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According to the author, getting more in life will not give us long lasting happiness if we don't learn to create personal success first. He thinks we can acheive personal success when we feel really good about ourselves and our past, present and future. Have you ever felt that you needed to have certain things to make you happy and yet once you got them, you felt like you needed to have other things to make you happy? Do you feel like you are in a never ending pursuit of happiness? So do you agree with the author that may be you need to feel really good about your past, present and future? Do you think it's possible to achieve the kind of personal success suggested by the author? If so, how can one feel really good about one's past, present and future?
My answer:
Yes, I do realize that nothing keeps me happy for long. My list of wants and needs seems to be on automatic renewals and updates... Of course, I do feel I am in a perpetual pursuit of happiness. I often said at the beginning of a New Year, "I hope I will be happy in this New Year..."... I never said, "I hope in this New Year, I can stay as happy as I've always been..." Yes, I agree with the author, may be I just haven't achieved personal success.
I'm not sure if it's possible for me to feel really good about my past or present, but I hope I can feel reallly good about my future. I can't change anything about my past, if something bad happened then that gave me unpleasant experience, I don't think I can sit here now and look back and tell myself, "hey, that was really good and I'm so glad that happened ..." As for the present, I have to admit that there were certain things I did in the past which costed me some good opportunities now, and there were certain things I did in the past that created certain setbacks that I am having now... It's just cause and effect. Everything in the past just affects the present... So no, I don't really feel good about my present either... I don't feel bad, but I don't feel "real good".
I think I shouldn't sit here and try to force myself to feel really good about my past. Whatever I felt bad about back then, I'm not going to feel any better about it now, so I don't want to waste my present time on that... Instead I should just do my best to accept, and deal with the bad consequences from whatever I had done in the past, right now, right here, so it won't carry to my future. Since I can't change the past and I can't completely control my future... my only option is really to make the best I can now with the present, and just have faith that my future is going to be great. My mother told me on Skype two days ago, "Cherish the present, regret not the past, fear not the future." I should feel so lucky to have a mother who can be my shrink and I should feel so happy to have Skpe that keeps my family so close with me despite the fact that they are thousands of miles away.
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