The Self Health Revolution - in more ways than one.

If ever I could recommend a book, it would be this one:



It's an easy read - about 175 pages but it's not full of fluff and useless information that bores you to tears. Although the basic foundation of information that it offered is what initially drew me to read it, there was one section that I felt was worth sharing.

Does your past equal your future?

Happiness of the heart that leads to Self Health is not found in possessions, accomplishments or any external circumstance. Health of the heart is something that happens from the inside out. Happiness is determined more by how we handle our circumstances rather than by the circumstances themselves. We all carry around some kind of circumstantial baggage from our past, broken homes, abusive relationships, failures, hurts, guilt, and fears. Many people believe that their past equals their future. Do you?

Charles Darwin basically taught us many years ago that we are the sum total of our past victories. The strongest will always survive and win because they always have (the past equals the future). That doesn't give much hope to those of us who have had less than a perfect past, does it? Then the great psychologist, Sigmund Freud, came along and told us that every future psychological event in our lives is determined by what happened in our past. Again, here we are being told that our past determines our future. Freud's powerful influence, even today, has many spending their lives attempting to fix some unresolved childhood trauma in order to find and fulfill their happiness as an adult.

The Real Freudian Slip

With all due respect to Freud (and Freudites), the truth is, as recent studies have shown, our childhood traumas have little determining influence on our adult happiness. This is not hard to believe. We all know people who had a horrible childhood but were determined to become happy, healthy, positive and productive people despite their rough upbringing. They became successful at being happy and positive without blaming their parents, abuse, stress, spouses, sex, drugs, alcohol, hurts, failures, injustice, or childhood. Perhaps you are one of those self-driven, happy people.

All too often in life, we can become bitter about our past and hopeless about our future, believing those negative events in our personal history have somehow imprisoned us and doomed us to failure, or at least to mediocrity. We allow our joy, contentment and happiness to be stolen by thoughts that overemphasize bad events in our lives without fully appreciating the good ones.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

Do a self check to be sure you are living this way!