Try our New Quest Reports Online - Happy Thanksgiving!
Welcome to this week's Life Warm-Up™ -
Building Your Influencer Inc. Company
Life Warm-Up™ November 2011 (11-23)
Howdy All!
Remember the theme is, “Living a Life of Influence!”
Happiness is a Choice!
It has been a long time coming, so here is the latest Life Warm Up.
Over the last couple of years as I travel across our nation I have seen and met some incredible people and want to share with you my Happy Thanksgiving wishes with a thought on happiness.
I often open with a quote when I am speaking that reads, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could forget our troubles as easily as we seem to forget our blessings.” How true and how sad that in a nation that has so much we are bombarded with all that is wrong on a daily basis.
I once heard a speaker say that fun is what we experience during an action, yet happiness is what we experience long after the action is through. Happiness is a much deeper and powerful choice we make. A sense of contentment that we can feel that is a step beyond the temporary pleasures of life. If we are not careful though we will believe that everything that does not make us happy must mean that something or someone is to blame. If fun and pleasure equals happiness, then the opposite must be true as well… pain, troubles and tough times should make us unhappy.
A couple of weeks ago Wendy and I with our new baby in the back of our SUV were side swiped on a major interstate while heading to a speaking engagement in Alabama. Wendy was driving and in the instant our car was hit it put us into a three part swerve that ended in a guard rail – all this while traveling at 70 plus miles per hour. Not a single person that witnessed the accident except the person that hit us stopped to help, but many were incredibly upset that we took up the far lane of traffic and were inconvenienced with our accident. I will not even go into how scary it was or how close we came to almost losing our lives, however there was something that was so strange in the middle of all of the chaos. Three separate police officers all asked the same question – is anyone hurt? Are you okay? Is everyone okay? The answer was thank God, yes we are all okay. Then they said it, “You should be happy that no one was hurt.” WHAT? Happy? No I should be upset, mad, angry! Someone is to blame for this terrible accident. Our car is damaged. My wife is shaking and crying in the backseat holding our ten month old baby in her arms. I am furious. This isn’t a time for optimism. I don’t need a pep talk. We just experienced something terrible and I should be…Happy?
I hope you really let this next part sink in – riding a rollercoaster is fun; seeing a movie is fun (depending on the movie of course); going to a game is fun. All of which temporarily make me happy – or better yet all of which I find pleasure temporarily. Getting side swiped while going 70 mph and almost losing your life is not fun – yet each person wanted me to be happy. Although the temporary moment or what I was feeling wasn’t in the least bit fun, I decided to look beyond all of the troubles and find the blessings. My wife, my new daughter and I are all alive and no one was hurt. A car is temporary, your friends and family our forever!
So my hope for you this Thanksgiving is to truly be Happy! Look around and count your blessings instead of focusing on your troubles. I think you will discover as Zig Ziglar says, “Happiness is not always about pleasure. Happiness is VICTORY!”
You really can Influence others when Happiness becomes a Choice!
Thank you to all of the businesses and individuals that have supported my dream of speaking and sharing my passion for helping others – I am truly Grateful and blessed by all of you!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sincerely,
Pete Hinojosa
If you want to find out more about how to influence or understand each personality type you can purchase Pete’s book, Influencer Incorporated for a full description of each of the four perspectives.
Thank you for reading this week's Life Warm-Up™!
A.G. "Pete" Hinojosa
Founder and President
Omega Quest®
281.360.0861 office
