The Roadmap to Heroism – and Happiness!

For many years as a reporter for People magazine, The National Enquirer, The Globe, and The National Examiner, I was up to my scruples in sensational tragedies, from the O.J. Simpson story and the Jon Benet Ramsey mystery to Princess Diana’s death and countless others. Then the Columbine story broke and my life changed forever. Columbine was a devastating incident, but the irresponsible mass media hysteria that followed was worse and undeniably brought about a copycat shooting by a similarly deranged youth the following month at Heritage High School in Rockdale County, Georgia.

As I saw society depressed more and more by this journalistic “tragicide,” I knew that there were hundreds of uplifting and incredibly dramatic stories that go unwritten or relatively uncovered every day, involving people who have overcome life’s greatest obstacles to achieve happiness for themselves and their loved ones. So I quit my job and began writing about those people in my first book, Triumphs of the Heart.

In writing that inspiring book, I found people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural perspectives from one end of the country to another. What they all had in common was that after losing everything they originally thought life was about — success, money, comfort, or luxury — they realized that life’s true worth lies not in the results but deep within the process of noble and sincere living. They realized that happiness wasn’t even about overcoming their hardships but about loving others and yourself every day and in every way while enduring those hardships. Even as their own lives were plagued with troubles, they all understood they had the capacity to love and respect humanity and the right to be loved themselves.

They understood that since the beginning of time mankind has had to care for each other even as pain, suffering, and hatred exists, and even as we toil to make a living by the sweat of our brow and contend with the struggles of everyday living.

I leaned that the people who ultimately master the ability to live in this inspiring manner are real heroes to themselves and to the rest of the world. And in the grand scope of life that means that everyone can and should be a hero. Because living like a hero will yield unimaginable joy, success, and contentment for you and the rest of society.

At the heart of this hero mindset is a set of principles — integrity, duty, self-respect, faith, devotion, altruism, compassion, listening, and forgiveness — that makes our commitment to love others real and brings about remarkable changes in the lives of others as well as our own.

We can and should be a hero at our jobs, at home, even when we are waiting in line at the grocery store. In every single relationship or encounter, we must ask whether we are respecting human dignity or instead thinking about what we will gain or lose from the interaction. If we answer the latter, then it’s time to change our game plan and step up to the plate to be a hero.

The next time you are feeling down or depressed, try this simple little exercise below. It will remind you of your own heroes and your own ability to be a hero. I guarantee you it will pick you up and head you in the right direction. I call it “The Road Map to Happiness.”

1. Who do you love (pick one person) and why are they so special to you?
2. What’s the nicest thing anybody ever did for you and how did it inspire or help you?
3. What’s the kindest thing you ever did for someone else that helped to make their day or their life better? How has 4. helping that person enhanced your own life?
4. What is something positive which filled your heart with happiness that you saw somebody else do yesterday or today to help someone else? It could be a family member, a friend, or even a complete stranger who you felt made somebody happy.
5. Who loves you and how do they show it? How has their love changed your life?

Related Posts
  • Hope and faith: Expectations vs. a confident belief in truth “Don’t lose hope,” said the waitress to one of the regulars at a little Irish pub I frequent. She had just poured her heart out about losing her job. The property management company she worked for lost its shirt in the current real estate crisis and she got laid off.......
  • President Obama: Don't abort the truth By coming out four square for abortion, Obama is losing the Catholics who supported him. Dear President Obama, How could you look thousands of young and impressionable, innocent and idealistic Notre Dame Catholic graduates in the eyes and purposely mislead them? When our new president first took office a few......
  • What’s old is new — for the smart at heart The young, purposeful woman sitting next to me in the café busied herself crocheting a new carrying bag. She couldn’t be more than 25 years old, an age at which one might expect her to more likely be reading about accessories in a hip fashion magazine than making them. As......
  • Hey James Ray - Religion of Success is Religion of Death! The recent tragedy surrounding “self help” author James Arthur Ray’s sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Ariz., which killed three people has stunned the spiritual community there and left many across the nation condemning the author for abusing a culturally revered ceremony that he knew little or nothing about not......
  • No lions and tigers in sight — just a little bear By the time you read this, the New Year will have already begun, which means it’s time to start fresh with a new attitude and a new plan. With just about every single pundit telling you how bad things are, how about a quick look at what didn’t go wrong?......
Blog Traffic Exchange Related Websites
    

Comments

Leave a Reply

Powered by WP Hashcash