10 Steps to Happiness

Ten Keys to Happiness By Deepak Chopra

Physical well being is inseparable from emotional well being. Happy people are healthy people. The wisdom traditions of the world tell us that happiness does not depend on what you have, but on who you are. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what really creates happiness in us.

The following ten keys, gleaned from the wisdom traditions, may give us some insight.

1. Listen to your body’s wisdom, which expresses itself through signals of comfort and discomfort. When choosing a certain behavior, ask your body, ‘How do you feel about this?’ If your body sends a signal of physical or emotional distress, watch out. If your body sends a signal of comfort and eagerness, proceed.
2. Live in the present, for it is the only moment you have. Keep your attention on what is here and now; look for the fullness in every moment. Accept what comes to you totally and completely so that you can appreciate it, learn from it, and then let it go. The present is as it should be. It reflects infinite laws of Nature that have brought you this exact thought, this exact physical response. This moment is as it is because the universe is as it is. Don’t struggle against the infinite scheme of things; instead, be at one with it.
3. Take time to be silent, to meditate, to quiet the internal dialogue. In moments of silence, realize that you are recontacting your source of pure awareness. Pay attention to your inner life so that you can be guided by intuition rather than externally imposed interpretations of what is or isn’t good for you.
4. Relinquish your need for external approval. You alone are the judge of your worth, and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks. There is great freedom in this realization.
5. When you find yourself reacting with anger or opposition to any person or circumstance, realize that you are only struggling with yourself. Putting up resistance is the response of defenses created by old hurts. When you relinquish this anger, you will be healing yourself and cooperating with the flow of the universe.
6. Know that the world ‘out there’ reflects your reality ‘in here.’ The people you react to most strongly, whether with love or hate, are projections of your inner world. What you most hate is what you most deny in yourself. What you most love is what you most wish for in yourself. Use the mirror of relationships to guide your evolution. The goal is total self-knowledge. When you achieve that, what you most want will automatically be there, and what you most dislike will disappear.
7. Shed the burden of judgment you will feel much lighter. Judgment imposes right and wrong on situations that just are. Everything can be understood and forgiven, but when you judge, you cut off understanding and shut down the process of learning to love. In judging others, you reflect your lack of self-acceptance. Remember that every person you forgive adds to your self love.
8. Don’t contaminate your body with toxins, either through food, drink, or toxic emotions. Your body is more than a life-support system. It is the vehicle that will carry you on the journey of your evolution. The health of every cell directly contributes to your state of well being, because every cell is a point of awareness within the field of awareness that is you.
9. Replace fear-motivated behavior with love-motivated behavior. Fear is the product of memory, which dwells in the past. Remembering what hurt us before, we direct our energies toward making certain that an old hurt will not repeat itself. But trying to impose the past on the present will never wipe out the threat of being hurt. That happens only when you find the security of your own being, which is love. Motivated by the truth inside you, you can face any threat because your inner strength is invulnerable to fear.
10. Understand that the physical world is just a mirror of a deeper intelligence. Intelligence is the invisible organizer of all matter and energy, and since a portion of this intelligence resides in you, you share in the organizing power of the cosmos. Because you are inseparably linked to everything, you cannot afford to foul the planet’s air and water. But at a deeper level, you cannot afford to live with a toxic mind, because every thought makes an impression on the whole field of intelligence. Living in balance and purity is the highest good for you and the Earth.

Deepak Chopra

See also;

• 10 Secrets of Happy Relationships
• 24 Ways to get the Rest You Need
• Cooking up Recovery
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Al-anon Works in India

Fighting the spirits with spirituality

Michelle was an angry woman.

Often, when her husband returned from work, she would slam doors, swear and shout. Once, when he was asleep, she even poured a bucketful of water on him and later regretted drenching the mattress she shared with him. There were even times she secretly wished for a call informing her that her husband had fallen into a gutter somewhere. That was her idea of justice. Michelle did not hate her husband. She hated him when he was drunk. As the wife of an alcoholic, she had slowly imbibed the drunkard’s lack of self-control herself.

Full story at Times of India, Spirituality in Al-anon

See also;

• Al-Anon May be able to help
• Adult Children of Alcoholics
• Address the drinking problem directly
• Styles of Enabling Behavior
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Quitting drinking, with help from friends

New Delhi: Alcoholics who want to quit drinking have only place where they can meet with like-minded people: Alcoholics Anonymous.

At an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting in Delhi, people will tell you that they have been “sober” for six months, or six years and even 16 years but it would take is just one drink to set them back on a path to disaster.

Alcoholics Anonymous gives the courage and willpower not to drink again, they say. “One alcoholic talking to another—that’s what works. That’s what happened in 1935 when our two co-founders met. When one alcoholic talks to another, he stays sober. The guy who’s ripe and ready will come and stay with AA,” says one member.

There are around 2 million AA members worldwide but the numbers in India are shockingly low. AA has been in the country for 26 years but it has just 5,000 to 8,000 thousand members in the country, most of them men.

There is a reason for that: alcoholism is largely under-detected in urban India and rarely even acknowledged as a disease.

AA doesn’t recruit members but provides support and survival strategies to people who walk in and want to quit drinking. “AA taught me to start loving myself and taking care of myself. Their programmes help me become aware of my own problems,” says a member.

Unfortunately, not everyone is ready for help. “I have seen lots of people die even after coming to AA, as they were not able to do what it takes to stop drinking. I know somebody who died two weeks ago,” says a recovering alcoholic.

Full story at IBN Live, India

See also;

• 12 Step Sponsor
• 12-Step Treatment More Effective than Alternative
• A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Find Your Stretch Zone

Learn new habits, change your brain.

At the core of recovery from addiction, alcoholism and codependency is the ability to learn new ways of thinking, new habits to replace the old. This story confirms, what many in recovery know that;

1. New ways and spiritual change can occur, and
2. Old habits are just waiting to be activated - if we allow them.

The Alcoholics Anonymous book says “we deal with alcohol-cunning, baffling, powerful!”, and many have added ‘very patient’ (p 58).

The New York Times story says;

HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

Full story at The New York Times

See also;

• ABC’s of Recovery
• Chalk Talk on Addiction Video
• Developing Spirituality
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Teenage Children of Alcoholism

Group helps teens cope with friends, relatives with alcoholism

Alcoholism is a worldwide issue causing problems not only for the drinker but for everyone else connected with that person as well.

There are more than 18 million alcoholics in the United States and Canada alone, many of them with children troubled by their parents’ drinking. Often, these young people have nowhere to turn for help.

This is where Alateen comes in. Alateen is a fellowship of young relatives and friends of alcoholics who come together to discuss their difficulties, encourage one another and learn how to cope with their problems. These young people are often introduced to Alateen by concerned friends, neighbours, school counselors and clergy - with a meeting held nearby.

Full story at Community Press

See also;

• Adult Children of Alcoholics
• Al-Anon May be able to help
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News