For every decision I make, I always ask myself this question:

“Will this increase my happiness and that of others?”

If yes, I go for it. If no, I don’t.

Simple as that.

This is the only criteria, and this makes life SO MUCH simpler, happier, and more fulfilled. No need to ponder a million questions which answers are hypothetical anyway. This allows to make a lot of decisions, and very quickly. Naturally, in most cases, these decisions turn out to be the best choices and often exceed expectations.

Happiness is about constantly giving, learning, growing, living on the edge or “on the crest of the wave”.

On the other hand, playing it safe is the most risky thing to do. Anything that doesn’t move falls down, just like a bicycle.

Making money, becoming famous, or getting a pompous title, has sense only if it brings more happiness. If it brings more problems and worries, forget it.

For example, I have never invested in the stock market, and most likely never will. This kind of game is mostly about greed (“I have some money and I want some more!”) and a total waste of precious creative time. It creates obsessive worries invented by others: how sick is that! I invest in myself like crazy, and even the result of that is unpredictable.

We often hear say, “I want a simple life.”

Life is difficult beyond measure for everyone.

The reason life is hard is because our behaviors are not perfect, and we have lessons to learn. We make mistakes, and we need to learn from them. If we don’t work on our own weaknesses, problems will keep on coming, over and over. There is no way out except to identify, understand, and correct our mistakes. It takes diligence, patience, and discipline. But the rewards are beyond measure, too, and sooner or later, we start to “fly”.

As we grow, bigger tests are being thrown at us, because now, we can handle the smaller ones.

We could simply avoid reality and watch TV instead, but we can’t hide. We still have to learn the lessons, and they’ll be thrown at us whether we want them or not. So we might as well take life by the balls and deal with it face-on, rather than chicken it out. Chickens are never successful; in fact, they get their heads cut off by the millions.

Saying “I want a simple life” without actually working towards it, is very naive, because it’s an excuse for being lazy. There is always something going on, always something to improve.

For example, let’s say that we commit to be kind at all times, with everyone, in all circumstances, with no exception. That’s a hell of a difficult challenge, because paradoxically, we will attract the worse of the worse, until we get it.

As soon as we have made a commitment, we will encounter people and situations that will upset us one way or another. It’s a test. We will be tested many times under different situations, and those situations will be more and more subtle.

When the guy waiting in line at the grocery store in front of us acts like a douchebag, we clearly see it, and we let it go. That was easy, no biggie. Later, we will encounter other situations that are nearly not as clear as this one, and this will be the real test.

As we develop our Discernment, i.e. our ability to tell truth from falsehood, we will be tested with more and more subtle tests. Until we truly get it.

In fact, the deeper the commitment, the more difficult our life will seem to be… but only temporarily. Soon enough, little miracles start to happen on a regular basis. Incredible situations and people start to show up on their own, as if it was a reward from the universe for doing our job of self-improvement. And it is.

Making ourselves better makes the whole world better.

Everything that happens to us in life is our own responsibility, and just waiting for better times doesn’t work. In fact, worse times will come, if we don’t see the lessons and change ourselves.

Changing is the basis of life. Seasons are part of nature. Not changing, which is the most popular choice, is the recipe for disaster. It’s called Denial, and it’s reflected in the classic behaviors of Blaming and Playing the Victim.

Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, said,

“When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot.”

Growing is NOT about creating more abundance. That’s the easy part.

The real growing is our ability to see the world for what it really is, which is often the exact opposite of what it looks like.