Epicurean Happiness Guidance – for some: a cold lima bean
I have sent my Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” to 26 people I know and appreciate FREE for their personal usage only. I told them that I would be very glad if they could give me some feedback about how they liked it and whether it was useful for them. Six of them thanked for it. 20 of them ignored it.
Mentioning this to a friend of mine he reminded me that people never value what they don’t pay for. Besides, these people were not a targeted audience, because they were not acutely in pain.
In the words of J.D. Salinger I must have acted “in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean” when they were satiated.
He asked me whether I learned my lesson and I am still wondering what lesson.
My book “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness”
My Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” is finished and the book cover is being designed. I hope to be able to make it technically available for stress-FREEDOM and happiness seekers soon.
From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness will take them on a journey like no other: Its road is paved with solid research, yet its scientific foundation is generously sprinkled with song lyrics, witticisms and words by scholars, philosophers and writers, refreshing graphics and photography, real-life examples, a few well-chosen jokes and a smidgeon of irreverence.
stress-FREEDOM action plans and projects for a truly happy life
The most important element of stress freedom guidance is enabling the guidees to work out their stress-FREEDOM action plans and designing their own projects for a truly happy life.
All the theory of the world will not suffice to produce one single happy life. This is why stress-FREEDOM guidees are trained to become the project managers of their own lives. They learn to set goals and milestones, identify resources and develop strategies for creating their own authentically happy lives. They also learn to organize themselves and their support teams. They learn the basics of team building and organizational development so they are equipped to step into the circle of like-minded friends following the same road towards happiness through stress-FREEDOM guiding each other as well as those seekers who are further back somewhere at the beginning of the road.
integrating the happiness ingredients
Having reached stress-freedom the guidees are ready and prepared to integrate the happiness ingredients identified by scientific research into their own individual lives.
800 years of continuous Epicurean communal life in friendship furnished the stress-freedom seekers with the ingredients for happiness as identified by 20th and 21st century scientific research:
In “The formula for Happiness” Stefan Klein resumes the results of scientific research as follows
Happiness ingredients
1. Quality of relationship with partner
2. sex/exercise/sport/dance
3. friendship
4. self-determination, autonomy, FREEDOM
5. civic sense, responsibility
6. social equality
7. voluntary work for others
Epicurean learning communities furnished their members with the social environment necessary for the creation and perfection of the happiness ingredients they needed. At the same time they learned to use the think-tools of reflection and the communication-improvement-tool of giving and receiving feedback to be able to eliminate the happiness blockers as identified by Epicurus and reconfirmed by scientific research: stress based on fears resulting from self-deception, false expectations, competition, envy, jealousy, the rat race.
At this stage the guidees are encouraged to develop communities based on identical intentions, value systems and strategies. By this time they are equipped with the necessary tools to shape the synergic satisfiers described by Max-Neef that will enable them and empower them to lead authentically happy lives with like-minded friends.
getting congruent: aligning plan and goals with needs, strategies and actions with values
After having rediscovered, sharpened and trained their think-tools the guidees learn to apply them for getting congruent: aligning their plans and goals with their fundamental needs, their strategies and actions with their values.
Incongruence between needs and desires, goals and needs, strategies and values are at the root of stress. Eliminating the incongruence the guidees eliminate the very causes of stress and make the way free towards stress-freedom, which is the first station on the road to happiness.
This is a process of fine tuning and habit formation under experienced guidance.
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