"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. " - The Dalai Lama
Get Started Finding Happiness and Success
Truly happy people can be more effective people. No matter what your current situation is, you can be happier, learn how to motivate yourself, put yourself on a positive and realistic road to success, or reinvent yourself into the kind of person you want to be.
This website includes multiple segments of guided readings. This is followed by three of my Lawrence J. Danks books:
- Your Unfinished Life - Finding Happiness and Success Through Kindness
- For College Students: You and Your Future - a career and job hunting guide for college students
- It’s a Matter of Life and Death: Growing Up in a Funeral Home and What I Learned Since - finding happiness, curing curiosity about funeral homes, helping those facing serious illness, aiding those who are grieving from loss of a loved one and seeking recovery
Take notes and jot down any ideas you get along the way. These resources are simply a starting point to set goals for yourself and to improve your outlook and your life.
Many outstanding happiness and success works are cited here. It's important to experience them yourself by reading from the original sources. The tests contained in some of them are valuable and are an essential element in knowing how to move forward more effectively. Also, what I've read and summarized, may not be as relevant as something else you would see that would speak more directly to you in an original work.
It's my hope that you will refer others to this site through your associations, and through social media, so that the information here may help them too. Check back in periodically. The site will be augmented and revised on a continuing basis.
Using These Resources
1. Follow through the material sequentially (which I'd recommend) Under each heading, read the introductory material, then click on the readings in order.
or
2. Scan the list of segments and select one. Some may not have the time to complete all the reading that's contained here, so if necessary, click on particular sections that interest you. While my goal is to have everyone get the full benefit of all that's contained here, I'd rather have visitors derive some value than none.
The best way to think of these resources is that they are intended to be a "bridge builder", leading you to further detailed and customized study that will help you learn more about yourself and lead to other educational experiences, and also to professionals, who are highly trained and experienced to help you. Reference to the resources shown below is only the first step. It is not an end in itself.
It's important to your success to seek out a variety of opinions. By the time you finish, you will have had many, including mine. But that's not enough. You need to consult with people who know you best and also with others who are familiar with areas you have an interest in. All the advice you're going to get from others is not going to be good. You might also not agree with all of it either. Just take it all in and evaluate it as you go along. Keep an open mind too.
The benefit of these resources, and any further courses of action it leads you to, can only be determined by the actual steps you take to improve your life. Just reading about it, while highly worthwhile in creating the proper motivation and frame of mind to help you move forward, is no substitute for setting meaningful goals and actually doing something to accomplish them.