Sunday Newscape Magazine

There is a line in a Bruce Springsteen song that talks about “an evil wind that is going to blow away everything that doesn’t have the faith to stand its ground”. There is a trick to living a happy, fulfilling and successful life, to not end up being blown away by an evil wind. This involves much more than having wonderful dreams and goals. I know that many people believe that if you hang in there, keep pushing yourself forward and keep working smart, most times, you’ll end up with everything you want.

In order to have the mental stamina to hang in there and keep pushing yourself forward, you must developed an outlook, a state of mind that will help you overcome all the obstacles that you encounter along the way to your achieving your happiness and getting everything you want. The reality is that millions of people in this world are living in a situation where there is nothing going on around them to give them the impression that the future has something good in store for them.

If you’re living in such a situation, if you’re bordering on the edge of despair, you must learn how to create a positive outlook. That way, you will have the mental strength not to just survive but to end up in a better place where you will be able to find the happiness you seek.

Having a positive outlook about the future doesn’t happen by accident, it isn’t an automatic thing. In order to develop a positive outlook about the future you must do three things as part of your daily routine.

#1 - you must take good physical care of your brain and the rest of your body. You should not smoke or drink too much; you must stop polluting your body. You must eat healthy. Make sure that your body gets all the vitamins and minerals it needs to perform at peak performance.

#2 - you must be spiritually in tune with things greater than your ego. Life is not fair and bad things are going to happen to you even though you were not at fault or involved in some sinister scheme. Try to make a spiritual connection so that part of your strength comes from a holy place. If you can connect to a higher form of inspiration, you will be able to rise above all the noise and negativity that blocks so many people from moving forward.

#3 – you must feed your mind everyday some good ideas. Dealing with one problem after another is not too thrilling. It is very important that you digest many good sensations everyday, make room in your life for fun. This will feed your mind the good energy it needs. You don’t want to go through life with a mind that is starving for something good. So, go see a movie that inspires you, listen to your favorite music more often, spend some time with an exciting lover, read about the life of a saint, engage in a little bit of daydreaming, find something to laugh about or go visit an animal shelter and spend a little time with a lonely dog or cat that will appreciate your attention. At the end of each day, say a prayer asking for inspiration.

I believe that you could be the smartest person in the world and easily end up walking around feeling depressed all the time. In order to prevent that, you must develop a sense of imagination, that way your viewpoint on life and the possibilities of what tomorrow may bring will be much stronger than the negative aspects of the reality you are presently living in.

In summary, as much as you can, several times a day, you should be re-fueling your mind and trying to kick-start your imagination. When you find yourself feeling a little bit out of focus, go sneak away and take a nap for twenty minutes, that will enable your brain to re-boot itself and clear out all the junk thoughts that are slowing you down.   You must never feel guilty about getting away from people who are trying to cause you to feel miserable. Bitter people will bite you if you get to close to them so avoid them too.

As you discover little secrets on being happy and maintaining a positive outlook, it would be wise to keep them to yourself. If you try to enlighten those who don’t want to be enlightened, they will try to cause you to feel stupid. If someone who you’ve done nothing wrong to, seems to resent you, that is his/her problem, not yours, ignore that person and continue to move forward on the road to happiness.

Just remember… the future will not be better than today for those who believe that things are not going to get better. Most times things don’t get better just because a few years have passed. Not only must you believe that the future has something greater in store for you but you must become proactive, get busy and start working towards achieving something great. At the same time you remain open to all possibilities because too many people go through life offering up so much resistance to change that it becomes impossible for anything wonderful to enter into their lives. This is one of the great secrets of the universe. You must be able to adapt to change and remain open so that something wonderful can enter into your life.

If you know anyone who might benefit from this little bit of insight, cut out this column and send it to him/her. Or hang it on a wall where it will be seen. As always, I welcome your comments. You may write to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it