I saved the most important step for last.  Over the course of your lifetime this final step will probably have more of a
significant impact on your health than any of the previous 5 steps.  

Few would argue that taking on a "positive mental attitude" will improve your health, but the phrase "positive mental
attitude" can be kind of vague, so what I hope to do in this chapter is to go into great detail of what I would consider to
be the ultimate "positive mental attitude" and how to achieve it, but the short and simplistic description that I decided to
give it for this chapter is being a person who is "easily amused and impossible to offend".

If you follow the advice in this chapter it will be so difficult for anyone to effect your mood in a negative way that even if
there was a world wide great depression going on you would be completely immune to it. This is such an important step
that I want to give you 100 tips that I've learned over the years that have allowed me to become a person who is "easily
amused and impossible to offend"...  


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1. BE YOUNG AT HEART

The Average Child                                                               The Average Adult






- No wonder depression is at an all time high!
- No wonder so many people grow to be old, bitter, and set in their ways!  
- No wonder one of the biggest fear among young people today is simply the fear of getting older!

During my lifetime I have met a lot of old people who were so bitter that I have a hard time even trying to imagine them
smiling, but at the same time every single baby that I have ever met was so easily amused that all you would have to do
is make a weird face at them and they would just laugh and laugh and laugh.

So what happens to people as they get older that causes them to become so serious and unhappy?  A lot of adults will
purposely hold back smiles and laughter during certain situations out of fear of seeming "childish", or they will be too
afraid to ask questions that are on their mind because they worry that asking lots of questions the way that a child does
will make them seem unintelligent, so I would encourage you to start catching yourself whenever you feel the urge to
hold back a smile, a laugh, or a question for these reasons and to start smiling, laughing, and asking questions
whenever you feel the urge to.  

I would also encourage you to spend some time with young children and observe their behavior and realize that so
many of the things that adults get angry, depressed, or worried about are things that a child would laugh about or would
simply not care about at all.

When I find myself in a room full of adults who are all complaining about the high gas prices or who are depressed
because someone died I am like a new born baby who is too young to understand what everyone is talking about, and I
wonder why everyone around me is so unhappy.


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2. LEARN ABOUT THE VERY BIG AND THE VERY SMALL


























It's amazing to me to look at things that we can only see through a microscope as well as things that we can only see
through a telescope and to know that we're somewhere in the middle of it all.  When I look at the pictures above I can
see a lot of the same creative patterns in both of them, and when I look at natural scenery that I can see with my natural
eye sight (Such as a herd of zebras drinking from a lake.) I see the exact same creative pattern in them as well.   

What does all of this have to do with our attitudes?  The more that you look through a telescope and realize just how big
and complex the universe is the more you realize just how small and insignificant you and all of your problems really are,
and the more you look through a microscope and learn about the microscopic world (especially in your own body) the
more you realize just how big and important you are...

"Wisdom is knowing that I am nothing. Love is knowing that I am everything.  And in between the two, my life flows."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj

If you have never seen it before I highly recommend that you watch the TV series "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan.


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3. LET GO OF ATTACHMENTS

Being "attached" to something means that you will become immobilized without it.  How did you react the last time the
electricity went off in your house?  Did you become unhappy or even upset the instant it went out?  Did you feel that
there was nothing to do without electricity?  

You were born with no possessions and you can't take any of your possessions with you when you die, (including your
body) so the most freeing experience that you can have in this lifetime is to let go of any attachments that you have to
the people, things, and circumstances in your life now while you are still alive and to then spend the rest of your life free
from the fear of losing them and accepting of the fact that nothing stays the same forever.  

Many wise people have said that all of the suffering that we experience in life is the result of the attachments that we
have to the things in our life.  I strongly encourage you to start letting go of the feeling of "ownership" over the things in
your life because the more possessive you are over things the more offended you will get when something happens to
them... If you hear a story about someone that you don't know getting their car stolen it probably won't bother you much,
but if you hear the news that someone stole "YOUR" car it will probably be a very big deal to you and the amount of
stress and anxiety that you go through when you hear the news will be in direct proportion to how attached you are to
the car.  (If you are the kind of person who has a picture of your car as your profile picture on "Facebook" than you will
probably be very hurt if something happens to it.)


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4. DON'T SPEND ANYTIME "REHEARSING" A NEGATIVE FUTURE IN YOUR MIND

A highly negative person will typically spend several hours a week (or even each day) rehearsing arguments in their
mind that they imagine they will get into the next time they see or talk to certain people.  

This is a huge waste of time and energy for many reasons. First of all the argument may not even happen in real life or
it may only last for 30 seconds, but you spend countless hours going through it over and over again in your mind and it
causes you a lot of unnecessary stress.  Plus the only way that the argument will go exactly as you are imagining that it
will is if the other person follows your imaginary "script" and says and does exactly what you are expecting them to, and
since you can't know for sure what anyone else is going to say or do it is unlikely that you will be able to use most of the
key lines that you are rehearsing over and over again.

From this moment on start catching yourself anytime that you are having an imaginary argument in your head with
someone who isn't even there and realize that if you are expecting and even rehearsing a future of being offended by
other people you are setting yourself up for just that.

Instead of spending your time planning arguments in your head avoid arguments at all costs, and if you find yourself in
one realize what you are doing and try to end it as quickly and peacefully as possible.


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5. KNOW THAT THE WORLD AROUND YOU IS A MIRROR

The world is like a giant mirror and although 2 people might be looking at the exact same thing one of them might be
seeing it through a "funny mirror" that distorts things in order to match their beliefs.  (An anorexic woman who only
weighs 72 pounds will look in the mirror and see an overweight woman staring back at her, because she has a strong
built in belief that she is overweight and this belief greatly distorts her vision.)

Our perception of the world is severely limited when we go through life with a lot of limiting beliefs, and the people who
are prejudice have the hardest time seeing what is in front of them.

Albert Einstein said that the most important question that you can ask in this lifetime is if you live in a friendly Universe or
an unfriendly Universe and he said this because if you view the world as a positive place you will be far better at noticing
the people and circumstances that confirm your
optimistic belief, and if you view the world as a negative place you will
have trouble seeing positivity even if you are looking directly at it.  (Even if someone gives you a compliment you will
view it as "sarcasm" or some kind of manipulation to get something from you
because you have such a pessimistic view
of the world
.)


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6. STOP LOOKING FOR REASONS TO COMPLAIN

I know someone who used to have a job that involved answering phone calls from angry TV viewers who were calling in
to complain about TV commercials that they felt were too vulgar, offensive, or sexual for TV and this person told me that
when they would talk to these people they would often here these people's TV's playing in the background and all you
could here was "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!"...  (When a person who is watching the Jerry Springer show is calling to complain
about a TV commercial being too raunchy it is probably because they are someone who looks for reasons to complain.)

Complaining can easily become and addiction, and a very hard one to break at that.  For some people complaining
about the weather, the president, or their job is nothing more than their way of saying "Hello" to other people who love to
complain.  

Catch yourself anytime that you are about to complain about something or someone, and then ask yourself the simple
question, "Is there anything that I can do to fix the problem that I am about to complain about?"  If the answer is "Yes"
th
en why not do something about it rather than complain about it?  And if the answer is "No" it makes no sense to
complain about it because you have already established that there is nothing that you can do to about it
and
complaining will only make things worse
.


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7. DON'T WAIT 10 YEARS TO LAUGH ABOUT SOMETHING

Recently I was at a friend's house who is 23 years old and at one point his dad started laughing and asked me, "Has my
son ever told you about the time when he was 13 and he destroyed my car?"  He then proceeded to tell me how when
my friend was only 13 he had never driven a car before and one night he stayed up late and as soon as his parent's
went to sleep he took his dad's car keys, went outside, and tried to drive his dad's car to a friend's house, but he ended
up going off the road and into a creek and he wrecked the car beyond repair.  

What was interesting is that both my friend and his dad were laughing hysterically while he was telling the story, yet I'm
sure that on the day that it happened none of them were laughing about it.

In today's society it is considered offensive to make jokes about certain things until a certain amount of time has passed.
(This amount of time is not written down anywhere, and it is basically a situation where the longer you wait to make the
joke the less people will feel offended by it.)  We need to learn to abolish time limits that we give ourselves before we
can laugh at the experiences in our life.  

The sooner you can laugh about something the less stress you will have to go through because of it.  If you know that
what is going on at the moment is something that will be a very entertaining and funny story 10 years from now how can
you not find any humor in it now?  

If you say that it's never funny the moment that something bad is happening to you I'm guessing that there have been
times in your life when you saw a total stranger trip and fall and you wanted to laugh about it the moment that you saw it,
so why can't you laugh the instant that something like that happens to you?  Some people do laugh at themselves in
these situations and the people who can do this have far less stress in their life than the rest of us.


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8. REALIZE THAT NO ONE CAN OFFEND YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION

We like to blame others people and circumstances for the negativity that comes out of us, but the truth is that in order
for you to "let out some negativity" you must first have negativity inside of you in the first place and the people who
offend us are simply giving us an excuses to let some of it out.

Imagine that a stand-up comedian is telling jokes in front of 100 people and you are one of the people in the crowd, and
in the middle of the show you get so upset at one of the jokes that you walk out.  It would be tempting in that moment for
you to say that the reason that you left was because the comedian was being offensive, but if that were true why didn't
the other 99 people get up and leave as well?

It's important to note that when people get offended about something (such as a joke in the example above) there's a
good chance that they wouldn't have been so upset about it if they heard the joke from someone else, or if they heard it
in a different environment, or if the
y weren't already upset about something else when they heard it, which is strong
evidence that we don't get offended due to things going on around us, but rather we get offended when we a let our
guards down and let ourself become emotionally vulnerable and irritable
to the point that even a joke could ruin our day.


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9. UNDERSTAND THAT THE PEOPLE WHO OFFEND YOU MIGHT NOT MEAN TO

Have you ever had the experience of having someone get really mad at you because they took something that you said
or did the wrong way?   Or have you ever had the experience of getting angry at someone for behaving strangely
around you and then you found out later that the reason they were behaving strangely was because someone close to
them had just passed away or something of that nature and then you felt bad for being so quick to judge their behavior?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions than you know that it feels terrible to be in one of these situations.

If someone is behaving in a negative way around you for no apparent reason please keep in mind that there is probably
a very good explanation for their behavior that you simply aren't aware of and try not take it personally.  If I was walking
down the street and a total stranger started yelling at me I wouldn't join them in their negativity by yelling back at them,
but rather I would wonder what in the world that person was going through and why they would be so upset that they
would be taking it out on someone that they don't even know.  

The next time someone is behaving negatively around you realize that the possible explanations for their behavior are
endless, and just remember that the worst thing you can do
for them or yourself is to join them in their behavior.


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10.  LIMIT YOUR TIME AROUND NEGATIVE PEOPLE

We all know that sitting in a room full of smokers is not good for your health and neither is sitting in a break-room at
work full of co-workers complaining about how much they hate their jobs.  "Negative People" are often referred to as
"Energy Vampires" because spending time with them can leave you feeling drained, unmotivated, and depressed.  (The
time will come when you are so optimistic and confident that you simply can't be "dragged down" by negative people, but
until you reach that level it is best to avoid being around them as much as possible.)

Please be very careful about what websites you visit while on the internet.  The last thing that you need is to be
immersed in negativity, so avoid spending any time at all (much less several hours a week) in chat rooms and on-line
forums where negative people come together to complain about how much they hate recent movies, c
elebrities, and
music
and then get in arguments with each other over it. (I've noticed that even on websites like Facebook a lot of
people will get on there just to complain about how they had to spend 2 hours in line at the DMV.)  There are far better
things that you can be doing in your time.

Also understand that if you join negative people in their complaining you are only making it worse for them by reinforcing
their negative beliefs.  People that I know who are addicted to complaining know that I won't join them in their negativity
so they don't bother trying to get me to do it.  Early on negative people may try to find ways to "push your buttons" but
once they realize that you have no buttons to push they will cease to try.


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                 THIS LAST CHAPTER IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
         THE REST OF THE TIPS WILL BE POSTED IN THE NEAR FUTURE
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                                                   BACK HOME
100 WAYS TO BE A PERSONS WHO IS
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