Welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III and I am your host. How are you doing today? I hope everything's going well for you. I'm not sure how your day has gotten started, but I myself decided to sleep in a little bit today, which is not normal for me. The alarm went off at 6 a.m. and rather than hitting the snooze bar three different times like I normally do, I just turned it off. I decided I was going to sleep in. I guess perks of being a self-employed entrepreneur. But anyway, whether your day has started out great and amazing or whether it started out slow and you feel like you're behind, I hope I can give you some thoughts and things here today that can get you inspired and motivated and going for your day. So let's start out. Normally, every day, I pull out the Daily Mastermind mobile app, which you can download for free. I pull up the quote of the day. And the quote of the day today is by Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins, and it's, Questions provide the key to unlocking our ultimate potential. I really believe that. Questions do provide the key because if our thoughts create our life, it's generally the questions we are asking ourselves. And most of us have certain questions that we are asking ourselves all the time. That's actually a great quote. I didn't see it before I started recording, but it's a great quote because today what I'd like to do, I'd like to just read you a chapter from one of the books that I'm currently going through. You know, I go through these books just to kind of get the day rolling, and there was a chapter I came across today that I thought might be good for you. I'm just going to read it to you, give you a few thoughts and ideas. It's out of the book called The Art of Happiness. It's done by Howard Cutler. It's his interview of the Dalai Lama, and for those of you that haven't gotten it, it's just jam-packed full of information. So I know we'll be short on time here. So I'm going to go ahead and read. I'm going to read out of one of the chapters. I'm not even sure what it is. I just opened it up this morning and there was a section inside a chapter called The Sources of Happiness. And the section is called The Comparing Mind. The Comparing Mind. And I think this is one that you are really going to be able to relate to no matter where you're at. So it starts, and I'm just going to read it to you. I'll comment along the way. It says, What shapes our perception and level of satisfaction? Our feelings of contentment are strongly influenced by our tendency to compare. When we compare our current situation to our past and find that we're better off, we feel happy. This happens, for instance, when our income suddenly jumps from $20,000 to $30,000 a year, but it's not the absolute amount of money that makes us happy. As soon as we soon find out, when we get used to our new income and discover that, we won't be happy unless we're making $40,000 a year. We also look around and compare ourselves to others. Now keep in mind this is the Dalai Lama giving his take on the comparing mind. We also look around and compare ourselves to others No matter how much we make we tend to be dissatisfied with our income if our neighbor is making more Professional athletes complain bitterly about annual salaries of a million two million and three million citing the higher salaries of teammates to justify their unhappiness. This tendency seems to support H.L. Meckin's definition of a wealthy man, one whose income is $100 a year higher than his wife's sister's husband. That's funny. So we can see how our feeling of life satisfaction often depends on who we compare ourselves to. Of course, we compare other things besides income. Constant comparison with those who are smarter, more beautiful, and more successful than ourselves also tends to breed envy, frustration, and unhappiness. But we can use this same principle in a positive way. This is real important. Listen to this. We can increase our feelings of life satisfaction by simply comparing ourselves to those who are less fortunate than us and by reflecting on all of the things that we have. I talked about this in gratitude yesterday. He goes on to say, researchers have conducted a number of experiments demonstrating that one's level of life satisfaction can be enhanced simply by shifting one's perspective and contemplating how things could be worse. That's very similar, by the way, to this idea of stoicism that I'm going to talk about later this week. He goes on to say, asked to complete the sentence, I'm glad I'm not blank. After five repetitions of this exercise, the subjects experienced a distinct elevation in their feelings of life satisfaction, meaning they're glad they're not something else they're comparing. Another group of subjects were asked by the experimenters to complete the sentence, I wish I were blank. This time the experiment left the subjects feeling more dissatisfied with their lives. These experiments would show that we can increase or decrease our sense of life satisfaction by changing our perspective clearly point to the supremacy of one's mental outlook on living a life. The Dalai Lama explains, although it's possible to achieve happiness, happiness is not a simple thing. There are many levels. In Buddhism, for example, there's reference to the four factors of fulfillment or happiness, which are wealth, world satisfaction, spirituality, and enlightenment. Let us leave aside for a moment ultimate religious or spiritual aspirations like perfection or enlightenment and deal with joy and happiness as we understand them in an everyday or world sense. Within that context, there are certain key elements that we conventionally acknowledge as contributing to joy and happiness, like good health material facilities or wealth that we accumulate Another factor is friendship I kind of skipping through a little to some of my underlying notes Now all of these factors are in fact sources of happiness But in order for an individual to be able to fully utilize them towards the goal of enjoying a happy and fulfilling life your state of mind is key. It's crucial. If we utilize our favorable circumstances, such as our good health or wealth, in positive ways in helping others, they can be contributory factors in achieving a happier life. And of course, we enjoy these things and our material facilities, success, and so on. But without the right mental attitude, without attention to the mental factor, these things have very little impact. Or even if you have worldly possessions, when you're in an intense moment of anger or hatred, you feel like throwing them away or breaking them. At that moment, your possessions really mean nothing. So there is no guarantee that wealth alone can give you the joy or fulfillment that you're seeking. The same can be said of friends too. When you're in an intense state of anger or hatred, even very close friends appear to you as somehow sort of frosty or cold or distant or annoying. All of these indicate the tremendous influence that our mental state or the mind factor has on our experience of daily life. Naturally then, we have to take that factor very seriously. This is huge because no matter what the circumstances and things are, we always talk about why the mind plays that role. So leaving aside the perspective of spiritual practice, even in worldly terms, in terms of our enjoying happy day-to-day existence, the greater the level of calmness of your mind, the greater our peace of mind, the greater your ability to enjoy a happy life. So the Dalai Laba paused for a moment as if to let the idea settle. Then he said, I should mention that we speak of calm state of mind or being, and we shouldn't confuse that with being insensitive or apathetic state of mind. He says, peace of mind or a calm state of mind is rooted in affection and compassion. But he goes on, and this is what he summarizes, and this is the point I wanted to make to you today. Summarizing, he said, facilities that you would normally consider necessary for happiness, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful life. That's the key. I'm just going to read that one more time for you. If you possess this inner quality, a calmness, quote-unquote calmness of mind, a degree of stability within, then even if you lack the various external facilities that you would normally consider necessary for happiness, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful life. How How many of us have known individuals that have had a lot of money Look I had a lot of income money things in my life cars houses trips travel things like that and not been content and fulfilled And I had no money at times and I felt much more states of being of happiness. How many of us know that? Like there's people that, you know, don't have what we would define as successful things and are much happier. I think this goes to the point that your inner state of being, and I like how the Dalai Lama goes on to say, it's really a calmness of your mind is key. And it all starts with this comparing mind. And, you know, back to the concepts we've had with the untethered soul and that book that I've read to you before. When you step back and you look at your life in the third party perspective and you identify when you're comparing to other people, it empowers you. It's that stepping back that empowers you. So if you'll learn to notice when you're comparing to your past income or your other friends and family or whether it's, you know, your next door neighbor or the guy that has the boat or doesn't have the boat or the person that has more friends on social media. When you stop, step back and notice that you're going to be empowered and you're going to learn to be able to focus on creating a calm, inner mind, peaceful mind, something that's going to allow you to experience happiness at every level of your life, whether it's the beginning where you're not doing much, whether it's relationships, family, friends, business, whatever, or whether you're developed into a high degree of success, whether you define it as success or society does. The bottom line is this, in today's economy, with the social media and everything going on, this comparing mind can be a weapon and working against you. So I'd like to just bring that to your attention and help you to realize that no matter where you're at, no matter what you're going through, no matter what level of success you have, no matter whether you feel alone or whether you have lots of friends, at every state of that journey, you can be happy. You can be fulfilled. You can experience joy by simply learning to calm your mind. And you can do this through daily rituals. You can do this through meditation, affirmations, reading, journaling, gratitude practices like I talked about yesterday. So these are all ideas I want to give you because no matter where you're at, you have to learn to enjoy this life. You only get one. It's not a dress rehearsal. This is the real deal. So you've got to focus on creating a life that you love. And the life that you were meant to live is a life of happiness and success. So I hope those are some ideas that will help you no matter where your day started off today. Remember that right now and moving forward, you can create whatever you want to create. And so I hope that you'll do that. And I hope these are some things that have given you a few thoughts that maybe you can even share with some others. And listen, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love for you to share this podcast with anybody that you know. I'd love to get the message out. And, you know, sharing is caring, right? I appreciate you guys. I appreciate you spending some time with me. And once again, my name is George Wright III, and this has been The Daily Mastermind. Have an amazing day.
