If you cling to something or someone, because you think without it you will be hopeless and ruined, the universe will take it away, to teach you that no, you are enough, solid happiness needs to be found in yourself first. The same if you chase something or someone thinking that if you get it you will be happy, you will feel whole. Either you won’t get it or you’ll get a taste of it and it will be taken away. Maybe if you do get it, it will turn out to be a source of constant struggle, worries and sadness. Again to teach you that first we have to find the basis for our happiness inside ourselves and can’t rely on external things or a relationship to make us happy. Simply put: what we obsess over will slip away from us.

Imagine you clutch sand in your fist. It will escape you. You have a better chance if you let it lie on your calmy stretched out palm.

Am sure you know people who got a job they weren’t desperate to get. You know people who always attract amazing partners, even though they don’t seem to make any effort to be seductive or appealing. You know people who make good money, even though they seem to think money isn’t that important. And you also know people who are the opposite. A friend who’s always looking to ‘score’ with the ladies, but is never lucky. He organizes all his activities around going to places where he could find the ideal one night stand and he never does, because his vibe is off.

You also know people who think material goods and status are going to make them happy, at peace with who they are, enough, and though they may have lots of that already, they’re always chasing more. Just to see them try hard to gather more accolades is already exhausting to watch.

A sign that people don’t feel like they are complete or enough, is that their stories, their presence will drain you. They run around trying to take as much as possible. Even giving can be taking. If you give your time, energy, gift, compliments, whatever in the hopes of getting something in return, you are not really giving, you are still trying to take. You can see this with stand-up comedians as well. The funnier ones are giving, they want you to laugh so you feel good, not because it makes them feel good.

So if you want to receive, give without expecting anything in return, give for the joy of giving, paradoxically you will start receiving more if you give, let’s say, lovingly and from a place of abundance.

This doesn’t mean you have to be reckless and irresponsible and give all your possessions away and work for people for free, you will feel bad if you do. Whatever you give, with passion, selflessly, in a positive spirit, but also responsibly, is the right kind of giving.

Which military unit will be more effective on the battlefield? A unit where every soldier is fighting to keep the guy next to him safe or a unit where soldier is focused on getting out unscathed? Fewer soldiers will die in the former than in the latter.

But how can I give in a world full of people who are ready to only take from me?

What you give out, doesn’t have to come back via the person you gave it too.

You can do good, help someone out, and write a mental cheque to the universe.

It’s usually not by giving money that we do the most good, but with acts of kindness, showing we see the potential in other people.

Looking at people not as what they are right now, but as how good they can be is also already a form of giving.

Instead of worrying about people and pointing out their faults, we can notice the good they do.

Politically this means we are better off mentioning good forces and never mentioning bad forces.

Many among us, me too, are so often harping on politicians and other influential people, and does it ever change them?

How many thoughtfully crafted opinion pieces and wonderfully sarcastic tweets would it take to change a politician?

There is no such number.

Criticism, no matter how well founded or how well formulated, isn’t going to stop them. Usually it serves only to make them and their supporters dig in their heels ever further and commit to their course of action even harder.

Be the change you want to see is a popular slogan, but how many people do you know who actually apply this? I know I certainly haven’t been applying this principle all that much in my own life either.

If we come at a situation, personal ones or political ones, from a place of anger, fear, despair and frustration we will most likely help to perpetuate or worsen that situation.

It’s so tempting though to attack and try to shut down whatever it is that bugs us so much. And when does this tactic ever work?

We feel good when we get if off of our chests and maybe we get some pats on the back, and then a short while later, the trend you hate so much and fight so hard against goes even more against our own wishes.

Fighting what we hate, instead of promoting and living what we love, puts us in a bitter vibration from which nothing good can sprout.

I know I only need to open Twitter to feel a vulcanoe erupt with bitter lava inside my heart.

I have been bothered by podcasts who have very positive messages, but never once, not even for one second, addressed the genocide in Gaza and other man made catastrophes, but maybe they were right and I was wrong.

Happy people don’t go stealing other people’s land.

Maybe sharing what builds people up is more effective in tearing down evil than relentless direct assaults on that evil.

It’s a tough lesson for me to learn and a challenge to unlearn my stubborness.