Well-Being

(Financial) well-being is not about how much money one has -- as though simply having “enough,” will be all that is necessary to enjoy all the days and moments of their lives.

Rather, well-being is derived from how one handles both the good and bad fortune of their lives: some people cannot handle success very well, and so they will fail because that is their comfort zone -- recounting and complaining about their misfortune, while the prosperous person, makes the best and most out of whatever fate has dealt him and so he has to work with -- knowing that by doing well at that, his fortune is bound to improve.

The “failure,” thinks that nothing that he does makes any difference, and so that becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy of their lives. Nothing they do makes a difference, and everything is beyond their control -- and so the only thing they think they can do in life, is to tell somebody else what they should do -- because they themselves, are incapable of doing anything.

Many of course, become editors and teachers -- the countless professions of people, who can do very little for themselves, while thinking they can do everything for everybody else -- because they have no personal interest in the outcome -- not even caring if they make that difference -- because as they were convinced from the start, they can make no difference for themselves. They can only serve others.

And so it doesn’t seem to bother a lot of these professionals that they can get up in front of a class full of people, in terrible condition, and obviously knowing nothing about what they are talking about, and proceed to lead a class of other professional people in any course of instruction -- and nobody is the wiser for it, or notices the cognitive dissonance -- the huge disparity in what they are talking about, and how it actually manifests in this expert giving the advice (instruction).

Of course if it were so easy, everybody would be doing it -- as most people do these days -- not because they really have a great insight into what it is they do, but they know what everybody else knows -- in that category, and if one doesn’t know that there can be any real difference, because they all seem to be saying and doing the same thing, it is because they haven't really inquired into these things but know only what somebody else wants them to know, as the entirety of what can be known.

A person who has not experienced failure and frustration, is very fearful, unsettled and distraught when it does present itself for the first time in their lives -- so much so that they may kill themselves or others, or more likely, blame everybody or only one other, for everything going wrong in the world and their lives. Obviously, that is not the entirety of what can be known, and if one is not prepared in life for the many different outcomes, they will surely be disappointed at most every turn.

Thus, well-being is this capacity to deal with both the good and bad, and to be able to transform the current conditions to that which is more to one’s liking and desires. Undoubtedly, it begins with simple practices, until one is quite used to the more difficult -- as easily.

Like in all things, the first step is the hardest, and so should be made as simple and easy as possible -- and not the barrier it is beginning participation as the "experts" try to make it seem.