Inspirational Recovery Quotes: Choosing Happiness

















Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
Dalai Lama

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.
Andy Rooney

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
Bob Moawad

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.
Groucho Marx

Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.
Dale Carnegie

I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.
Drew Barrymore

When one door of happiness closes, another opens: but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
Oprah Winfrey

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln

Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.
Kevyn Aucoin

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller

Happiness is not in our circumstances but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.
John B. Sheerin

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
Denis Waitley

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.
Democritus 

The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. 
Marcel Pagnol

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
John Barrymore

Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.
Dale Carnegie

When I was in grade school, they told me to write down what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy. They told me I didn't understand the assignment,
I told them they didn't understand life
Unknown

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
Charles Spurgeon

Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.
Indian Proverb

Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it eludes you.
But if you turn your attention to other things, It comes and sits softly on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. Elizabeth Gilbert

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.
Jim Rohn

If you think sunshine brings you happiness, then you haven't danced in the rain.
Unknown

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.
Alice Walker

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Albert Camus

You are free to experience life negatively or positively, and the choice you make determines whether you are at cause, or at effect, of the life you are living.
Marianne Williamson

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
Henry David Thoreau

What is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Albert Camus

Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.
Ann Brashares

I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
Martha Washington

It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.
L.M. Montgomery

Happiness always sneaks in a door you did not think was open.
Anony-mouse

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you wish for. Happiness is something you design.
Jim Rohn

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
Dale Carnegie

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.
Dalai Lama

Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
Dale Carnegie

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.
Richard Bach

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

Happiness is the result of my decision to be happy. There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. In other words, happiness is a feeling I tap into, not an outcome of events. I can be happy without changing anything in my life except my relationship to my own thinking. I decide to be happy and commit myself to making happiness my state of mind, rather than relying on a set of circumstances to do it for me.
Richard Carlson

We smile because we are happy. But we also become happy because we smile. Act the part and you’ll become the part.
Unknown

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Marcus Aurelius

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels.
Bertolt Brecht

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower.
John Harrigan

Never dwell on what you have lost, only on what you have left. Count your blessings. You’ll always find plenty. Your most prized possessions are your unexpired years.
Unknown

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
Louisa May Alcott

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire

The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.
Norman Vincent Peale

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.
Robert G. Ingersoll

Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you have decided to look beyond the imperfections.
Unknown

Learn to be calm and you will always be happy.
Paramhansa Yogananda



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Recovery Quote Of The Week: September 12, 2012


We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity. "
Barbara De Angelis




original picsource: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jinx1380/4983207375/
By NMR Photo

We Will Never Forget: 9-11 Tribute




World Suicide Prevention Day 2012: Facts, Stats, & Resources





















What is World Suicide Prevention Day?
World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) is an awareness day observed on 10 September every year, in order to provide worldwide commitment and action to prevent suicides, with various activities around the world.The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Federation for Mental Health, to host World Suicide Prevention Day.  In 2011 an estimated 40 countries held awareness events to mark the occasion. The United Nations issued 'National Policy for Suicide Prevention' in the 1990s which some countries use as a basis for their suicide policies.
source Wikipedia 

Worldwide Statistics:

Worldwide suicide rates have increased 60% in the last 45 years.
Nearly 1 million people die each year from suicide, globally. One death every 40 seconds. 
Suicide is among the 3 top causes of death for those between the ages of 15 and 44.
Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for those between the ages of 10 and 24.
Attempted suicide occurs up to 20 times more frequently than completed suicide.
Suicide rates among young people has increased so dramatically that they have surpassed suicide statistics for elderly males, becoming the highest risk group in a thirdrd of countries (both developed and developing).
source WHO (World Health Organization)


US Specific Statistics

Nearly 1,000,000 people in the U.S. attempt suicide every year.
Someone dies by suicide every 14.2 minutes.
90% of people who commit suicide have a diagnosable/treatable psychiatric disorder at the time of death.
Most people with mental illness do not die by suicide.
Yearly medical cost for suicide are nearly 100 million dollars.
Though women attempt suicide 3x more often than men, men are nearly 4x more likely to die by suicide.
The highest risk age group for death due to suicide is 40-59.

Statistics by State. 
source: AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Risk Factors For Suicide
Warning Signs of Suicide
What To Do if you fear someone will take their life


Resources for Suicide Prevention: Hotlines, Organizations, Websites




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Recovery: Is What's Holding You Back Worth Holding On To?


Past experiences, and the emotions that accompany them, all serve a purpose. We learn by doing, observing, and by making mistakes. We file those lessons away for future reference and we draw upon them to help us navigate the present. There's nothing wrong with this process unless, that is, it becomes the most used (if not only) navigation tool we possess. We, and the world around us, are in constant change. Even the tiniest deviation from the circumstances in which we found ourselves previously will have an influence on the outcome today.

For an example, when you were a child you were taught that fire burns. It's dangerous. You were told not to touch it because it will hurt you. That lesson is still with you as an adult but now you know how to use fire to your advantage. You had to adjust the lesson of your past in order to use fire safely to light a candle, to cook, to warm yourself by.

But what if you only held on to the first lesson learned and didn't deviate from it over the years? How different would your life be?

When we don't update the lessons of our past, we hinder the progress of our present. We create a wall of fear and self-doubt. The past becomes a proverbial prison, holding us back from moving forward and living and enjoying our lives as we are meant to.

The same holds true for how we define ourselves. What happened in the past is not our permanent definition. It's not a gauge for what is possible in the present. Who we were then does not determine who we are now.

Do you hold yourself in constant accountability for the mistakes you made as a young child and allow them to decide who you are today? Of course not, because we understand that those mistakes were made because we didn't know any better, we were learning, and we had some growing up to do. Despite what we may think, this is true no matter what our age. We are constantly learning and growing along the way, even if we don't realize it. Because of this, it's nearly impossible to be who you used to be. There are just too many variables.

When self is constantly confined and defined by the past there is no forward movement, no progress.  Past lessons no longer serve the purpose they are intended to but, instead, hold us captive. This is why it is so important to examine what we're holding on to, to be sure that it's not holding us back from the life we are deserving of.

Letting go of what's holding you back takes self-examination, patience and forgiveness.

Ask yourself if what you're holding on to is:
  • relevant in your life today
  • outdated thoughts/beliefs
  • positive and supportive
  • keeping you from being yourself
  • keeping you from moving foward
  • detrimental to how you feel about yourself
  • causing you anxiety, fear, shame, or guilt
  • causing feelings of inadequacy
  • making you feel undeserving of love, success, happiness,  or joy

If you find that your answers are mostly negative, it's time for some updating and clearing out.

It's okay to let go of those lessons that are no longer pertinent to the life you desire and deserve. Just because they served their purpose then, doesn't mean that they still do. No matter what the past holds, you are who you decide to be today. The life you desire for yourself is achieved one thought, one belief, one small change at a time. 




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