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I struggled with including this line in the Live Extraordinary Manifesto: “Make every day an adventure.”

I’ll explain why by telling you about a friend of mine, a starry-eyed, adventurous, world-traveling romantic. He’s trekked to so many different places across the globe that foreign embassies have had to keep stapling more pages into his passport.

He’s been up close with gorillas in Africa. He’s walked through the olive groves of Jerusalem. He’s sailed the Mediterranean. He’s seen flamenco dancing in Spain and danced the tango in Argentina. He once slipped past armed guards to check out Bosnia.

The first time I met him, when we were both twenty years old, he shared with me his “bucket list” — and to describe it as ambitious would be a gross understatement.

If anyone knows how to live with adventure, it’s him.

Trouble is, his adventurous spirit hides a troubling truth: His adventures aren’t a quest for life, but an escape from life.

He’s never married because no woman could ever live up to his romanticized — and frankly naïve and selfish — vision of womanhood. And that’s just a front for his fear of the responsibility of marriage and family.

He stays on the road because he’s plagued by a constant discontentment — “regular” life holds no charm for him. His world travels are less manifestations of intrepid passion and more symptoms of an unwillingness to grow up and face real life.

Call me a stick-in-the-mud adult pirate, but Peter Pan isn’t exactly my model of success. Keep in mind that while he and the Lost Boys were out playing with swords and seeking for treasure, Wendy was back home washing the dishes and cooking their dinner.

In all our talk of living our dreams, let’s not forget that most of life is boring routines.

I struggled with that line in the manifesto because the vast majority of my own days are commonplace and tedious — doing the same stuff over and over again. That’s not because I’m boring or unadventurous, it’s just the nature of adult life.

Every single day, the dishes have to be washed. Kids have to be dressed and fed. There are emails to respond to, bills to pay. (Luckily, since I work from home, I only have to shave once a week.) A lot of my work isn’t stuff I’m particularly thrilled about.

Making every day an adventure is not an escape from life’s routines and responsibilities. Rather, it’s a call to discover and create adventures in our daily routines.

The key to living a life of adventure is not to ditch the burdens of adulthood, but to simply recognize the miraculous in everything.

Says John Ruskin,

“I am not surprised at what men suffer, but I am surprised at what men miss.”

How many boring days do we suffer working on computers without acknowledging the mind-blowing miracle of computers?

Eden Phillpotts added,

“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

Seeing the magic doesn’t require us to travel or go bungee jumping. It simply requires a heightened sense of gratitude and a perpetual curiosity — consciously choosing to live in a constant state of wonder.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a big believer in bucket lists, passion, and adventure. In fact, all of us should probably seek more adventure.

The challenge is when we romanticize adventure to the point of being disillusioned with regular life. Regular life is adventurous, but it requires the right mindset to be so.

“The world is so full of a number of things; I am sure we should all be as happy as kings,” noted Robert Louis Stevenson.

And why are we not happy? Wordsworth answers that,

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…”

We got so bogged down by haste, busyness, clutter, and possession-seeking that we fail to see the enchantment and beauty right in front of our noses. Consumed by the worldly, we fail to appreciate the world.

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote,

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush
afire with God;

But only he who sees,
takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it,
and pluck blackberries.

Peter Pan had it all wrong. For those with eyes to see, growing up is the greatest adventure of all.

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The ball is passed to me.

I give a head fake, my man is up and I’m around him, I drive and another defender steps in front of me just as I pass the ball to the man he left, but it’s too fast — it’s always too fast, and a guaranteed two points bounces impotently on the sidelines.

He leaps up, venomous anger burning bright red in his face.

“STEPHEN!” he screams, spraying spittle. “What the hell kind of pass was that?!”

He stomps onto the court, his cowboy boots smacking the hardwood like I’m sure he would like to smack me.

“Get over here!” He points at the bench. “Siddown!” He thumbs a teammate to replace me.

I slump onto the all-too-familiar bench.

“So what do you need to forgive him for?” Jan Graf interrupts my reverie.

Jan, the creator of a unique stress management process to whom I will be forever grateful, is teaching me the four steps of forgiveness.

“Remember,” Jan says, “true health, happiness, and wellbeing come when we are at total peace with ourselves in all aspects of our life, both past and present.

“One of the greatest sources of stress is our unwillingness or inability to forgive.

“If we forgive, we don’t need to bottle the hurts up inside to fester, and we don’t need to retaliate and get even.

“Forgiveness is not approving or judging. It’s allowing the offender the free agency to be less than perfect and letting the Lord be his judge. Forgiveness releases us from the hurt, anger, or pain that is associated with the offense we feel.

“You can release this burden of stress by using these four steps:

Step 1: State Your Forgiveness Out Loud

“Don’t deceive yourself and think you can just think the words in your mind. Retire to a private place, if necessary, but do not underestimate the importance of this step. There is something powerful about hearing the words spoken out loud; it makes the forgiveness really come from the heart.

Step 2: Be Specific

“You must be specific about who you’re forgiving and what you’re forgiving them for. The more specific your forgiveness statement, the greater release you’ll experience, the more peaceful you’ll feel.

Step 3: Use the Present Tense

“You must state your forgiveness in the present tense, as in ‘I forgive…’ ‘I will forgive,’ ‘I need to forgive,’ ‘I should forgive,’ are not forgiveness, but merely evidence of our inability to let go.

Step 4: The 490 Principle

“When Peter asked Christ, ‘How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?’, Christ responded, ‘I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven.’

“490 times! Realize, this is not four hundred and ninety offenses, but rather one offense thought about 490 times.

“I believe Christ was telling Peter and us that if we could forgive and forget we could do it in one time, but he knows we have fantastic memories and we wouldn’t forget.

“We tend to think of offenses over and over again, even though we may have forgiven once, and each time we think of it, it festers deeper and deeper. Then we often become ill.

“Every time you think of someone who has hurt or offended you in the past and you feel negative feelings, state your forgiveness again. Some deep hurts may require hundreds of forgiveness statements before you finally purge all the anger and pain.”

“So, what do you need to forgive him for?” Jan gently asks me again.

“I forgive my high school basketball coach, Ben Widman, for yelling at me and embarrassing me.”

I feel a weight lift from me, which I’ve carried for almost two decades. Blessed relief. I don’t want to stop.

“I forgive Ben Widman for not recognizing and developing my talent. I forgive Ben Widman for destroying my confidence by how he treated me.”

I walk out Jan’s door feeling like I’m walking on air. It feels so good I spend the next several weeks digging through my past, eagerly searching for people to forgive. One by one, offenses are purged from my soul.

And I finally understand Lewis Smedes’ words, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you.”

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SCENE 1: Her life is good. Her career is soaring. She’s got money in the bank.

Then one day she’s driving home from work when a semi-trailer pulls out in front of her.

The next thing she remembers, she’s lying in a hospital bed, unable to move anything except her head.

She has a choice to make: bitter victim, or joyful victor?

SCENE 2: His marriage is strong, his kids healthy and happy.

Then one night he finds himself alone in his office late at night. Everyone else in the house is asleep.

He turns on his computer and feels a temptation.

He has a choice to make: clean and confident, or dirty and guilty?

Life is full of pivotal choices upon which hinge our destiny. It is these crucial choices that define who we are and who we will become.

Or so we think.

But this perspective is deceiving and conceals a life-changing truth: Our choices do not define us. They reveal us.

As Robert McKee writes in his book, Story,

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature…People are not what they appear to be. A hidden nature waits concealed behind a façade of traits. No matter what they say, no matter how they comport themselves, the only way we ever come to know characters in depth is through their choices under pressure.”

Our most important choices are made long before we ever face them. What matters most isn’t our choices, but our preparation preceding them. Our small, daily, habitual choices are more important than those that precede the sporadic, momentous choices.

Show me a woman who has filled her mind with empowering books and who has cultivated a positive mindset through her whole life, and I’ll know what she chooses as she’s lying paralyzed in that hospital bed.

Show me a man who has prayed fervently, studied God’s word earnestly, and followed spiritual promptings day after day over years and I’ll tell you what he chooses when no one else will ever know.

“Any idiot can face a crisis,” said Anton Chekhov. “It’s the day to day living that wears you out.”

In other words, sustained discipline is harder and more important than choices under pressure. And our day-to-day choices determine how we react in crises.

Long before George Washington faced Valley Forge, he had studied Seneca’s dialogues and laboriously copied, memorized, and practiced 110 “rules of civility.” Long before he won the Revolutionary War and had the clear opportunity to become a monarch, he had studied and strived to model the life of the Roman statesman Cincinnatus.

Katherine Kersten writes,

“What would Washington have accomplished if happiness, rather than integrity and service, had been his life goal? Instead of suffering with his men through the snows of Valley Forge, he might have followed the example of Benedict Arnold…What can we learn from Washington and his contemporaries about character-building? They teach us, most importantly, that ‘the soul can be schooled.’ Exercising reason and will, we can mold ourselves into beings far nobler than nature made us.”

Because he had “schooled his soul” diligently and consistently over years, Washington chose bravely and rightly when he faced crises.

And so must we if we are to choose rightly under pressure.

I often teach writing students that “As you read, so shall you write.” Likewise, as you prepare, so shall you choose.

What we feed our mind and soul today is revealed as our choices and actions tomorrow. What’s more important than choosing right in the moment is choosing to be good long before the moment ever comes.

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The Resolved Manifesto is a stunning visual of Orrin Woodward’s 13 principles found in his book, Resolved: 13 Resolutions for Life.

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I can be such a cow sometimes. I can chew my cud with the biggest and dumbest of them.

Cows are “ruminants,” which are animals with a stomach that has multiple compartments.

Ruminants also regurgitate their food. This partially broken down food is known as “cud.”

It’s said that these animals have a “thoughtful” expression on their faces while they chew their cuds. This explains the origins of “ruminate,” which is derived from the Latin ruminare, meaning “to think.”

I’d say their cud-chewing expression is closer to doleful, knowing how I feel when I chew my cud.

My cud isn’t grass and hay. It’s all the embarrassing things I’ve said, the bone-headed mistakes I’ve made, the wounds I harbor.

I’m prone to regurgitate and chew on that crud until I have indigestion. I mean, I can remember dumb things I said clear back in the sixth grade.

I swear I have fifteen brain compartments devoted solely to digesting pain and embarrassment. But in a ruminant, multiple stomachs actually aid digestion. In my case, the crud grows and gets more toxic the more I chew on it.

I’ve discovered three truths for digesting pain, embarrassment, guilt, and regret, and actually deriving nutrition from them:

1. Forgive Yourself

“How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” Peter asked Christ.

“I say not unto thee, until seven times,” Christ responded, “but, until seventy times seven.”

On another occasion He taught, “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

Forgiveness applies to ourselves, too.

It’s hard to have healthy relationships with others when we haven’t been reconciled with ourselves and our own mistakes. The guilty man sees guilt in others. Our anger toward others usually masks anger toward ourselves.

If we’ve truly repented of our mistakes, we can stop beating ourselves up over them. “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,” Christ told us, “and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”

If He forgets our mistakes, don’t we have permission to forget them, too?

2. Forget Yourself

I’ve found that the best way to stop ruminating on my own sorry life is to forget myself and serve others.

When Christ counseled us to forget ourselves and lose our lives, He wasn’t calling us to a hard, sacrificial life. He was inviting us to an easier, more peaceful, more joyful life.

I think one reason we struggle with forgiving ourselves is because we worry that no matter how good we feel about ourselves, we’ve still hurt other people. And that’s exactly the point: We can make up for the things we’ve done to hurt others by forgetting ourselves and serving them.

Self-forgetful service is the only path to peace and redemption.

3. Change Yourself

I can easily sink into depression when I rehash past experiences and rerun them in my mind over and over again.

Dr. David Burns, renowned expert on depression and author of Feeling Good, has concluded after decades of research that the primary source of depression is prolonged immersion in distorted thinking. (In other words, chewing cud.)

And in the past, scientists have taught that our brains are hardwired and unchangeable. If you’re prone to depression, went the thinking, you’re forever doomed with that tendency.

But cutting-edge research has uncovered an empowering process called “neuroplasticity.” Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz explains,

“The hardware of the brain is far from fixed at birth. Instead, it is dynamic and malleable…

“Conscious thoughts and volitions can, and do, play a powerful causal role in the world, including influencing the activity in the brain. Willed mental activity can clearly and systematically alter brain function. The exertion of willful effort generates physical force that has the power to change how the brain works and even its physical structure. The result is directed neuroplasticity.”

In short, sustained positive and productive thinking can actually rewire our brains to overcome tendencies like depression.

Sharon Begley details the startling and overwhelmingly positive results of cognitive therapy used on depressed and OCD patients in her enlightening book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.

We’re not doomed by our past or our birth. Rehashing our mistakes, wallowing in our embarrassments, holding onto our pain solves nothing.

We can forgive ourselves and others. We can forget ourselves and serve others. We can rewire our brains to think more positively and productively.

And as we do so, the crud we’ve chewed in the past can stop poisoning us and instead, can heal and strengthen us.

Maybe instead of telling each other, “Don’t have a cow,” we should instead say, “Don’t be a cow.”

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I know a guy who struggled for years, searching for his talents and purpose.

I wonder if you can relate to his search, and identify and learn from the things he did to find his place in life.

Growing up, so many people gave him confusing advice, so many experiences befuddled him.

He hated high school. Everything about it felt so shallow, petty, and ridiculous to him. A charade of cliques and labels. A mind-numbing conveyor belt. Jumping through hoops, playing a game to get to real life.

So when an opportunity arose to go to college his junior and senior years of high school, he pounced on it. When he told his high school English teacher what he was going to do, she frowned, looked down at him over her nose, and said, “Aren’t you worried that you’re going to miss the best years of your life?”

No, Mrs. Heydet, he smirked to himself, that’s the least of my concerns.

While he liked college much more than high school, he still struggled. His grades were atrocious. He was bored and unmotivated. Nothing had context for him — without knowing who he was and what he wanted to do with his life, his learning was abstract.

Grasping for answers, he took a career prep course. He knew something was amiss when he took a lengthy, detailed test that would supposedly give him viable career options based on his strengths and interests, and the top answer spit out by the machine was “bus driver.” Not that he had anything against bus drivers, but his dreams weren’t exactly filled with visions of driving a bus full of screaming kids.

He barely squeezed through the hoops of academia, eking out a 2.37 GPA.

After graduating, he had no clue what to do with his life. So he thought he’d travel for a while. He got a job delivering Wonder bread and Hostess cakes to grocery and convenience stores, with the plan of saving up money to travel.

Roaming across Europe was fantastic, but when he got back he was still stuck. He got another delivery job, this time for a water company.

A couple years later, his first big clue came, and a bizarre clue it was. As he was deep in contemplation and prayer one day at work, Father told him to start a window cleaning company.

He was blind-sided and thoroughly bewildered, not to mention scared to death of entrepreneurship. But he followed that prompting enthusiastically. He started knocking doors after finishing his job each day, offering people free estimates for window cleaning.

His business exploded. He had received his prompting in August, and by November he had quit his job and was working his business full time. Business went so well that within a year he had six employees.

He began attending seminars put on by a financial services company with revolutionary ideas. He loved what he was learning. When the company told him they wanted to start a content-based membership subscription, he wanted to help.

He offered to write their daily email and monthly newsletter for free. Writing had always come easy for him, though he’d never once considered it as a career option.

He wrote for the company for free for six months. He had no end game, no reason to do it other than he simply enjoyed doing it.

Then, one of the founders approached him and said he wanted him to ghostwrite a book and offered to pay him $15,000. He readily accepted and got to work. When that book became a bestseller, he sold his window cleaning company and launched a freelance writing career.

He fell in love with the power of the written word and wondered why it took him so long to discover that. Despite that love, it wasn’t always easy. Some months paid well, other months he didn’t make a dime.

But he gutted it out through five tough years, riding the ups, enduring the downs.

And all the while, he wrote about his passion for freedom on his personal blog. No pay. Tiny audience. Just because he had important things bursting from his soul that needed to be said.

Then one day he read the Holstee Manifesto. Lightbulb moment: Why not write dozens of life manifestos and sell them as posters? And so he did it. Tiny budget. So many unknowns. Just following his bliss. And his posters sold.

Then he felt a prompting to publish a book of his blog posts he’d been writing for free. So he did. Tiny budget. Tiny audience. But a few people read his book and liked it. And it spread. One book at a time until it started opening opportunities.

And so it is, that after years of

1. Following a few critical promptings from Father
2. Following my bliss from one project to the next — even when it meant working for free for years
3. Staying committed to a purpose — especially when it was hard and I couldn’t see anything in the darkness except for the next tiny step in front of me…

I’ve found my place and live the life of my dreams. Every day, I wake up and pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. What an indescribable blessing it is to do what I love.

But this story is not about me. It’s about you and your quest to find your place and do what you were born to do, what you love to do. I hope my story helps you in that journey.

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“There is no way Mom! Mowing lawns is the only way I can earn money. It will be next spring before I can earn enough money!”

He wailed. He moaned. He cried. He was nine.

What could I say? I could see so many options. He needed to think bigger, longer term. He was so much closer than he realized. Mowing lawns is not the only way to earn money.

I swallowed the perfect lecture bubbling up in my throat.

“I am sorry bud,” I said with a hug. “Can I tell you a story?”

He nodded.

From a hilltop, a man looked out across the valley. Panting, his heart rejoiced. In the distance he could see his goal. At last!  It was in reach.

He gazed at the path. He gasped.

No! A canyon.

So close and now, failure. For a while, he thought, he planned, he wondered, he despaired. There was no way to cross, no bridge in sight.

He cried. He stormed. He raged. He blamed. He looked longingly at his goal and angrily at the canyon barring his path. A seesaw of emotions tormented him, rocking between anger and depression with nauseating speed.

This is how it always is for me. Things never work out. What was I thinking going on this journey in the first place? Who do I think I am? Why should I try? I knew I’d never make it.

He slumped into the shade of a nearby tree.

I’ll go somewhere else tomorrow. There must be a better place to go anyway.

He drifted off into a restless sleep.

Sweating and exhausted another man came up the hillside. He caught site of the goal. He rejoiced. Momentarily, concern washed over him when he saw the canyon.

Well, it’s like granddad always said, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

He laughed, knowing there was no bridge to cross. But he journeyed on.

Down he marched into the valley. Onward through marsh and mud.  Snakes hissed, scorpions scuttled across his path. He reached the cliff’s edge weary from the day’s labors.

He looked across the terrible gap. Then he looked down.

What was this?

Unseen from the hilltop, or even a few feet from the cliff’s edge was a narrow path. And just above the roaring river, deep in the canyon, a bridge!

Who would have guessed there would be a bridge down there? I’m sure glad I kept walking.

With a spring in his step, down the path he went, across the bridge, up the other side.

The sun was setting when the first man woke. He stretched and took one last look at the goal he was giving up. Shocked he saw a man on the other side of the canyon, walking resolutely up to the city gates.

How? How did he get there?

He must have come from another direction. There is no earthly way to cross that canyon. Ah, some people have all the luck. They just start from the right places. They know the tricks. 

Someday. Someday, I’ll get a lucky break too.

I stopped my story. Looking into the eyes of my boy I asked. “What did the first man miss?”

“Mom, it wasn’t it luck! That other guy worked hard! And the other just slept! And…”

I let him talk and talk. As I listened, he discovered most of the truths that I had hoped to teach him.  And those truths will be his, forever.

Smiling, he ran out to mow the lawn.

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Marie Arnold is an entrepreneur’s wife and a mother. She and her husband, Michael, homeschool their five curious, energetic, amazing children, ages 2 to 11.

She calls herself, “An ordinary person, seeking for extraordinary truths to savor and share.” Her hobbies include reading, writing, reading, family history, reading, and leading a Den of Cub Scouts.

On her blog she discusses books she’s been reading, explores ideas she’s been pondering, and shares her experiences homeschooling.

You can connect with Marie on Facebook and by subscribing to her blog.
 

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**********************

“Now, Michael, me boy,” the old Irishman said, “just remember the three bones and you’ll get along all right.”

“What bones, Grandfather? What do you mean?”

“I mean your wishbone, your jawbone, and your backbone. It’s the wishbone that keeps you going after things. It’s the jawbone that helps you ask the questions that are necessary to finding them. And it’s the backbone that keeps you at it until you get them!”

It’s a good perspective, I agree. But the old man forgot a pair of bones: When we’ve done all we can do, when we’ve gone as far as we can go and feel like we can go no farther, we need our knee bones for praying. Stooping to our knee bones carries us higher and farther than we could ever go alone.

Choice is among the most powerful forces on earth. But it pales in comparison to Father’s power to uplift us when we’re discouraged, strengthen us when we’re weak, guide us when we’re blind.

Despite our awesome power to choose, we are weak, ignorant, and limited beyond comprehension.

The most important choice we can ever make is to humble ourselves before Father and earnestly seek His guidance, strength, and peace. Our power to choose is elevated and enlightened by surrendering it upon His altar.

“I have been driven many times to my knees,” wrote Lincoln,” by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

Prayer, said Gandhi, is “daily admission of one’s weakness.” We cannot access our deepest strength until we admit our abject weakness before Father. The weakest man is he who believes he is strong alone.

We’re magnetized by William Ernest Henley’s fierce declarations in his seemingly inspirational poem, Invictus:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Yet Orson F. Whitney gave us a much fuller, more accurate version of truth in his response to Invictus:

Art thou in truth?
Then what of Him who bought thee with His blood?
Who plunged into devouring seas
And snatched thee from the flood,
Who bore for all our fallen race
What none but Him could bear-
That God who died that man might live
And endless glory share.
Of what avail thy vaunted strength
Apart from His vast might?
Pray that His light may pierce the gloom
That thou mayest see aright.
Men are as bubbles on the wave,
As leaves upon the tree,
Thou, captain of thy soul! Forsooth,
Who gave that place to thee?
Free will is thine — free agency,
To wield for right or wrong;
But thou must answer unto Him
To whom all souls belong.
Bend to the dust that ‘head unbowed, ‘
Small part of life’s great whole,
And see in Him and Him alone,
The captain of thy soul.

The only unconquerable man is he who recognizes his pitiful and wretched weakness and relies upon Father to compensate. The captain who sails truest and farthest is he who consults not only with navigational charts and stars, but also with the Captain of the Universe.

The fuel we get from our wishbone, the answers we get from our jawbone, and the work we perform with our backbone are nothing compared to what we get when we drop to our knee bones.

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Written by Chris Brady and designed by Life Manifestos, the Rascal Manifesto is a bold declaration for free-thinking mavericks who do not follow the crowd, servant leaders dedicated to making a difference.

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**********************

Imagine I had an “experience machine” that could stimulate your brain and give you any positive feeling you desired at the click of a button.

Feeling low and want to feel wonderful? Click. Whirr. Ahhhh, bliss.

Feeling discontented, dissatisfied, empty? Sit down, plug in, instant happiness. All your worries melt away, all is right with the world.

Feeling bored? Strap yourself in, because you’re about to be overwhelmed with excitement.

The experience machine could be yours today. Low payments. Ninety days same as cash. For a limited time only.

Any takers?

Psychologist Martin Seligman reports in his book, Authentic Happiness, that, strangely, “Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine.”

Huh? Why?

“It is not just positive feelings we want,” explains Seligman, “we want to be entitled to our positive feelings.”

Ah.

He continues, “We have invented myriad shortcuts to feeling good; drugs, chocolate, loveless sex, shopping, masturbation, and television are all examples.” (I’d add pornography to that list.)

And here’s the earth-shaking takeaway:

“The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually.

“Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die.”

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence,” says Aristotle. “A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy,” says Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I beg to differ with these intellectual giants.

Yes, happiness is within our control. Yet experiencing true happiness is much more than a simple matter of choosing to feel it, regardless of any other factor.

Happiness is not an end to pursue, but a byproduct to enjoy. It is the result of flinging ourselves into a magnificent obsession — something worthwhile and meaningful that creates value in the world, improves the lives of others, and serves a greater purpose than meeting our own selfish needs. The deepest joy comes after the hardest, most meaningful struggles.

Happiness is the consequence of compassionate service; we are happy to the degree that we make others happy. Taking the garbage out for your elderly neighbor will do more for your happiness than reading a dozen books about choosing happiness inside.

As Viktor Frankl revealed,

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

Happiness is the satisfaction we feel when we live with integrity — when our actions align with our core principles, deepest values, and highest ideals.

Yes, happiness is a choice — but not exactly the simple internal choice we’re often told it is. It’s a choice to do those things that generate happiness — to live and act with passion, courage, compassion, and virtue. We can’t just choose and feel happy; we have to do happy.

A man out of integrity with himself will never find true and lasting happiness, no matter how earnestly he strives to choose it. Genuine, enduring joy is simply not an option for the selfish little clod who seeks naught but personal satisfaction, or for the fearful soul who stifles his passion and hides his talents in the petty box called “security.”

If that were possible, then an “experience machine” — or drugs, for that matter — could give us everything we ever wanted.

Feeling happy is much more than a simple mental and emotional choice. It’s something we earn.
 

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