Happiness is not something we find, it’s something we create…

This story is about a beautiful, expensively dressed lady who complained to her psychiatrist that she felt that her whole life was empty, it had no meaning.

So, the lady went to visit a counselor to seek out happiness. The counselor called over the old lady who cleaned the office floors. The counselor then said to the rich lady"I'm going to ask Mary here to tell you how she found happiness. All I want you to do is listen to her."

So the old lady put down her broom and sat on a chair and told her story: "Well, my husband died of malaria and three months later my only son was killed by a car. I had nobody... I had nothing left. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I never smiled at anyone, I even thought of taking my own life.

Then one evening a little kitten followed me home from work. Somehow I felt sorry for that kitten. It was cold outside, so I decided to let the kitten in. I got it some milk, and the kitten licked the plate clean.

Then it purred and rubbed against my leg and for the first time in months, I smiled. Then I stopped to think, if helping a little kitten could make me smile, maybe doing something for people could make me happy. So the next day I baked some biscuits and took them to a neighbor who was sick in bed.

Every day I tried to do something nice for someone.It made me so happy to see them happy. Today, I don't know of anybody who sleeps and eats better than I do. I've found happiness, by giving it to others."

When she heard that the rich lady cried. She had everything that money could buy, but she had lost the things which money cannot buy.

Why Some People Have All the Luck

by Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50."

This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it. Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties' intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:

1) Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
4) Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect.