Learn The Secrets Of The World's Happiest People
Jeff Davis
American Entrepreneur, Founder Of Twelve Mavens, Plan The Attack, and Scalable & Saleable. Currently traveling across 29 countries.
An Introduction (To Happiness)
First of all, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a psychiatrist or a PhD on the topic of happiness, but I’ll bet I’m happier than all of them. My Grandma Jean only made it to the 4th grade yet she outlived all of her doctors and nearly made it to 100.
This is kind of like that.
I’ve fought my way through a ton of adversity, heartbreaks, set backs and obstacles, yet I have a tremendous amount of energy, absolutely love what I do and I feel insanely happy almost all of the time. I genuinely love helping other people feel happy as often as possible. One of my missions in life is actually helping people live their best life possible.
I think the reason I want to make other people happy is because I suffered for years from stress, anxiety and overwork and want to do everything I can to prevent other people from going through that much pain. Even if I don’t know them or ever meet them.
In my early 30s I was working so hard that I would literally still be in my office wearing a suit and tie as I saw the sun coming up out of the window. I would rush home to shower, change my outfit and I’d go right back to the office for another 15 more hours before finally collapsing onto my bed for a few hours of stressful sleep.
Sounds awesome right?
I pressed the gas peddle down to the floor as hard as I could for as long as I could until I finally surpassed my threshold for pain and exhaustion, hit the wall and officially burned out and had a total mental melt down.
I’ll never forget the moment I looked at my wife in our bedroom and feeling like a boxer who had just gone 36 rounds of nonstop punching and getting punched.
I knew that she had been alone at the house while I was gone at the office and had sacrificed for our future as much as I had. I could tell that she was wondering exactly when this was going to start being “awesome” and that the answer was never, if nothing ever changed.
I looked at her face and could feel everything that she felt and I felt horrible. At the time, my business was experiencing explosive growth. We were featured in Fortune Magazine as an innovator, on CNNmoney I was quoted by Inc Magazine as a “Smart Company Builder”, the Business Journal listed me as one of the Top 40 Executives Under 40 yet I could not have felt like a bigger loser.
I broke down into tears sobbing uncontrollably promising her that everything was going to change and would get better. I said it from the bottom of my heart and I believed it completely, but unfortunately, I had no idea how I was going to make that happen.
I started thinking about how hard I had been working all of those years and asked myself why. What was it that I was chasing?
I thought about a dream house, a dream car, a dream vacation, success, making my parents proud and on and on.
I started asking questions about my own answers asking “and why do I want that?” and again, “why do I want that?” until I eventually got to the core reason.
I didn’t want any of the things I thought I wanted. What I wanted was the feeling that I imagined those things would give me.
Happiness.
No matter what the thing was, or the accolade, or the experience I would think of, the real thing I wanted was the feeling that I imagined it would bring me. I realized I was doing all of these things so I could be happy.
So I thought to myself, if all I want is to be happy, then why not make my goal a straight shot to being happy instead of going a million directions trying to one day reach this intangible some day destination of happiness.
I began making massive changes in my life. I scaled back my work hours dramatically and eventually sold the entire company and I started doing the things I dreamed of doing that didn’t seem possible.
If you want to be happy as often as possible, and who the heck doesn’t, this book will give you enough real world, tactical ways to do that. This isn’t fluff or theory or BS concepts that sound super fancy when you hear them but you aren’t really sure what they mean. You know, like when you hear “your inner light of oneness” or whatever…
These are actual things that I have done and do to become a pretty damn happy dude most of the time. I hope you don’t just read this, but you DO this. You are capable of living an extraordinary life. I hope that through these words and the actions you take after them, you discover who you are ultimately meant to be.
And if nothing else, you embrace your inner light of oneness. Just kidding.
SECTION 1
The Secret To Living Your Best Life
If You’re Not Happy, What The Hell Is The Point?
The only thing that matters is what makes YOU happy. This is about you living your best life possible. Not what I think you should do, not what your parents think you should do, not what your favorite guru says, not what your brilliant mentor thinks you should do, only what you feel will ultimately make you the most happy.
Do that.
When you find happiness in your work and happiness in your personal life, then you are living your best life.
If you are working hard just so you can some day, hopefully, down the road be happy, then ask yourself: Is it worth having 5 blah days just to get 2 good ones?
If you’re making a lot of money but you’re not happy, what’s the point?
If you’re chasing all of these things and you’re still not happy, then what’s the point?
I’m not telling you to only do things that make you happy right now either. It is important to make short term sacrifices for your long term goals. In fact, long term goals help you soften the blows from short term set backs. It’s up to you to determine that balance of short term pain for long term gain.
I suggest you ask yourself a simple question: Will it ultimately make me more happy?
I’ve found that asking that one simple question can make the most difficult decisions incredibly easy. Should I do X? Will it ultimately make me more happy? If so, I do it.
I had a successful guy offer to give me all of these opportunities that would have dramatically increased my new company’s growth in exchange for some equity in the business.
I could have used the help, I could have used the capital and I could have used the connections and introductions. There was only one problem, I couldn’t stand the guy. I imagined him calling me all of the time making demands and asking me to do things I wouldn’t want to do and it made it an easy decision. Which way would I be more happy? I told the guy no thanks and kept trucking.
SECTION 2
Compare Yourself To No One
Freeing Yourself From How You Stack Up To Anyone Else Is Giving Yourself A Life Of Freedom
The guy you went to school with sold his company for almost $300,000,000. Your friend from first grade did $460,000,000 in sales last year. The guy who let you crash on his couch for a week just got his own hit TV show on MTV. Although all of those seem like over the top exaggerated examples just to make a point here, but I’ve actually witnessed every single one of them with people I know.
When you see other people and feel like they are even slightly better looking than you, have more money than you, more successful in their career than you, have better lives than you, they’re taller than you, younger than you… whatever the case, you can never be fully happy.
If you want to be at peace and feel a freedom that you have never felt in your life, make the decision right now in this moment to never compare yourself to anyone else ever again regardless of how absolutely amazing the other person is.
When I first started dropping my kids off at the fancy private school we enrolled them in, on the very first morning of the first day of school, the first car to pull out as I was pulling in was a Rolls Royce. The second car was a shiny brand new Porsche.
When I got out of the car with my kids as I was wearing flip flops, there were so many doctors in scrubs that it looked more like a hospital waiting room than a school.
All the same crappy feelings from high school started to rush back in to my mind, wondering if I’m being judged, if they think less of me, if they have way better houses than me, if they have way more money saved than me, if they are going to whisper something superficial about me and on and on.
As I was growing my business well over a decade ago and I hired my first employee, then a second, a third, a seventh, a ninth… I would hear one of my friends mention that they now had 46 people.
There is always going to be someone with a bigger boat and there is always going to be a more impressive house. I promise you that the billionaire with 1 billion dollars feels inferior in a room with a group of billionaires who all have 50 billion or more.
If you want to be free, let all of it go forever.
It doesn’t matter.
Yay, they’re taller. Hooray, they have a better complexion. Fantastic, they reached their goal 2 years ago but you have a few more years to go to reach yours. Literally imagine cutting a rope that lets all of it go and float off out to sea.
You compare yourself to no one. No one is you, has had the exact same circumstances as you, been through the exact same misfortunes as you, overcome the exact same things as you, has the genetics as you or is you.
There are 7 billion people on this planet and not a single one of them is you or can ever be exactly you. That’s crazy when you think about the fact that you could line up 7,000,000,000 different people and not one of them matches you exactly. My Dad is an identical twin and even his identical twin brother is still different than him.
So let go of any comparisons to anyone else forever.
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There Is No Gap To Future Happiness
If You Can Only Be Happy ‘If Or When’ You Do Something, There Will Always Be A Gap Between You And Happiness
I remember thinking that if I got to six figures a year, I could then be happy and enjoy life. That was until I got to six figures a year and then realized that it wasn’t nearly enough. When you have this gap between right now and some event that can only happen in the future, you are keeping yourself from being allowed to enjoy the journey. When you get to the end of your journey, you will realize that it was the journey that made up your life, not the prized one day milestone at the end.
Having a gap between today and your future version of you is actually another form of comparing yourself to others only you’re comparing yourself to a fantasized future you. Progress creates happiness and fulfillment so instead of comparing yourself to a better version of you in the future, compare yourself to 10 years ago you or 5 years ago or just before you read this you. Brilliant minds like Dan Sullivan have written entire books on just that one thing. Make your life today at the end of a gap to your past instead of your current life being a perpetual before snap shot of this “better” future you. Do continue to set higher standards for yourself and always work at getting better and being better in different ways, but for crying out loud, be happy as you do it.
Think of a moment in your life that you are grateful for when you felt incredibly happy. Go ahead, think of it right now. Stop reading! Sit there and think of a moment that makes you smile. Maybe it’s a moment when your kids did something, maybe it’s a moment from when you were the kid.
See the moment happening as if you were there and you’re experiencing it all over again as that moment was happening, right now.
Did you feel happy? There you go, happiness right now instead of deferred joy that you aren’t allowed to enjoy until years from now when you have a particular amount of cash, or status, or job title.
SECTION 4
Focus On Everything You Love Instead Of Everything You Don’t
If You Focus Mostly On The Donut Hole, You Are Missing All The Happiness From The Donut.
Every year we do this big event for entrepreneurs called Plan The Attack. If you’ve never been, imagine hundreds of entrepreneurs and CEOs of fast growth companies gathered together in a ballroom for an entire day. I do crazy things at the event to surprise the attendees. I’ve surprised the room with a procession of bagpipers, a gospel choir, a college marching band and other schenanigans.
The energy of the room at Plan The Attack is ridiculous. This event has been completely life changing for people. We’ve seen attendees go on to have their best years in company history, create life changing relationships, and even lose weight! Seriously.
The vibe at Plan The Attack is unreal.
One year however, there was one guy in the room who had a face like he didn’t like what I was saying. In an entire room of people who were having an amazing day, all I did was focus in on this one guy.
For all I know, he could have been having a terrible stomach ache, he could have just had his daughter text him that she’s been arrested again, he could have just been a jerk. I’ll never know. I just turned everything I said into an attempt to make the event so freaking good that he started making a face like everyone else who was writing down notes and ideas and having a-ha moments left and right.
It’s so easy to put all of the attention on the things that go wrong. You may not have noticed it, but you have a million things that go right all of the time.
When one door closes another one opens but we spend all of our time dwelling on the door that just closed. We wonder why did it close on me? What could I have done to prevent it from closing? Is there a way I can reopen that door? Meanwhile, there’s a new door to something that might be even better sitting completely unnoticed.
The TV news makes its money by getting and keeping your attention, so they have to create “breaking news” and the latest “developing story” of doom and gloom. That’s what sells. It sucks, but that’s the reality.
I watch zero news. I don’t watch it on TV, on the internet or on the radio. I hear the big stories from conversations out in the world and occasionally from a late night show monologue. That’s all I need.
Instead of everything going wrong in the world, I seek out information that helps me get to where I want to be in my life. I watch interviews of successful entrepreneurs and CEOs and I listen to podcasts with interviews of people who are changing the world. I intentionally think of all of the things that are going awesome around me and for others. I focus on the donut and not the hole. Most people, the ones you hear complain about everything, spend their life focusing on the hole.
SECTION 5
Do Work That Itself Is The Reward, Not Just A Source Of Income
Do Work You Love
You hear people say to “follow your passion” but that can be dangerous advice. What if you’re passionate about airbrush paintings of unicorns on paper plates? You can follow that passion, but you better get used to a life of beef flavored Ramen noodles for dinner if you do. I’m not saying you can’t somehow find a way to get rich doing that, I’m just not going to bet my money on you ever selling a paper plate unicorn and then hopping back into your Bugatti.
I’ve been advised by mentors to not worry about loving what I do so much and to just find a way to make a good living, but I don’t subscribe to that philosophy either. I’m an insanely passionate person. If I don’t have a passion for what I do, there’s no way I’m dedicating my life to that work.
I tell people to follow their passion, but as they’re following it, be sure to stop down the hall in the conference room for a meeting with their brain too. The key is to find something that you are deeply passionate about but that also provides the income you need to be happy. If you are happy doing the work but unhappy with keeping up with your bills, you are not as happy as you could be. On the other hand, if you are doing work that you are moderately happy about, you won’t be as happy as you could be either.
There is no work that is all rainbows and lollipops all day, every day. Don’t even try to pick out work that will come with no disappointments or set backs ever. You’ll have those no matter what you do. The goal is to do work that you love and at the same time are able to reach the kind of income that meets your standards too.
If you don't absolutely love the work, it gets harder and harder to put in the hours that building anything great requires. If you can’t believe how fast the day went by, you’re on to something.
Love your work, love your non work time. For me, there is no paycheck you could give me that I would be willing to do something I couldn’t stand. I’ve been offered opportunities that could give me a good amount of money but would not make me more happy. I’ve had opportunities that if I pursued them I could have made much more money, but I wouldn’t feel the freedom of being in control of my future. For me, that freedom is directly connected to my happiness.
I love what I do. It makes me happy. If you don’t love what you do, figure out what it is about what you do that prevents you from being as happy as you could be and remove it. Even if that means removing yourself from it completely. Life is short. Figure out a way to love it or figure out a way to do something else.
If you feel like you can’t switch because you already went to law school, it doesn’t matter. Do what you want to do and will make you more happy.
If you got a Masters degree for your current profession and you feel like it would be a waste to switch careers at this point, do what you’d love to do now, not when you were in your twenties. Do what will make you happy over these next twenty years.
SECTION 6
Love People, Love Things, Love Doing Things
The Feeling Of Loving Is A Feeling Of Happiness
When I was in high school I surfed. I wasn’t that great at it but I loved the feeling of paddling as fast as I could, feeling the force of the wave coming up from behind me and that incredible feeling of excitement of when I knew the wave was pushing me enough that I had caught it and could push myself up to my feet and ride it.
That feeling of catching a wave was like nothing else you can experience.
I went about 20 years from high school to being married with kids without feeling that rush a single time.
As part of my mid life crisis, I bought a surf board at about 40 years old and painted it to look exactly like the board I owned as a teenager. I found that just seeing it in my garage alone made me happy. When I got home from a long day at the office and pushed the button to open the garage, I’d see that bright yellow board with the blue stripe across it.
I started getting up extra early and paddling out into the ocean at sunrise and surfing before work. I didn’t care if I caught a wave. I loved sitting out in the ocean watching the sun come up behind the horizon from in the water. I loved having sand and tiny shells on my ankles as I got back into my card and headed back home. I loved blasting Rage Against The Machine in my car as I drove back to get ready for work.
Pick hobbies you love and think you might love and then actually do them. Schedule time to surf or to learn a new instrument, or learn how to make a gourmet cappuccino with the heart on top. Learn how to samba dance, make the documentary you always thought would be cool, take the pastel drawing class you heard about 2 years ago. Do whatever you would love to do and it will make you happy.
What other things do you love that make you happy. Surround yourself with those things. Seeing a picture of myself leaning my wife back and planting a massive movie style kiss on her in Paris makes me happy.
That’s why I put a picture of it right in my daily planner I used for business. I had serious meetings with straight laced “fancy” professionals and they’d see this picture of me planting one on my wife as I was opening it up to the appropriate page I was looking for.
If you have people in your life that when you think of them, it makes you happy, then get into the practice of thinking of them more often. I think about the people I love every morning as routinely as I brush my teeth. If there is a music album that would remind you of your happiest times in your life, play those songs again.
Give yourself a ton of things to love. If you just wake up, go to work, change, eat dinner, watch a TV show that you’re not that into just because it’s on, get your kids ready for bed, watch another mediocre show and then go to sleep, you’re missing out on a lot of loving “stuff”. Be intentional about completely overloading yourself with things on your wall that make you happy, hobbies that make you happy, people that make you happy, songs that make you happy. Try to be loving things, loving doing things and loving people as often as you can.
SECTION 7
Clarity About What Makes You Happy
Listing Out Everything That Makes You Happy Or Would Make You Happy
I think one of the reasons why people aren’t as happy as they could be is because they’re too busy to stop and actually get clarity about what it is that would make them more happy. It isn’t something that people do. We do what we do, we don’t sit at a desk and make lists of things that we’re going to start adding to feel happy. But what if you did?
Everyone has heard of bucket lists which are hopeful lists of things to try to do before you die. Those are great to have, but some of them you may never do, some of them you may do 20 years from now.
Get out a sheet of paper and write a vertical line right down the middle. Put on some relaxing music, if you’re a wine drinker, perhaps a glass a wine. First, on the left write a list of all the things you can start doing, might want to get yourself or could acquire for yourself as quickly as tomorrow or at a minimum by the end of the month. Start writing everything you can come up with that you think would or could make you happy.
Don’t try to make it perfect. List things that you might end up not even liking at all once you try them. It’s ok. Make a list of ideas that is full of everything that pops up in your mind at the time, even if you have no idea why you wrote it. If buying a fishing rod comes to mind, write it down. If joining a polka music band comes up, put it down on paper. If buying a blank canvas and an oil painting set sounds fun, write it down. If reconnecting with your old friend Frank sounds fun, write it down.
Next, on the right, make a list of everything that you do that takes away happiness from you or the people who make you less happy. For example, if you hate addressing envelopes every month, write it down. If you’ve gotten to the point that you hate all of your clothes because you’ve had them since the 90s, write “my entire wardrobe” on your list. If your long time friend Carol is always negative and calls you to complain, write Carol on that list and fade her out!
Give yourself the time to sit and do nothing else in the world other than becoming incredibly clear about what it is that makes you happy and what it is that doesn’t and then take action on that list.
SECTION 8
Unaltered By Things Outside Of Your Control
You Can’t Control What You Can’t Control, So Why Stress Over The Things You Have No Control Over?
There are things in life that you have control over and things that no matter what you do, you can never control. You can’t control the weather. You can’t control how other people react to things. When the economy collapses, you can’t control the entire world economy.
Most of the things that you see in the news are things that you can not control. There is zero value in stressing out over things that you can do nothing about. What’s the point? Once a president is elected, they’re elected. When your favorite restaurant suddenly goes out of business, it’s done, its over. Pick your new favorite spot. I remember hearing a quote in an old Dale Carnegie audio book that said “you can’t saw saw dust.” Replaying things again and again in your mind is not going to ever change what happened.
Figure out what you can control in situations and do what you can about those things. Never ever waste your energy thinking or worrying about things that you have absolutely no way of improving.
You can’t control the wind or the ocean, but you can control the sails on your boat. Do what you can do, and if you can’t do anything about it, move on.SECTION 9
Something You’re Working Towards And Looking Forward To
Carrot And Stick Yourself With New Things, New Upcoming Experiences, New Levels
Accomplishment makes people happy. Checking a box on a to-do list is a nano bitesized quick little form of happiness. Knowing that you have something coming up down the road that you’re looking forward to, like a vacation, gives life a bit of a different feel than right after a vacation has ended.
Always have the next vacation planned even if the next vacation isn’t for a year or three years. I remember buying tickets to see the Foo Fighters play live in Atlanta about 6 months before the show.
My wife and I would talk about flying to Atlanta and watching them play, we’d look at restaurants in Atlanta, we played Foo Fighters songs and got all excited, We got as much joy out of that 6 month runway than the concert itself. Always give yourself things to be looking forward to.
Long term goals help minimize short term set backs too. When you give yourself 10 year + goals, you don’t have to worry as much when shorter term set backs happen because you know you’re making progress towards this much bigger, more significant outcome in the future.
I was thinking about how cool it would be to have 12 Mavens members in Australia and London, when we only had 7 members total in the world, all of which were in Jacksonville, FL at the time. When some guy who just didn’t understand the value of being part of a confidential think tank of fellow risk takers passed on coming to one of our meetings, it didn’t disappointment me as much when I thought about how many members we’d have around the world 10 years from that point.
I think the key to life is to constantly set new goals for yourself, advance to that level and then set new goals, all while enjoying the journey. That’s why I plan to never retire. I say that because I always do the kind of work that I love to do, so why would I want to do nothing and just wait to eventually die? When you reach a goal, set the next one. When you come back from a great trip, determine the next trip. Always be working towards the next level of your career. Always be shooting for your next level of wealth. Always be working on learning your next new skill.
SECTION 10
Happiness Hacks
Tricks For Getting Yourself Happy Again Quickly When Life Knocks You Down
And knock you down life will.
Here are a few simple hacks for getting yourself happy again when you hit a set back, frustration or heartbreak.
Your body recognizes functions and automatically starts acting accordingly. Have you ever gone to the bathroom and as soon as your eyes saw the toilet, you REALLY had to pee? Your body knows to activate some of the machinery. When you smile and breathe deeply, your body takes it as a signal that says “we are relaxed” and it acts accordingly.
If you get upset, angry or worried, stop what you are doing and start taking really deep slow breaths in and out. It actually fires off signals of calmness and your brain reacts.
This next hack is going to sound funny and as unscientific as it gets, but it works. The next time you get mad, upset or worried, I defy you to turn on a funky James Brown song and stay sad. I’ve tested it many times. If you do still remain a lifeless sad robot at the sound of James Brown blasting, get up and shake that money maker. Now I really defy you to stay sad or angry. I know that is not what doctors will tell you, but blasting a funky James Brown song is a lot more healthy than whatever pill they’d suggest. It works. Try it.
Another quick hack for getting happier when you get knocked down is quickly figuring out how the crappy thing that happened somehow benefits you in the long run. Force yourself to ask that question when you get bummed out. How might this help me going forward? What might actually be great about this for me? There is ALWAYS an answer if you get out of your own way and don’t refuse to allow the answers to come to you.
When you notice you have become unhappy, take slow deep breaths, crank up the James Brown, answer the question of how the thing that made you unhappy is going to actually end up serving you going forward. Breathe deep again, turn up the James Brown even louder, dance a little more aggressively and think of everything you are grateful for.
SECTION 11
Knowing Your Life’s Purpose
Using Your Meaning As Your Message
Gandhi once said "My life is my message.”
Think about that sentence for a second. To me that means that he lived his entire life letting his life itself serve as the message he wanted to share with the world.
Think about the thing you want more than anything and ask yourself why you want that. When you get an answer, ask yourself why you want that, then again and again keep peeling the layers of onion that is your life until you get to what you really, really actually want.
Think of the one thing that bothers you the most about the world. What would you say is the total 180 degree opposite of that thing? Next, make that thing that you see as the antidote to the thing you can’t stand in the world and make that your impact and your legacy in the world. Make it so that from now on, you become a force for good in the world who is eradicating the thing you hate about the world from existence little by little in your own special way.
If you hate people who don’t tell the truth, make authenticity and honesty your impact and your message. If you hate entitlement, make your impact in the world a life of gratitude and work ethic. If you can’t stand negative people, be a force of positivity in the world.
Take what you can’t stand in the world and make the opposite your meaning and your message.
Take this new meaning in your life and create a single sentence that sums it up perfectly.
This might be the single most important sentence that you ever write down. This is one really important sentence that may stay with you for the rest of your life so don’t rush it and just throw it together in a few seconds. Make it amazing. Make it so empowering and uplifting to you that every time you hear it or think it you feel a special feeling that you’ve never felt quite before. Put that sentence where you can see it, you internalize it and become more and more excited that you are on a mission to fulfill this sentence as your truth and why you are here.
They say the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. Know why and make the most out of it, in the time that you have left.
When you know your calling, your meaning, and your purpose, and you live it every day, you have a lifelong target and it minimizes short term set backs and will always remind you of what really matters.
SECTION 12
Gratitude
How To Make It Physically Impossible To Be Unhappy
You may have heard this before, but it is physically impossible to feel worried, stressed or angry at the exact same time as when you are feeling grateful. It’s like turning the light off and on at the exact same time. It is always either or, never both at the same time. It is literally, physically impossible.
So if you want to be happy, think of people you are grateful for. Think of moments from your life you are grateful.
Did you wake up alive today? Be grateful. That’s better than billions of dead people who didn’t. Did you wake up with your eye site working? Be grateful. That’s better than some other people. Do you live in a country where you are allowed to read anything you want? Be grateful. Are you able to walk? Be grateful. Do you have access to all of the world’s information in your pocket? Be grateful. Billions before you did not.
I remember losing my voice and trying to use Siri on my iPhone and be on important scheduled calls and realizing how happy I would be if I just had my voice. I had taken my voice for granted and felt genuinely grateful just for having a voice when it came back to me.
One year I did an experiment to see what would happen if every single night before bed I had to list out 5 things that I was grateful for from that day. Some days were easy to write down my list and some days sucked and it took a lot longer to come up with something.
Listing out all of the things I was grateful for from every day forced me to always be paying attention to things that I could use for material at the end of the night. I started looking out for things to add to my list, which made me always be looking around for things to be grateful for. I ended up having my favorite year in about a decade. I don’t know if that was a coincidence or if it was related, but that sure was an amazing year and it ended up being an incredible way to journal my life that year.
On those days that sucked and I sat on the side of my bed at night after a long day trying to think of things I was grateful for, I would at first think of the things that went wrong. I would think about the employee who failed to do what they said they would do, I’d think about the flat tire I got in the morning, I’d think of clients who were late paying me what I had rightfully earned and on and on.
I would stop myself from the rehashing of things that had sucked that day and reminded myself, 1) I can breathe. 2) I’m still here and I have incredible resilience 3) My family 4) I’m the kind of guy who writes down the things he’s grateful for 5) tomorrow is a new day.
And I’ll add a bonus number 6 to my list right now… I’m grateful for you and that you’ve read this.
Thank you. It means a lot.
Do you feel a littler happier than you were when you started reading it?
I hope you take some of the ideas from this little book and you incorporate more of them into your every day life. I hope it makes you happy. Ridiculously off the charts, crazy happy.
You deserve it.
Hey, you want to be even more awesome and make the world a little better
…within the next 18 seconds?
If you want to kill two birds with one stone, actually… what’s the deal with that expression? Who wants to kill two birds at the same time? They’re not only so mean that they’re out walking around killing birds, but they’re so lazy that they want to do it with just one stone and then go home?! Anyway… Share the link to a free copy of this E-book with someone that you want to be as happy as possible and you’ll enjoy the gift of helping others and they’ll get the gift of being loved and thought of by someone. Happiness comes naturally by feeling gratitude and by being loved.
Just email this link: www.jeffdaviskeynotes.com to them right now and suggest that they download this same free, quick read E-Book too.
By you taking the time to read this, you’ve made me incredibly grateful and happy.
I hope we can share a smile and a laugh together in person sometime soon. I’d be happy to come out and give a talk to your group. Just got to www.jeffdaviskeynotes.com and reach out to my team. OK… That’s it. Just remember that life is incredibly short, but you’ve still got a lot of time. So be as happy as you were meant to be and you deserve to be. On second thought, no one is looking, so you can be even happier than that. :-)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
By his 30s, serial entrepreneur Jeff Davis had already built multiple nationwide companies and was featured in Fortune Magazine, CNN.Money, quoted by Inc Magazine and featured in countless other news stories. In 2014 he successfully sold his national medical-legal trial presentation company to a Bio Tech that soon after became publicly traded.
He is the founder of www.12mavens.com the national by invitation only community of CEOs and entrepreneurs which the Business Journal describes as the Secret Society of CEOs, he founded the popular strategic planning event www.PlanTheAttack.com he is the founder of www.OperationTimeFreedom.com an 8 week program that teaches overworked entrepreneurs how to free up more time, he’s the host of ‘THE CLIMB With Jeff Davis’ on YouTube and is a highly regarded keynote speaker.
For more information about having Jeff Davis give a keynote speech to your audience live visit www.jeffdaviskeynotes.com
Instructional Designer|L&D Specialist
6 年Thank you for sharing.
Field Operations | Lead & Conduct Surveys | Survey Data Verification
6 年Great insight. Thks for sharing.
Personal Brand Expert, Certified Image Consultant, Business Etiquette Coach, Speaker and Writer
6 年Great read and thank you!
Project Manager-Operational Excellence - Motion Ai
6 年We are too alike Jeff. Thanks for sharing. Creators of love are naturals at being happy regardless of life challenges. Because of this we tend to not see our happiest place we can be. I lived a life time so far being a follower in my personal life but a leader at work. I knew I was down the wrong path but because I am an expert at being happy, I stayed the course. Then one day, I realized I can be happier if I destruct my life. I am still in the midst of it all. However, the positives tremendously outweigh the negatives. It is amazing. I will surely add this book to my read list. Thanks!! On another note, I am beginning to study and observe centurions. Did your Grandma Jean live at home and, take care of herself in her last years?
Sports for Development - Football for Schools Consultant at FIFA | LOC AFC Women's Asian Cup India 2022 | Customer Experience Officer - Tennis Australia - Australian Open | Hospitality Management
6 年Ashu Gupta