraut or cabbage due to the odors and the offence is subject to imprisonment.

177. In Missouri, a man must have a permit to shave.

178. The law states that more than 3000 sheep cannot be herded down Hollywood Blvd. at any one time.

179. In Texas, it is still a “hanging offense” to steal cattle.

HONEY, I TOLD U I CAN MULTI-TASK

180. Each weekend, about 54 million Americans mow their lawns, using 800 million gallons of gas per year.

STUPID IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Posted in IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD on June 20, 2010 by devology

STRANGE BUT TRUE…

AND TOTALLY USELESS FACTS AND FIGURES…

SHE WAS THE REASON 4 THE BAN

1. Saturday mail delivery in Canada was eliminated by Canada Post on February 1, 1969!

2. In Tokyo, a bicycle is faster than a car for most trips of less than 50 minutes!

3. Should there be a crash, Prince Charles and Prince William never travel on the same airplane as a precaution!

4. Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second!

5. The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing card!

6. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos!

CLOCKLESS CASINO 4 BRAINLESS GAMBLERS

7. There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants!

8. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off!

9. Every day 20 banks are robbed. The average take is $2,500!

10. The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad!

11. Tablecloths were originally meant to be served as towels with which dinner guests could wipe their hands and faces after eating!

MUHAMMAD ALI

12. Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult!

13. One car out of every 230 made was stolen last year!

14. The names of Popeye’s four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye!

15. Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia!

16. The Nobel Peace Prize medal depicts three naked men with their hands on each other’s shoulders!

NOBEL PRIZE - THE NUDE GAYS

17. When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second!

18. A Boeing 747 airliner holds 57,285 gallons of fuel!

19. A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounce is used to start the average automobile!

20. The Philadelphia mint produces 26 million pennies per day!

“HAHAHA! A PERFECT HIT” ~God~

21. A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun’s surface!

22. A violin contains about 70 separate pieces of wood!

23. It is estimated that 4 million “junk” telephone calls, phone solicitations by persons or programmed machine are made every day in the United States!

24. It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!

25. Forest fires move faster uphill than downhill!

26. Almost half the newspapers in the world are published in the United States and Canada

27. The two-foot long bird called a Kea that lives in New Zealand likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows!

U SHOOT US. WE EAT YOUR TIRES

28. Most lipstick contains fish scales!

29. Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing!

30. One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen!

31. It’s illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while you’re sitting on a curb in St. Louis!

32. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum!

33. No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half!

34. A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein!

35. Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people!

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING B4 KING KONG'S ARIVAL

36. There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!

37. If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion!

38. Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive!

39. A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth!

40. The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!

41. Clinophobia is the fear of beds!

42. A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second!

43. Porcupines float in water!

OOHHH! POKE ME AGAIN..IT TURNS ME ON!

44. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” uses every letter of the alphabet!

45. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”!

46. The sloth (a mammal) moves so slowly that green algae can grow undisturbed on its fur!

47. Cat urine glows under a black-light!

48. The world’s termites outweigh the world’s humans 10 to 1!

49. The electric chair was invented by a dentist!

ARE U MAKING CAMEL EYES AT ME?

50. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand!

51. Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks!

52. Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone!

53. A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside!

54. Hummingbirds can weigh less than a penny!!

55. Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it’s known as Tennessee!

56. The Earth weighs around 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons (5,940 billion billion metric tons)!

EARTH WHEN IT WAS STILL LIGHT

57. A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off – it dies from starvation!

58. Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie!

59. The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year!

60. It’s against the law to pawn your dentures in Las Vegas!

61. One in every 4 Americans has appeared on television!

62. The average American/Canadian will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year!

63. It’s against the law to burp, or sneeze in a certain church in Omaha, Nebraska!

64. You’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206!

65. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete!

STUPID BIRD. THE DOOR IS ON THE FRONT

66. Over 10,000 birds a year die from smashing into windows!

67. The state of Florida is bigger than England!

68. There are more than one million animal species on Earth!

69. In Natoma, Kansas, it’s illegal to throw knives at men wearing striped suits

70. It was once against the law to have a pet dog in a city in Iceland!

71. Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!

EDISON THE SCARDY CAT!

72. Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark!

73. During your lifetime, you’ll eat about 60,000 pounds of food, that’s the weight of about 6 elephants!

74. Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!

75. Dolphins sleep with one eye open!

76. The world’s oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9000 years old!

77. There are more plastic flamingos in the U.S, than real ones!

78. About 3000 years ago, most Egyptians died by the time they were 30!

NOW U KNOW WHAT PORN STARS USE

79. More people use blue toothbrushes, than red ones!

80. A sneeze travels out your mouth at over 100 m.p.h.!

81. Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, every time you breathe!

82. In the White House, there are 13,092 knives, forks and spoons!

83. Slugs have 4 noses!

84. Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch T.V for 3 hours!

85. Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet!

86. Owls are one of the only birds who can see the color blue!

OWLS...THE NEXT BIG BLUE FILM STARS

87. The average American/Canadian drinks about 600 sodas a year!

88. It was once against the law to slam your car door in a city in Switzerland!

89. There wasn’t a single pony in the Pony Express, just horses!

90. Honeybees have a type of hair on their eyes!

91. There are over 58 million dogs in the U.S!

92. Dogs and cats consume over $11 billion worth of pet food a year!

LONG NAILS? WAIT TIL U SEE MY TOES

93. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!

94. Humans blink over 10,000,000 times a year!

95. In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an “Honorary Harlem Globetrotter.”

96. Every second, Americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate

97. A fetus develops fingerprints at eighteen weeks!

98. There are approximately fifty Bibles sold each minute across the world!

WORLD CHEWING GUM CHAP

99. Every year, kids in North America spend close to half a billion dollars on chewing gum!

100. An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 caused parts of the Mississippi River to flow backwards!

101. A person uses approximately fifty-seven sheets of toilet paper each day!


BOOK OF DEVOLOGY

Posted in The Book Of DEVOLOGY on June 15, 2010 by devology

SELF DISCIPLINE

EVERY ASPECT OF HUMAN LIVING

CAN, AND THEREFOR, MUST

BE ORGANIZED

TO ACHIEVE MAXIMUM RESULTS

FROM MINIMUM EFFORT.

~ Dev~

STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

Posted in STRANGE ENCOUNTERS on June 11, 2010 by devology

SHIRTLESS & BAREFOOT                        MILLIONAIRE TOWKAY

QUIRKY BUT RICH: Fifty-three-year-old Foong Bang Loy never wears a shirt to work and wanders around barefooted. However, looks can be deceiving. Foong is actually a millionaire with a diverse spread of businesses, ranging from vegetable farming to sand mining.

HULU SELANGOR: He can easily adorn himself with Gucci belts and Bally shoes, but this millionaire from Serendah walks around town shirtless and barefoot, with his shorts held up by raffia string.

Meet farmer and entrepreneur Foong Bang Loy, 53, whose eccentricity makes him look more like an over-aged ragamuffin than the towkay that he is.

As if his choice of attire is not bizarre enough, he sometimes dons a long, curly wig or hats made from newspapers – whenever it strikes his fancy.

“People think I am crazy. Let them talk. I am living life my way. I am happy, I hurt no one and more importantly, my wife and children accept me the way I am,” said Foong, the father of four grown children.

Wife Seck Sow Yan, looking adoringly at Foong, described him as the same kind, hardworking and loving person she had known since she was 10.

“He has disliked wearing shirts and shoes for as long as I can remember. When he was young, the only shirts he wore were for school.

“While he may not dress to convention, he is really likeable. He showers me with affection and we love to sing karaoke together,” said Seck, who is in her 50s.

Folks in Serendah have become accustomed to this barefooted millionaire –who has no qualms riding his horse to town shirtless or walking into the bank to see the manager in his usual shirtless and shoeless self.

While this may raise eyebrows, it is his wealth that is the talking point.

Foong is one of two licensed sand miners in town, and he owns the largest vegetable farm in Serendah. He also owns a mini-market, three shoplots, a Mercedes and a BMW.

HARD AT WORK: Foong operating his excavator at his sand mine in Serendah recently.

The locals remember him and his wife coming from Ampang to farm in Serendah more than a decade ago. They were poor then and many believed he had struck lottery.

“Nonsense!” said Foong. “Whatever we have, my wife and I earned it the old-fashioned way – through hard work.”

“We did everything ourselves to save money. We planted vegetables, transported them to the market and sold them there.

“We were tired to the bone but kept working to make more money. We invested with the money we had, such as in the sand mine,” said Foong.

The couple still work hard. Seck sends the vegetable to the Selayang wholesale market at 1am and returns home around noon to sleep.

Foong keeps his morning busy tending to the vegetable farms and the sand mine. He learned to operate the excavators and repair the machines to save on labour costs.

“My children work for us. We pay them wages. Some say we are tight with the children. I believe they should earn their keep.

“What I have will eventually become theirs. However, they must know that our wealth did not fall from the sky, lest they squander the money,” said Foong.

Wise words from one who wore a plaited wig that day.

LITTLE HAPPINESS PART 3

Posted in ASK MASTER COACH DEV on June 10, 2010 by devology

THE LITTLE HAPPNESS PART 3

There are 4 Little Happiness Resource Tools to help us in times of need.

The 4 Resources are

  1. Resource of Character
  2. Resource of Love
  3. Resource of Work
  4. Resource of Faith

THE RESOURCE OF CHARACTER

The single most important, most valuable component of character is the habit of doing what has to be done.

To sustain grief and calamity best is to accept life as difficult- that in its self is brave, but you must also be prepared to walk up to the perils, the grief, the disaster, and do what is needed.

People with such a resource are strong. But you must realize it never springs to life the moment it is needed but it grows through the years, and it is a discipline that ought to start when you are young, in the acceptance of small painful things.

THE RESOURCE OF LOVE

You are, in a deep sense, what your relationships to other human beings make you.

Only the discipline of human sympathy keeps life from growing poor and brittle. If you keep your sympathy and understanding alive, then you will feel so warm a bond with other people that in time of trouble it will hearten you just to look into the faces of your fellow men and feel the comforting sense of your common human destiny.

THE RESOURCE OF WORK

Work is not only a great resource but also a great therapy, and anodyne against pain. Work takes all your energy therefore leaving little for you to cry over things.  The more difficult and challenging the thing you are working at, the better. You can’t work hard without using up some of the energy that might go into self-pity. The more creative your attitude towards work, the greater the enrichment you can draw from it. People who are always busy building cathedrals are mightily fortified against life’s ills.

THE RESOURCE OF FAITH

The resource of faith, of believe in life’s essential goodness is probably the greatest resource. To be sure, life is not always fair. But it is good and joyous nonetheless, the most courageous thing one can do is to snatch joy out of the very path of pain.

CONCLUSION

There is only one tragedy in life and that is its brevity. In the face of that tragedy one must be joyous.

One cannot deny that tragedy is real or dodge experiences however hard they are to bear. But there is always the ‘triumph of goodness’. The goodness we have in our lives has its goodness elsewhere. There is a power greater than ourselves who wishes us well. Therefore we live in a Universe where good is stronger than evil.

Such an attitude is our shield against bitterness. No matter what the state of the world. We must live in it with such courage as we can. How well we are prepared depends in considerable part on how well we have built up those timeless resources that are proof against change.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

By putting traits of mind and character ahead of things, we can rethink our values and put loving and growing at the head of them.

We can lose ourselves in some good for others. We can learn to pray, stretching communion to the very edge of our human frailties. We can learn too, the discipline of meeting little problems well with courage in preparation for the day when the big ones will come.

The thing to remember is that, in joy and sorrow alike, life itself is precious. We need it most because it gives us a chance to be what we can be, experience what we can experience and love what we can love.

LITTLE HAPPINESS PART 2

Posted in ASK MASTER COACH DEV on June 8, 2010 by devology

THE ‘LITTLE HAPPINESS’

(LE PETIT BONHEUR) PART 2

CREATING NEW MEMORIES

The Little Happiness is about creating ‘Future Memories’ in times of peace. These ‘memories’ can be accessed as ‘Emotional Investments’ in times of need.

JUST IMAGINE...

You can draw from your past or present experiences to create these ‘Future Memories’. Or you could ‘borrow’ some memories from friends, colleagues, acquaintances, relatives, etc.

If you are like most people, (bankrupt of your own memories) you might just have to draw from your ‘hopes, wishes and dreams’ by stealing them from books you have read, movies you have seen or simply by scanning the horizons of your Imagination.

Hollywood is a great frontier to tap these ‘borrowed or stolen’ memories. Most people just go back to being 12 years old, and instantly an endless avalanche of these memories begin to flood their mind.

BE A CHILD AGAIN

You can choose to create any memory, imagined or real. Rest assured, your mind cannot tell the difference between those that have their origin in fantasy from those that have their feet firmly planted from a real emotional experience in your past.

Just, allow your mind to go where anything and everything is possible…because it is…if you allow it…!

Ask yourself; “If all things were possible, who would I want to be, what would I want to do and what experiences would I want to have?”

Just ask….and it is yours to experience…

And if you are ready…let yourself go…now….

RESEARCH INDICATES ROMANTIC MEMORIES ARE THE MOST POWERFUL

Research has shown that the most powerful ‘Little Happiness’ comes from romantic memories or fantasies that are embedded in the emotion of love. Whether real or imagined, they have exactly the same impact on the mind. For the mind any imagined thought laced with emotion is real.

JUST LAY BACK ...AND ALLOW YOURSELF TO DRIFT OFF...

IMAGINE...YOU ARE TOTALLY FREE...TOTALLY AT PEACE...JUST LET GO...

BEGIN TO CREATE AND RECORD NEW MEMORIES IN THE MIRROR OF YOUR MIND

THIS IS THE JOURNAL OF YOUR ROMANTIC JOURNEY

YOU ARE NOW AT YOUR MOST FAVORITE PLACE ON EARTH

AS U OPEN YOUR EYES, FAMILIAR OBJECTS GREET U

TODAY, U R ALLOWED TO HAVE IT YOUR WAY, ANYWAY U DESIRE

FOR A START...YOUR LOVER SPOILS U WITH BREAKFAST IN BED

WALKING DOWN THE BEACH...HAND IN HAND WITH YOUR SOULMATE

JUST LAZING IN THE SAND...WITH NO PARTICULAR AIM...FREE OF ALL THOUGHTS

THE LONG OVERDUE PIGGY BACK RIDE TO NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR

PROMISE ME U WILL HOLD ME IN YOUR ARMS LIKE THIS...FOREVER

LAYING BESIDE U, I ACHIEVED IMMORTALITY!

TAKE ME 2 MY FAVORITE SPOT IN THE WOODS WHERE U FIRST KISSED ME

OUR LOVE IS AS ETERNAL AS THESE WOODS

REUNITED ONCE MORE...WITH MY 'KISSING ROCK'

I WANNA GO BACK..2 WHERE U FIRST TOUCHED ME...MADE ME FEEL WHOLE!

THE SPOT WHERE THIS GIRL TURNED INTO A WOMAN

DO I REALLY NEED 2 EAT...ALL I EVER NEED IS U

ME READING YOUR JOURNAL...ABOUT ME

LOOKING INTO YOUR EYES...I SEE ALL THE TOMORROWS OF MY LIFE

THIS IS WHERE I FIRST SAW YOUR BODY WITHOUT CLOTHES

I FELL IN LOVE WITH U ALL OVER AGAIN

U SAID 'YES'...I M TRULY IMMORTAL NOW!

OUR PLANS OF OUR TOMORROWS TOGETHER

THE END OF THAT DAY...THE BEGINNING OF MY LIFE

THESE ARE MY 'NEW MEMORIES'...MY LITTLE HAPPINESS!

Remember, our Memories are our only true possessions. Everything else can be take away from us, except for our Memories!

THE LITTLE HAPPINESS Part 1

Posted in ASK MASTER COACH DEV on June 7, 2010 by devology

THE ‘LITTLE HAPPINESS’

(LE PETIT BONHEUR)


Dear Coach,

As a Salesperson I get a lot of rejections and objections, making me feel like a failure. It sucks all the zap out of life. I at times feel down and defeated, even bordering depression.

I try to reach down within me…but there is nothing there to pull out. What should I be trying to reach within my soul that I could pull out in such trying times that can give me a second wind?

Luv

Liana, Manila

Dear Liana,

I suggest you just reach down and pull out your ‘LITTLE HAPPINESS’. Everyone has it, we just need to connect with our ‘LITTLE HAPPINESS’.

THE ‘LITTLE HAPPINESS’

(LE PETIT BONHEUR)

‘Within all of us lie untapped wellsprings of strength (resources) that can sustain us in time of trouble. These resources are to last a lifetime.’

The Fact

It’s always like that and for everyone too; we are always between tears and laughter, that is.  Meeting crisis, big and small, in turmoil with hurt feelings, defeated ambitions, unrequited love, grief and loneliness are a part of life’s package for any individual striving for a better quality of life.

The Problem

The problem isn’t that troubles come, but that we don’t know how to meet them. The negative and most popular approach is to run around feverishly from party to party; pub to pub, swallow tranquilizers and barbiturates, lash out at people we care about or cutting people out of our life who truly care, substance abuse, resolutely containing grieves and coming down with psychosomatic illness.

Worse still, we begin to play the ‘Blame Game’. We find refuge in bitterness, accusing other people, life and even God for tripping us up.

That is why it is so important that we should discover what kind of inner resources, what imperishable treasures of mind and heart we have in the bank of Spirit.

95% of people, answering to the question: ‘What do you want to live for?’, are simply waiting for something to happen, i.e. a better job, a new house, a trip, a new relationship, a pay raise, an inheritance etc.

Winners put in time to make things happen, while these ‘poor-me’ people wait for an uncertain tomorrow.

They should realize that waiting for tomorrow wont help – for tomorrow’s sun may never rise.

If you happen to be one of them, the only way for you to take hold of your tomorrows, is to change your Thoughts; that is to do something about it and change your world. For nothing is impossible where there is a will.

The Little Happiness

Most people fail to meet the stresses and strains of life because they never learned to cherish ‘The Little Happiness’ (le petit bonheur) when it comes along. It is too bad; for most lives hold little that is dramatic and overwhelming.

The trick of living- is living in the present. Most of us spend 59 minutes of an hour living in the past, or in the future (that we either long for or dread). The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, because that’s exactly what it is.

The Little Joys

Examples of these joys: the slow staining of the sea by a pale sunrise when you awake one morning before everyone else and go sit alone on the alter of the beach, a row of baby ducks swimming valiantly behind a pair of mallards- stately as galleons, a branch of rubber wood burning in the fireplace, the wind making silken susurrations in the pines…

The web of life is woven from threads like these. No tread alone is wide enough to encompass a sorrow, but together, they make a shelter that tempers the chill and slows the rain and softens sadness to the point where it can be endured. When recognized and cherished as they come, these small joys build a reservoir of memory against sterile hours.

Though the ‘little happiness’ is transient, a sweet accident; we can cultivate a more enduring resource. It is in our minds that all events happen, all joys live, all sorrows find the philosophy that tempers them. So here is where lies a citadel that cannot be taken, a region of peace where storm cannot enter unless we welcome it.

Sorrows and loneliness cannot be rationalized away, but you can build yourself a kingdom of the mind where life can never fail to be worth living. One way is to grasp the thoughts of others who have enjoyed the beauty of this world before you and have set what they discovered on canvas or in the notes of music or in good books – this is a great consolation.

But the most important factor in the working of this ‘little happiness’ is that you must build up this resource of the mind in times of peace, so that it will be there when you need it.

i.e. …all day sitting on the shore, writing a little, but mostly thinking, finding yourself, (you will one day look back to such a day and say; “I couldn’t have got through so much sorrow if I had not had that day.”)…

…. To be cond…