Three Steps to Peace and Happiness

     Throughout my life, I have sought peace and happiness. Sometimes I find it. Sometimes I don't. Because of this journey that I have undertaken, and am still undertaking, I have discovered three main ingredients in finding true peace and happiness in my life.


       First, stop and take time to smell the roses.   

In the world that we live in, everything goes about a million miles an hour, and we often get caught up in it all, which can cause us to forget the truly important things in life. In order to find peace, we have got to just stop, take some deep breaths, and think about our lives, and instead of focusing on what we don't have, and are missing out on in life, focus on all the wonderful things that God has blessed us with already. This in and of itself is a huge step toward finding peace and happiness in life.




      Second, be positive!

The way I see it is, there is a heck of a lot of garbage in this world. But, there is also a whole lot of good things in this world as well. Since I don't have enough time, energy, or brainpower to dwell on everything that is out there, I would much rather just focus on the positive. The other part of that is, there is pretty much a good side and a bad side to everything. So, I strive to look at the good side of things, and when a potential negative comes my way, I find a way to tun it into a positive - and thus all things work towards my uplifting, not just the half that already appears good.




      Lastly, help others.

Wait, how can helping others help me find peace and happiness? It's actually pretty simple. When we help others, we focus less on our problems, and focus instead on how we can bring others to a higher level, which goes hand in hand with being positive. When we help others, we believe that we can bring something positive into someone else's life, and by seeing their happiness, our own happiness increases. Also, when we serve others, it changes who we are inside, and makes us more loving and compassionate people, which are two important attibutes that all truly happy people have.



     Obviously, there are many more things that we can do, as we all embark on this wonderful journey in finding true happiness and peace in this life. Though it may be discouraging at times, never give up. Even when the dark clouds of struggle and uncertainty obscure your vision, just keep putting one foot in front of another, and before you know it, you will be much farther along this wonderful path than you could have ever thought possible. Peace and happiness are real, and are attainable things in this life. And they are worth every effort we may put forth to obtain them.

The Harmonica

    As of late, I have been experiencing a bad case of writer's block. That, along with a lack of time, has contributed to the sparseness of posts in the last little while. So, I apologize and hope that with this new post, my creative juices will begin flowing again, and I will be able to put out posts more often.

   So anyways, this morning I found myself playing around with my companion's harmonica. As I blew through the instrument trying to find a scale that I could use, I found that it only played every other note. I tried a variety of ways to play it, to find the other half of the notes, but nothing seemed to work. In frustration, I asked my companion to play it. Eureka! I learned that in order to play the other half of the notes, I had to breathe in. It was so simple, but just something that hadn't occurred to me.

     Whenever I have problems or struggles in life, I have found that the simplest solutions are the best ones. For many of the problems I have faced in life, I have found that the best solutions have been praying and reading the scriptures. Just yesterday, we lost our keys to the apartment, and could not find them anywhere. So, we drove around everywhere trying to find them. After about a couple of hours, we decided to pray. Obviously, we should have done that first, but sometimes, I get stuck in that mindset where I can do things myself, and I don't need help. Well, the truth is, I always, and will always need God's help. Soon after we prayed, my companion was prompted to text the other missionaries. They called soon after. It turns our they had accidentally picked up our keys thinking they were theirs. We soon after got our keys back from them. Coincidence? Not even a little bit. Simple? Definitely.



     Just as playing all the notes on the harmonica required a simple solution, I know we are blessed when we find the simple solutions to what can sometimes be very complex problems. Among the greatest of those "simple solutions" are prayer and scripture study. Though they may seem so easy, and maybe even unrelated, I know they can help in any situation.