Building Happiness through Character Exercises

I have been sharing and practicing character exercises with my philosophy students now for over ten years. Character exercises are daily practices that increase your self-confidence, emotional resilience, positive attitude and cheerfulness, and give you a sense of love and infectious enthusiasm for life. 

Many of us face each day with guarded self-consciousness, where we are bothered by self-doubt, a sense of inadequacy, dissatisfaction and anxiety. So we are often too timid and hesitant to live each day as we really want to live it. 

Character exercises, drawn from the great religious and philosophical traditions around the world, give us the strength to overcome our guarded self-consciousness and really live our life. They help us cultivate what I call graceful presence to our life and each moment. 

I will be regularly sharing different character exercises, and how they might help us live beautiful lives of graceful presence. I hope you’ll join me in this practice and share your experiences with the rest of us.

Thanks,

Jeff Nielsen 

Character Exercise for today:

Express love and gratitude today to those who assist you in any way, no matter how small. 

Melody Beattie has said: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

I have found that expressing gratitude to others each day increases my ability to enjoy the beauty present to each day and the joy inherent in each moment. Try it today—Be grateful!