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One wise man knew everything about money and happiness, because he had both. In the era of the financial crisis, when he went bankrupt, he was asked: “What is it like to be poor?” To which he replied: “I am not poor, I am without money. Poverty is a state of mind, and I will never be poor.” We talk about how to think and act in order to maintain inner strength even in difficult times.
1. Think Rich
He was right: wealth and poverty are states of the soul. Some people feel rich without money, and the rich feel poor. If you are poor, that is, small, think – this is much more dangerous than being broke. You think about wealth, forgetting that money comes and goes, but you are valuable in your own right.
Think Rich: Boost your self-esteem, remind yourself how precious your personality is. That alone is true wealth.
We are often advised to do what we like, and the money will appear by itself. Sometimes it works. But what is more important: doing what you love, you experience a great feeling of fullness of life, which is more precious than any riches.
Near the bedside of the dying, we often hear words of regret: “I never followed my dream”, “I never did what I really wanted”, “I was a slave to money.” But no one has yet said, “I wish I could stay in the office longer” or “I’d be much happier with an extra tens of thousands of dollars.”
2. Let go of control
We believe that money gives power, we feel that control over people and situations gives us power. The more control the better. Naturally, we need to keep within the framework of daily activities, but problems arise when we begin to control more than necessary. That is, we expend energy to embrace the immensity.
It is true that those who have more money and power can control the environment. But it has nothing to do with real power. It is only a temporary influence on others.
When we seek to take control of people or situations, we deprive them and ourselves of natural victories and defeats, without which there is no life. We want everything to be our way. But “our way” is not always the best.
Why should others follow it? We become stronger in relationships and in life when we let go of control, realizing that it is just an illusion. And life does not turn into chaos when we weaken or remove control. Moreover, everything falls into place.
3. Make yourself happy
Personal power is both an innate gift and a reality. We waste it when we focus on other people’s opinions. To bring her back, remember that she is your life. You don’t have the power to make others happy, but you have the power to make yourself happy.
Think of the people you wanted to please ten years ago. Where are they now? Disappeared from your life or are you still trying to woo them? Leave it. Take the power back – for yourself. Our strength is to help us do what we want, to become what we can become. It is not given so that we do only what we “should”. The most valuable thing we can and must do is fill ourselves.
4. Believe in others
Personal power creates spaces in our lives—and in the lives of those around us—to fill with wholeness and grace. This strength means that we support others in their strength, for we are strong enough to give. In the end, what is in you, I find in myself. If I convince you to believe that you are not a victim, it helps to realize that I am not a victim either. It is a miracle that allows useful good ideas to spread. By instilling faith in others, we gain faith in ourselves.
Unfortunately, we, ordinary people, often go astray. We look back at our mistakes and losses with the words: “I am unhappy because I messed up so much firewood. I’m not good enough, so I’ll try to improve.”
But the search for mistakes and missed opportunities only binds to them. We inspire ourselves: “I used to be “insufficient”, but I will become “bigger” right now. We comfort ourselves that we will be happy if there is more money, more authority, or more respect.
5. Live today
Why does “tomorrow” seem to have more possibilities of happiness or power than “today”? The game of “more” keeps us in a sense of inferiority. Even if we get what we want, we will still feel worse than expected, because even this will not be enough. And we will still be miserable. If only we had a little more … We do not understand that in reality everything is much simpler.
Dying people cannot afford to play the “more” game because tomorrow may not come for them. They discover that the power is in today, and that is enough. If we believe in an almighty and good God, can we really believe what he says: “I must wait until tomorrow!” God won’t say, “I wish Bill had a good life, but, oh, he has a bad job, so I can’t help it.”
God does not see the limits in which we place ourselves and our lives. He releases us into a world where life can always get better – not tomorrow, but now. And a rainy day will immediately turn into a sunny one, bad relationships will become good, and “wrong” – “right.”
“Live now!” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
In 2015, the EKSMO publishing house published the book “Live Now!” two famous American authors. The name of the first is well known to our readers. This is the psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the creator of the concept of psychological assistance to the dying and the five stages of accepting death. Her co-author David Kessler is a writer and lecturer who specializes in palliative care and mourning. The idea of their joint work was to correct a great injustice: those who have discovered the meaning of life often can no longer use their wisdom.
Here is how they themselves write about it in the preface: “It is hard for the living to deal with death, but this is the essence of life. We have asked the dying to be our teachers because we cannot experiment with death or experience it prematurely. There are big changes in people at the very end of the road. We took up this book to learn the lessons of the end of life and give them to people who have a lot of time ahead of them.”
With the permission of the publisher, we publish material made on the basis of the chapter “Strength”.