Happiness

What Makes Me Happy

Garth Beyer

Those who say that you can’t find happiness, that it’s something that just happens to you in the moment, obviously were only listening to those before them, and who knows who those people were told by. Happiness can, indeed, be found absolutely anywhere.

When I look at my phone, I feel happy because I think about the conversation I had last night with a friend whom I trust, or the sweet text from my significant other that I read this morning when I woke up, or the hour long conversations I have with my mom. (Often one-sided conversations. She likes to talk.)

aLet’s look at this more broadly. Happiness is associated with two forms of events: new and old.

When I find myself wandering through an oddly lit alleyway in town, I feel adventurous, curious, and slightly anxious to discover what lies around – all feelings adding up to that of happiness. Then, at a later date, I find myself walking through that same alleyway remembering the picture I took of a toy sand shovel that I saw in the parking garage. Unexplainable, but oddly, made me happy to remember it.

See, we live in a world made up of little things, new and old. These little things come from experience and experience has as much to do with happiness as the flame does in a hot air balloon. So, what makes me (us!) happy is experience. There’s a problem with this though. You can have a bad customer experience, or a regrettable experience, or a poor vacation experience. Right? I would argue that you can’t.

Experience involves two variables: noticing and having interest.

Dictionary.com describes experience as “the process or fact of personally observing, the totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered.” I believe that if you were to notice what is happening around you, if you truthfully and personally observe what is occurring, then without a single doubt in my mind, do I think you would feel happy.

The events that people often refer to as negative experiences are actually a subjective reaction to what is going on around them. This reaction is the result of shortened feedback and either always a misunderstanding or the mere inability to understand the situation enough to find the yin in the yang.

Following your attention to the moment, experience also comes from having an interest in something. In one sense, you can view this as the opposite of a negative reaction. Having interest involves reacting to an object or an event in a positive way.

“Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.” – Henry Miller

Just as you can always find good in the bad, you can always find an interest where you find the good. It’s our inherent responsibility to follow our hearts, to seek out our passion and then, once found, let it ignite our hot air balloons. The higher we go, the happier we are. All from seeing the good in things and having an interest.

I can’t help but end with the note that Abraham Lincoln is purported to have once said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” In short, it isn’t about what makes us happy, it’s what doesn’t make us happy. (In case you were wondering, the following does not make me happy: pickled eggs, when I fail to see the bigger picture, and the memory of playing hide-and-seek with my Dad in Gander Mountain, except he didn’t know he was playing.) Happiness is a choice that after you make often enough, it becomes a habit, a habit definitely worth having.

 

Stay Positive & Do More Of What Makes You Happy

Garth E. Beyer

The Big Things

Garth Beyer

Really aren’t the big things. And, actually, the little things don’t add up to the big things.

What makes us feel that something is big is a quick succession of noticed and understood little things.

Telling someone you love them isn’t a big thing. Simply, in that moment, you are processing the 10,000 little things that make you feel the way you do.

Finally sharing your creations, your art, is not a big thing. It’s just a realization that you feel connected with people who want your work, that you feel satisfied with what you’ve made, that you appreciate all that you have been given and are ready to give back, that you care about those whom this product will help, that… this list of little things is endless.

It’s not about the moments that take your breath away, but all the thoughts and feelings you are acquainting that moment with as your breath escapes you.

Happiness comes from noticing the little things. The richest happiness comes from noticing the most little things in the shortest period of time.

 

Stay Positive & Big Idea, Huh?

Garth E. Beyer

A Simple Answer To Starting A Business At Age 25 Or Not

Garth Beyer

Ironically, the two articles of my young entrepreneurial beat were published on the same day and are equally counter-argumentative. The first article, “Don’t Start A Company Before You’re 25” by Robbie Abed was posted on Technori, where people go to celebrate entrepreneurship. The second article, “Start A Company When You’re 25 – Not When You’re 52,” was submitted on Forbes by Liz Kammel. Just from viewing the titles you can bet they will be butting heads like two entrepreneurial rams during mating season. Mating, of course, with their destiny of either starting a company before the age of 25, or not.

Robbie Abed, the author advocating you not to start a company before you’re 25, understands that every reader of his article is aware of how controversial it is. In fact, within the first line of the article he says, “Yup, this article is controversial.” His writing, from the beginning, taunts you personally. His language and word choice is nearly mirrored to what his reader would be thinking after glancing over the title. However, after his humorous introduction, he begins to attack the point of his article, giving support to those in favor of starting a business before the age of 25. Then, suddenly, his entire voice shifts over to something which should be held with the utmost respect, a voice that radiates wisdom and complete confidence. He boldly notes that “Success does not equal happiness” but “happiness is the new success.”

Instead of defining happiness, which you can rightly agree does not have a definition, Abed talks about his friends. Friends who are not involved in technology or startups at all. Friends that hang out every weekend and have fun. He considers them to be “happy” people. In contrast, he uses himself as an example; that he works too many hours, tries, but can’t take weekends off and is addicted to his kind of success. Quite plainly, he says that being happy and having fun while young is far more important than starting a business and losing the youthful and exciting era of life to the task of building a business. After adding contextual support for the statement, “it’s never too late, but it can be too early,” he offers his closing statement that “when you start your company at 26, you won’t be behind. I promise.”

All that Abed has said is clearly tried and true, however, one specific portion of his take on starting a business at an early age is used as leverage in the other article, “Start A Company When You’re 25 – Not When You’re 52,” by Liz Kammel. Kammel explains how the youthfulness which Abed described is – to Abed’s disappointment – the largest reason to start a business when you’re 25. “At age 25, the sky is the limit,” Kammel says. As you can readily agree with, when you’re young, you can stay up late every night, work as many weekends as you want, and as Kammel most importantly notes, “you have no fear of challenging ‘market standards.’”

As a 20 year old, I can offer even greater support than Kammel offers. When you’re young, you have an extremely low number of responsibilities: one pet, if any, a couple of bills, no kids. When you’re young, you can settle for less: a small place, maybe even just living at home, a part-time job, and of course, ramen noodles.

This free, flexible, full play lifestyle that Abed states is important to happiness is as important in starting a successful business.

The second argument Kammel makes is that a company should be started early and with the support of an older mentor. What she hints at is the inclination for older mentors to help the youth. Naturally, you wouldn’t think a 52-year-old would be working with another 52-year-old on starting a business. The mentor would, as expected, be puzzled as to why another 52-year-old man is asking for advice rather than giving his own to others. It’s a simplistic structure of society – the old help the young.

Kammel makes a strong point that as a young entrepreneur, there are plenty of experienced people you can hand the business off to. While they are taking care of “business,” you’re off starting another one!

Comparing and contrasting the two articles, it seems the better choice – to start a business early or not – comes down to what you have more fun doing on the weekends? Working on a business startup or hanging out at a coffee shop?

Stay Positive & Live On

Garth E. Beyer

Make ________ Not War

Garth Beyer
Our Last Night. (I’m in between the two band members on the left)

Just the other week I took a nice four-hour drive down to Joliet, IL to see the band Our Last Night. Once my friends and I got there, we had to wait another five hours while other bands played. Bands we either didn’t know or they dragged on stage last-minute because the originally scheduled bands didn’t show up. After plenty of headshaking, not headbanging, Our Last Night was up to play.

As the saying goes in the hood, the music was “an orgasm in my ears”. However, this post isn’t about to promote Our Last Night, it’s what I discovered from constantly checking their Facebook page, waiting for them to upload this photo that I shared above. While I waited I saw other photos of the lead singer wearing the same shirt that he wore to the concert I saw. Even in the pictures that were taken at locations they played at after Joliet, he was still wearing the same shirt.

Finally, curiosity kicked in and I once again went on their Facebook page only to see a professional photo-shoot of Trevor (lead singer) and his brother sporting Johnny Cupcake t-shirts. Trevor was, of course, wearing the same shirt that you see in the photo above. The link was provided, I was sucked in.

Meet Johnny!

The creator of Johnny Cupcakes was, you guessed it, Johnny! Look above! There he is showing off his “Make Cupcakes Not War” t-shirt. Johnny is a multi-millionaire and he has his story. He doesn’t have a specific motto, he doesn’t have a thousand testimonials (although it would be all too easy to get them), and he doesn’t have a college degree. Most rags-to-riches stories you hear have some special opportunity in them: a person runs into an investor, an idea gets picked up by the newspaper, an anonymous person donates a hundred thousands dollars to a persons blog post of an idea, they use Kickstarter, or they know someone who knows someone. Very rarely are the stories… simple.

Johnny has a very simple story, a story that represents so many noteworthy themes and lessons.

  • Never giving up
  • Waking up early or pulling all nighters
  • Avoiding drugs and alcohol
  • Start selling whatever you can, buy in bulk and sell
  • Even having a smashed up car won’t stop you from making sales out of the trunk of it
  • Everyone loves surprises
  • Take risks
    • “These trade shows cost an arm and a leg…but you gotta spend an arm and a leg to make more arms and legs.”
  • Sometimes you have to leave what you like to do what you love
  • Add value to you and your product, no matter how crazy people think you are for the choices you have to make
  • Confusion sells
  • Upset customers sell even more.
    • In response to the question “why don’t you sell cupcakes too?”, Johnny says, “Well, if I did that then people wouldn’t be upset. And, if you think about it, those upset people advertise for me!”
  • Turn your customers into friends and truly connect with them. You can become a millionaire due to the help of 10,000 people. You don’t need 100,000.
Mac Miller representin’

Just an FYI: You’re going to see Johnny Cupcakes everywhere now. Congratulations, you’re part of the tribe!

“Do More Of What Makes You Happy” – Johnny Cupcakes

You can visit Johnny Cupcakes website by clicking on the picture above.

 

Stay Positive &Vote Cupcakes For President

Garth E. Beyer

28 Lessons To Living The Successful Life Through Personal-Achievement Principles

Garth Beyer

Yes it’s a mouthful but it is the best description that I can give to the following 28 lessons. Enjoy.

 

1. Better results does not make a better plan. A better plan makes better results.

2. Happiness is meant to be designed. You create it, you sculpt it, you make it.

3. Discipline: without it there is no bridge from your goal to your accomplishments.

4. Success is sending yourself an invitation to grow, develop, move up, build more, create more, invest more, innovate more and raise above mediocrity.

5. Life works like a magnet, the more you put forth to your goals, the closer you get to the results you want, the harder you work at your dreams, the more force in which they pull you toward them, it gets easier. It always gets easier.

6. Learning is the beginning. Everything else will fall into place itself.

7. Things only change when you do.

8. There really are no destinations, only points in which you change direction again.

9. Be influenced by the successful. Peer pressure is necessary as long as it pushes us further toward our real potential.

10. Be influential. Peer pressure is necessary as long as it pushes someone further toward their real potential.

11. Remove “easy”, “simple”, and “effortless from your vocabulary. Also never make something a piece of cake, have it all or take nothing.

12. Try. Only when you don’t try, do you fail.

13. Answer this question, very clearly. What is the purpose of life?

14. Lead a tribe of as much inspired if not more willing people than yourself. Create an unbeatable alliance with others.

15. Create a new faith, a new religion, a new belief and call it “The YourName Faith/Religion”. This is the only way to destroy any limitations.

16. A good person runs a mile. A great person runs an extra mile. Only a legend keeps running long after the first, second, third, ninth mile. Always do more, always.

17. Make every part of your character visible.

18. Be Human.

19. Self-initiative, Self-resilience, Self-motivation, Self-assurance, Self-inspiration, Self-control, Self-discipline, Self-growth, everything begins with yourself. Want to be successful? Work on you harder than you work on your job.

20. Pursue an interest that makes you feel alive. Nothing radiates more positively to others than a personal keen interest in something, something you pour your passion into, something that if upon waking up at 2 am and asked what your muse is, you answer with it.

22. Combine accurate and imaginative thinking to create your art.

23. You won’t last without good health.

24. Not to mention exercise is the absolute greatest habit you can create to stimulate the positive senses.

25. Living in the moment is derived from the collection of experience you have had controlling, focusing and centering your attention on the positive, on the material that will help you produce results you care about and on the search for what you can learn from every moment.

26. Everything remarkable was the result of overcoming adversity. If you come face-to-face with adversity or even sometimes get defeated, you are on the right path. Nothing worthy comes easy.

27. Visualization doesn’t need to be done all at once. Visualization is something that is meant to be anointed to all the various positive thoughts that float through your mind every day.

28. Care

 

Stay Positive & Live The Successful Life

Garth E. Beyer

What It Means to Be A Minimalist

Garth Beyer

Being a minimalist isn’t entirely about throwing out all you have and settling for less. Ask any minimalist, there is no settling and very few things get thrown out (apart from when you transition from being a stereotypical consumer *see end).

Being a minimalist is about being satisfied with what you have. It’s about living in Zen, not trying to live in it.  After all, you know what they say about Zen. The only Zen you find on the top of the mountain, is the Zen you bring up there.

Being a minimalist does not mean you can’t have wants, it just means that your wants are the same as your needs. The reason so few can become minimalistic is that it takes a powerful mind and an even more powerful understanding of what you need to live, to be content, to be happy or whatever word you want to use for a quality of life.

Being a minimalist isn’t completely about having money, saving money or spending money. A minimalist can save all the money they make but it doesn’t bring them happiness or excitement in having a lot of money. What it does bring is freedom and peace. Minimalist’s think neither of having money saved or spending the saved money.

Being a minimalist is a mental state. A state in which is content  and happy with the avoidance of negativity, arguments and emotional attachments.

Being a minimalist does not mean that they can carry all of their possessions in a backpack or suitcase. It means that whatever the size of case it takes to contain their items, it bears no weight.

Lastly, being  minimalist is about minimizing to a degree you’re comfortable with, a phase in which you are free.

 

Stay Positive & Try Freedom, Not Torture

Garth E. Beyer