In Illinois, businesses are propelled to new heights through forward-thinking investments, ensuring that companies base here remain at the forefront of industry trends and breakthroughs. Be in Illinois, where infrastructure, talent, and an ecosystem of like-minded companies and support organizations meet to shape our economy. Brighter future for your business. Visit intersectillinois.org/expand for more information. That's intersectillinois.org. Or slash e x p a n d. This podcast is sponsored by Monarch Money. Are you saving to reach your financial goals? goals isn't just about getting more money but by managing what you have. And the best way to manage your money? Monarch money. Monarch Money is a new kind of finance app that's intuitive, powerful, ad-free, and takes the headaches out of budgeting. When you go to monarchmoney.com/podcast. Monarch puts all your accounts, investments, transactions, and finances at your fingertips.

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Inspirational Living podcast. A special thank you to our new patron Jeremy Johnson. To learn how you can become a patron for as little as three dollars a month and gain access to full transcripts, ad-free podcasts, and more, please visit Livinghour.org/inspiration. Thank you. Today's reading was edited and adapted from Just Being Happy, a little book of happy thoughts compiled by Grover Edwin Osgood, published in 1916. If you want to be happy yourself, make others happy. If you want to make others happy, be first happy yourself. There you have the whole formula.

Our happiness today is to an enormous extent in our own hands. A person is happy when they think they are. And why should I not this morning think so? Why should I be gloomy when I can be glad? Here inside me is a force that can drive away the clouds. Our will power, which can call up good thoughts and disperse bad ones, which can fall back on gracious memories as a refuge from present evils, which in a word, can be destroyed. Make its own weather. Our willpower, if we will only use it, is our philosopher's stone that turns all things into gold. The more we give it to do, the better it works.

The habit of expecting success and believing in happiness. Nothing succeeds like success. Nothing makes happiness like happiness. There is a beautiful and an ugly way in which to say almost everything, and happiness depends upon which way we take. You can upset a person for the whole day. By the harsh way in which you address them in the morning. Or you may give them a beautiful start by the cheeriness of your

greeting. So not only in words, but in all the little common courtesies and duties of life. Think of the beautiful way of doing them. Happiness comes not from the power of possession, but from the power of appreciation. Therefore, above most other things, it is wise to cultivate the powers of appreciation. The happiness of your life depends upon the character. Of your thoughts. Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it can... In having and getting and in being served by others but it consists

In giving and in serving others. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. Robert Louis Stevenson talks of the great task of happiness but happily. Happiness is not a task. It is not even an occupation. It is a quality of life. Happiness depends on helpfulness. That's the reason joy is there.

Is social. People are not happy when they seek after happiness. They become steeped in happiness when they undertake to promote the joy of others. Strength is success. Strength to be. Strength to do. Strength to love. Strength to live. Strength is not happiness, nor amusement, nor contentment. These indeed will come, but they are not the object. To be truly happy is not a question of how we end, but how we begin. Of what we want, and not what we have.

If all could realize the power of even a small pleasure, how much happier the world would be. And be sensuous. So do people realize how often they are revived, kindled, strengthened by some little thing, some word of praise, some token of remembrance, some proof of affection or recognition. Life is for character. It is to be lived and lived happily. Things should be put aside. That is not essential to one thing. Namely more life. More and higher thoughts.

More hours of nobler and deeper emotion, and truer friendships. Happiness does not come in boulders generally, but in pebbles. So I think we all ought to be thankful when we receive such a pebble, and how much more delightful to give one.

A kindly face and a gentle tone will make your family happier than anything else you can do for them. The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do. The happy person is the one who finds occasions for joy at every step. They do not have to look for them, they just find them. There's no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world which remain unknown even to ourselves. Or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. We can't choose happiness. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us, for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard, but I have felt that if I let it go forever, I should have no light through the darkness of life. a little...

Thought will show you how vastly your own happiness depends upon the way other people interact with you. Turn the idea around and remember that just so much are you adding to the pleasure or the misery of other people's days. Happiness is not a luxury but a necessity. The beneficial effect of mental sunshine on life, ability, strength, vibrancy, and happiness. Vitality and endurance is profound. So if your whole world is upside down and joy and cheer are far from you, play for an hour with a six year old child and see if their laughter and faith are not veritable signposts on the road to happiness.

In the long run, people are generally apt to get what they look for. Those who are seeking trouble usually find it. The same goes for a happy disposition. There are two things which will make us happy in this life. The first is, never to vex ourselves about what we cannot help. And the second, never to vex ourselves about what we can help. The happy have whole days.

And those they use, the unhappy have but ours, and those they lose. We cannot have happiness until we forget to seek for it. We cannot find peace until we enter the path of self-sacrificing usefulness. The first requisite for enduring happiness is in having work to do in which you believe. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it. And if you want pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one begins to love work, their life is

Is a happy one. One of Dr. Johnson's ingredients of happiness was quote To have a little less time than you want. That means always to have so many things you want to see, to have, and to do. That no day is quite long enough for all you think you would like to get done before you go to bed. To be happy and make others happy is the highest duty and privilege in life. Ill temper is the key.

Of crimes and misdemeanors. Ill temper is contagious and a person has no more right to go about scattering germs of bad temper then they have to propagate smallpox or the measles. Sunshine from all and for all should be our motto. An instant quarantine in Is the penalty for our failure to live up to it. I believe a happy disposition contributes more to success in life than any other single element. Happiness is inward. And not outward and so it does not depend on what we have.

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