Ask yourself, “what would I do, right now, in this situation, if I was living in the best of all possible worlds?”

Your action will be an action of a person living in the best of all possible worlds, and as the echo of your action reverberates it will spread the quality of a best possible world around you.

Now think about how you usually act. What world do you usually believe yourself to be in? Are you surprised you are not living in the best of all possible worlds?

Can you agree that if everybody was acting as if they were living in the best of all possible worlds, then we would be living in that world? Can you also understand that if no one ever acts towards the goal of a best possible world we will not even be close?

Is it not then in your best interest to at least act as if the world were just a little bit better than you believed it to be? To give just a little more than your instincts tell you to? And to believe others to be just a little bit better than you believe them to be?

Yes, you may be fooled. They may take advantage of you. The risk exists.

But as you consider this also consider the risk you are taking by believing you live in a world worse than it really is, or giving less than your instincts tell you, or believing people to be just a little worser than they really are.

It is a cumulative development, and you are the one deciding if it should be cumulatively worse or cumulatively better. Trust me when I tell you this. In the end it adds up. It adds up tremendously. In fact, your life and your happiness depends on you making the right decision here and now.

This is not something you can save for later, or do once a Sunday now and then, this is something you have to do right now right here, because if you do not do it now, in this moment, why would you do it in any later moment?

Believe and you will win what you seek. Belief is like water in the desert. Belief is what separates success from defeat. If you dare believing you also dare winning. If you dare believing, nothing, not even death can keep you back.

Why do people not believe?

Belief is to let go, to embark upon the unknown without scientific or logical foundation telling you that what you are undertaking will be successful.

Does this mean belief is rash and insane or could it be that science and logic are only two of several measures for how to act successfully?

What is success?

Do you agree happiness is success? Do we need more? Respect? Status? Friendship?

If respect, status and friendship are what make you happy, then this is your measure of happiness. If you, on the other hand, wake up one day and find that what makes you happy has changed, the only successful thing to do is to update your definition of success to make it once more match what gives you happiness.

Can I become lazy, selfish or even a bad person if I only seek to satisfy my own happiness?

Are we talking about true or imaginary happiness here?

Imaginary happiness can be very seductive. It can make us believe we live our lives successfully and completely at our full potential, when in fact all we do is satisfying our society’s or our surrounding’s demands on what we should do — or rejecting these same demands by acting against them. Society and people around us tells us; if we do this and this we will be rewarded, we will get happiness.

Every one of us can be lead astray by imaginary happiness!

True happiness is something completely different. True happiness can be felt in the core of your soul and it can never be replaced by any substitute. The most important lesson you need to learn about true happiness is that there is only one person that can define it for you; you yourself.

Society cannot give you the recipe for true happiness, your parents or your spouse cannot do it, not even your priest or therapist. True happiness is ultimately an affair between you and your innermost self.

Does this mean I have to abandon my loved ones to reach true happiness?

Both yes and no.

To reach true happiness you need to go your own way. This can mean that you will loose contact with people in your life, and you may end up making some enemies.

You are not the only person that needs to find true happiness. Many of the people in your life build their lives on imaginary happiness. If feels good to keep and strengthen the bond between the two of you even though this bond actually hurts both of you. It gives you imaginary happiness and it feels safe to keep it.

To give people in your life an honest chance to find their own true happiness you cannot be the one trying to strengthen a hurtful bond. You must be willing to sacrifice the imaginary happiness you share and instead go out there, look the truth in the eye and find what not only feel as happiness but also is happiness.

On the other hand, you never need to fear hurting the people living closest to you. Your children, your spouse and your parents all have so much of your love you will never be happy hurting them. At the same time you need to be aware that even these people may be living on imaginary happiness and when you try to create change in your search of true happiness they may resist it.

The unknown is frightening.

There are many ways on which you can redefine your relation to people in your life. You may be brutal and say; “This is it, take it or leave it!” or more cautiously introduce the change step by step.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you as a unique person have a unique way of dealing with change. In the same way the people you wish to create change with has unique ways of acting and this means that you always need to keep a keen ear to what way they wish to be approached in, if for nothing else, for the mutual benefit of the change you are trying to create.