How to Have a Happier Life
Use Barbara’s 5 Daily Happiness Habits Plus
The Platinum Rule
This essay attempts to answer what is probably the most frequently asked question for Barbara and I through much of our married life: “How did you work together and yet maintain and project such devotion, love, and happiness for so many years?” Hope Barbara’s ideas help you change your life. We met in high school and were married for 56 magical years. We worked the last 32 years of her life together. Jim (Jim for Barbara)
- Always find and say nice things about and to each other in private and publicly every day, everywhere. Insist on a continuously positive tone. Just start doing it and keep doing it.
- Avoid saying those two or three tired, corrosive, divisive things we might love to mention some days. Suck it up, swallow it, and let it go.
- Always be positive or blah rather than negative or inflammatory.
- Ditch the downers. Keep negative, irritating, needlessly, and intentionally abrasive individuals and organizations out of our lives. Over the years we did lose a number of friends. Their irritating and argumentative behaviors didn’t fit our lives. We could not change them, so we simply dumped them. Happiness broke out immediately.
- Happiness is intentional. Get in the habit of subjecting everything you do or plan to do to these happiness-building tests, is it simple, sensible, satisfying, positive, helpful, useful, and truthful every hour of every day? Skip anything that fails even one of these tests. Give yourself the gift of happiness. No’s are always remembered, and are permanent.
Corollaries to Barbara’s 5 Habits
- Find things to verbally compliment each other daily, especially in front of family and other people.
- Happiness habits practiced every day become easier. Continued, they strengthen your relationship, your love, and your trust in each other.
- When in doubt, say yes. Say yes, a lot! Start with yes, end with yes.
This document, initially published on August 23, 2020, the first anniversary of Barbara’s death, was a way for us to answer the happiness questions which are still asked quite frequently. It is shared here because it seems to have had such a positive impact on so many lives. I, we, hope these thoughts are meaningful and helpful to you.
The Platinum Rule*
Help Others Who Want And Need Assistance
Helping Others Achieve Their Goals And Aspirations
Many Of Those You Help Will Thank You.
- This rule is 10 times more powerful than the Golden Rule which only says, “ do unto others. . .
- The Platinum Rule says help those who need help to help yet others do what the others want or need by providing the necessary assistance to help others who can’t, by themselves, complete what they seek to achieve.
- The Ethical and Practical principles I follow support both rules. Share your own version of these approaches with others who work with you, people you’d like to work with, and people you will seek to work with.
- Find ways to discuss these ideas, explain them, and ask and answer questions about them.
- Everyone you care about or those who care about you should be aware of ideas like The Platinum Rule. Help them live and learn to form their own principles.
- Practice The Platinum Rule helping those you help to help others. All will remember and thank you.
- PLEASE NOTE: This idea has many advocates. When I first began mentioning it I was directed to Amazon which lists more than a dozen currently available books by prominent authors with absolutely the same idea.
Good luck.