I don’t agree with every single nuance in this great talk by Srikumar Rao, but there is definitely gold to be mined here:
(Especially the Coach John Wooden quote!)
Tag - happiness
My wife just sent me this:
There are two ways of being happy:
We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.
If you are idle, or sick, or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous, or young, or in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your menas than to diminish your wants.
But if you are wise you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise, you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Perhaps she’s trying to tell me something …
Few things are more challenging to me than to simply be content and happy with who I am, what I have, the things I do, the person I am in the social-economic-personal-familial context I live in.
Here’s a great quote from Garrison Keillor that I saw today:
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted if you didn’t have it.
The exact rendering is apocryphal, but appropriate. And the sentiment is bang-on.