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1-Page Summary of Resisting Happiness

Overview

You can’t put a price on happiness. It’s free, but you still have to work for it. The best things in life are worth working for and finding them is no different. Luckily, there’s help with that too! Matthew Kelly has written a book about how to find happiness by overcoming the resistance we feel toward doing what matters most to us and discovering who we really are.

In the following list, I will tell you why reading is more important than having lots of money; how prayer can help with mental focus; and why embracing solitude helps defeat loneliness.

Big Idea #1: When you overcome resistance you can get more done and lead a more spiritual life.

Resistance is an everyday occurrence. When you hit the snooze button on your alarm, you’re resisting getting up and starting your day. You’ve already lost that battle by hitting the snooze button.

In other words, it’s the feeling of being too lazy to do something that you know needs doing. It is a major problem when it comes to long-term projects. Most people who start writing a book, for example, never end up finishing it because laziness or lack of confidence gets in the way.

Matthew Kelly knows a lot about getting published. He’s been in the business for years, and he regularly gets asked how to get into print. However, most of those who ask him haven’t even finished writing their own books!

Kelly tells people to get back to him once they’re done writing. Most of them don’t, because they were too lazy or procrastinated.

So, how can you beat your resistance? Well, one way to do that is to identify the obstacle. Once you know what it’s made of and why it exists, you’re better equipped to fight through it.

Another option is prayer. Kelly, for instance, spends a lot of time on the road and could easily become distracted by what he sees and hears. So he started praying every day to keep him focused.

When he prays, the Dalai Lama considers four questions. Who am I? What is my life purpose? What’s most important to me? And what’s least important to me in this moment?

By answering those questions, we can gain clarity on our purpose. It helps us to figure out what we’re passionate about and reaffirms it. That’s a great basis for making better life decisions. The added bonus is that it also leaves you spiritually fulfilled because of the answers you’ve gained from yourself.

Big Idea #2: Accepting the inevitability of death and understanding that life is a struggle for everyone can help you realize your full potential.

Finding happiness is difficult. People often think that they would be happy if they were rich or had a nice house, but it’s not true. Therefore, you need to find out what will make you truly happy. The key is confronting your mortality and discovering what really matters in life.

Kelly realized that people talk about the same things when they’re dying. He got to talking with some hospice nurses and asked them what people talked about as they were dying.

Most people regret not being true to themselves, and they wish they had communicated their feelings better. They also wish they had taken more risks in life. This provides a clue about how to live in the here and now: by pondering your deathbed speech, you can prioritize what’s important to you now. That means doing things that will make you happy, which is easier said than done because everyone faces his or her own unique struggle with happiness. Once we realize this, we become more compassionate toward others who are struggling with happiness as well.

Another example from Kelly’s life is when he got the news of his cancer diagnosis. It was a sunny day, but he realized that people were just going about their business as usual.