be

hAPPY

GUIDE FOR FULL LIFE

JORGE ACEVEDO VARGAS

INDEX
MY CHOOSINGS
FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE. Loss of Address

- The Easy and Hardness of Being Happy

- Once Upon Happiness
- Pain of Humanity
- Clash of Emotions
- Fail Exits
- The Enemies of Happiness
- Kindness with Low Self-Value
- The Rent of Naivety
- Between Hunger and Fear
- A World in Draft
- Fantasies’ Market
- Rivalry and Ostentation
- Sickness of the Century
- Shortage of Love
- Loss of Center

CHAPTER TWO. Life Project

- Human Project
- Seeking Wisdom
- Myself ’s Best Version
- The Force of Memory
- Life Size
- Between my Skin and my Soul
- Soil of Dreams
- The Art of Being Happy
- Endless Youth
- A Trip from the Illusion to Happiness
- Much more than Surviving
- Happiness with Identity
- The Best Teacher
- Full of Energy
- Love
- Degree in Humanity
- The Basics of Happiness
- Strengthened Happiness
- Happy Children and Youth People

CHAPTER THREE. Challenges to Build Our Happiness

- The Challenge of Change

- New Agenda Challenge
- New Story Challenge
- New Architecture Challenge
- New Fonts Challenge
- Realism Challenge
- First-Range People
- Big Dreams Challenge
- Convictions Challenge
- Challenge of Wisdom
- Good Decisions Challenge
- Humility Challenge
- Success Challenge
- Challenge of Discipline
- Modulate the Rhythm Challenge
- Inner Healing Challenge
- Assertive Communication Challenge
- Good Habits Challenge
- Dignity Challenge
- Generosity Challenge
- Family Challenge
- Friendship Challenge
- Social Inclusion Challenge
- Nature's Challenge
- Friendly Environments Challenge
- Magic Talent Challenge
- Healthy Diet Challenge
- Challenge to face the Sickness
- Challenge to face the Death
- Spirituality Challenge
- New Day Challenge
THANKS

MY CHOOSINGS

I have chosen that nothing will ever be the same as in the past
time. That the ghosts and fears of yesterday will never again have
permission in my heart.

I decided that, even if my skin breaks into a thousand pieces, my

soul will not throw into the garbage the peace that my years have
managed to conquer.

I decided to manage my own life at the risk of being wrong,

without giving up to the advice of those who have come out
ahead from failures and difficulties.

I decided to include the demons of freedom in the album of my

loves, because they have become faithful allies of my happiness.
I decided open mind to navigate the seas of the planet, so that
nothing of the human being can scandalize me.

I decided to defend the land of the poor, although my

philosophy will never be poverty.
I decided that my happiness will be in the open field, away from
the skyscrapers, and near the tree and nature.

I decided to live, and to live in the beautifully way, but without

spoiling the landscape where the Universe placed me times ago.

FOREWORD

And, why a book about Happiness?

1. To tell us that we are not a failed project, that under this skin
hides a masterpiece born in the heart of the Universe.
2. To learn to live 24 hours a day connected to life.
3. To live beautifully, driving our time without surprises or fears.
4. To stop making problems to the problems.
5. To live in harmony with this beautiful paradise that God gave
us.
6. To learn to see the beautiful part of our experiences.
7. To rewrite on our scars the history that the planet does not
yet know.
8. To give more reasons to our heart and inspire it to live big
dreams.
9. To strengthen our character so that nothing makes us lose the
way of our dignity and our faith.
10. To keep our spirit fighting in front of the challenges that life
put us.
11. To inaugurate a smile on our face every second and keep our
five senses in the path of surprise and fascination.
12. To teach our soul the virtues that will be the best teacher of
our inner peace.
13. To give full energy to our life, 24/24, seven days a week.
14. To recognize that the Universe is the celestial stage that
allows us to put the most beautiful fantasies to flight.
15. To tell the world that happiness is not only possible but
necessary absolutely.
And for more, and more, and more. Because life is a like a
market of countless delicacies that we cannot waste.

It is evident that the life of many people resembles a clock in

some old church tower whose machinery was stopped times
ago, without the possibility of counting its next seconds, trapped
by some event that spoiled its gear and condemned it to being
an obsolete and cheap object.

It is not easy to live like puppets stained with pain, who have
seen their lives fall apart in sadness, or simply trapped in anxiety,
while others in their neighborhood smile victoriously, like kings
enjoying beautiful paradises.

That is why I want to tell you, dear reader, that this book not
only represents a Life Project for some of us, but above all an
Inner Growth Challenge that will require us to walk to the top
of a mountain of virtues, from where we can see other
mountains full of life and smiles that we have still to enjoy.
Because being happy is not only possible, but necessary
absolutely. So, we must stop looking for excuses and get
involved in making our life something beautiful and tasty,
without delaying this moment any longer. Otherwise, we would
be condemning our seconds in the Universe to an insipid
moment, bored and worthless pastime. Because the after does
not exist, today is the time for coffee with friends, the time to
take a walk with a friend before the knees begin to curse the
pain, the opportunity to establish an enterprise that offers
finances to our dreams and pays our tastes and our expenses.

This is a challenge that requires us to undress not only the

vitiated reality that hides under our scars, but also the social
environment in which we have moved since we were born. Two
realities that we must face realistically, in order, to make it easier
for our emotions to find their way to Inner Peace, the same that
ensures our true state of happiness, that means, full harmony
with the Universe.

The commitment is to raise the Volume to our Personal Esteem,

and make our Inner Being feel that we are not a Failed Creation,
on the contrary, keep the feeling that this skin and its content
are a Marvelous Work born in the heart of the Universe to great
life experiences. Commitment to build a Self-esteem that is
totally in harmony with Humility, without those exaggerated
positions that can lead us to arrogance. Commitment to improve
the quality of our relationships with others, especially with those
who are part of our family record.

To build our character to be recognized and distinguished as

someone who has a voice and a vote in the decisions that
concern us. Give a higher level of emotion to our actions, a
greater flow of vibes and energies to our hearts, of dreams and
illusions, of everything that contributes to carrying our life to
the maximum of positive experiences.

It is not about becoming perfect men and women, of those who

do not fit on this planet of learning, but about trying some lines
of action that help us achieve a new level in our own degree of
humanity. Because being better person will help us to be more
accepted and trusted by the other people and will offer us
greater skills to drive the problems that come to our lives every
day.

Will it be impossible to restore our face to its natural shine, to

give our heart the firmness and temper it deserves? Is it
impossible to remove those obstacles that damage our
relationship, delay our happiness and make us losers, that have
transformed us into one more thing in the heap to end up being
used and abused by a society that mistreats the weak and
negotiates with their hunger and with their fears? Will it be
impossible to build healthy and happy societies that not only
have bread in their stomachs, but also a heart full of virtues and
hopes for the next day?

It is good to say that imperfection is what makes life to be life,

that what remains to be done in our inner being is what gives
office to our early mornings. Thus, imperfection gives
movement to our existence, because it is there in its emptiness
where our dreams and our desires, our struggles and our projects
are born. What would life be worth if we had been born
encapsulated like an animal, without individual project and
without illusions for the next day?

It is good that a negative emotion is followed by a positive one,

that a virus is followed by a relief, that a remedy is followed by
a tiredness, that a thirst is followed by a lemonade, a stress is
followed by a trip to the sea, that a mistake is followed by a
learning lesson.

Imperfection is the best gift from Heaven. It represents our

playground on the planet, our laboratory for leisure and fantasy,
for the footprint and personal pictogram that we will leave in
the cave of the Universe.

If we wanted to live in a perfect world, we would have to

redesign the wombs of our mothers so that, instead of humans,
they conceived robotic machines. It would be necessary to
deactivate all the sensors of our mind, to transform it into a
baseball’s ball that could withstand all the hits to the best of its
possibilities. In other words, we would have to change the
Universe, and that would be to deny that life is created in the
dialogue of opposites, between the health and fatigue of our
cells, between tranquility and neighborhood harassment,
between religious beliefs and the appetites of the flesh. It would
be to deny that we are part of a constantly changing scenario,
with actors who enter and leave every second of the scene. It
would be like denying that life requires these contradictions for
it to be life.

It is not about eternalizing the cells of our body, that we teach

our heart set survival records. Rather, it is a question of making
pleasant what can be pleasant, of improving the attitude and
vision in front of each event, of learning to read the good part
of the story, of bringing our emotions to a good end, in order,
to be able to move forward with greater optimism towards the
next second of our life.

It is about recharging ourselves every minute with the best

energies to increase the power of our motivations, so that our
inner being, our soul, is once again filled with illusions, so that
we make our dreams more accessible, our desires and aspirations
more tangible.

It is a pity that millions of human beings on the planet do not

seem to find their place in this sky of a million of colors, in this
paradise where love is possible, where smiles have been granted
to many people, where the happiness swarms everywhere, where
there are multitudes of arms wanting to hug, mouths wanting to
kiss, beautiful people hoping to leave a mark of friendship on
our bodies and in our hearts. Territory where pain builds angels,
where illness teaches virtues, where death reminds us at every
moment that we all brought an expiration date, that we do not
belong to a body but to a humanity that unfolds from generation
to generation.

Thus, my dear reader, these letters want to offer you a thousand

reasons to transform your life-problem into a happy life. They
want to be a light to show the positive side of each of your early
morning, a ship that will help you travel from the surface of your
skin to the depths of your heart, from your brittle earth to the
solidity of your soul, from the insecurity of your ignorance to
the strength that knowledge gives you, from selfishness of your
heart to the generosity of your soul.

And if we have into you a new model of human being, we can

imagine a new model of family and society, without overseers
and slaves, without levels or social classes. A being that applies
himself to recognize in his neighbor the son of the Universe,
with his name, his dignity, his scars, his dreams, his fears, his
identity, his likes, his dislikes, his past, his future, his bread, and
his Projects.

These lyrics are intended to be a vitamin for those who have lost
their appetite for existence, who have seen how the disease has
taken away their best dreams, how sentimental crises have
suppressed the motivation to continue struggling. This is a
family’s recipe for individuals who, no matter how hard they try,
their days seem to go from failure to failure, from anxiety to
anxiety.

But this is not an instrument to be imitated letter by letter,

because we were not made in a serial system, nor are we robotic
artifacts intended for manipulation, nor are we a recording or a
video that was made behind our backs so that we could interpret
throughout our presence on the planet.

This is a simple notebook of ideas to inspire new actions, new

dreams, new ways of looking life, because when a human being
can dream his own dreams, and those dreams are held by the
hand of virtue, then can become a person with high degrees of
personal satisfaction.

It is about making a stop along the way, reviewing what our

backpack carries, what is left over, what is missing, because it is
especially important that we must not leave for tomorrow these
desires of starting to smile twenty-four over twenty-four hours
each day.

This will imply, of course, shaking our hearts and brains to see
what good we have learned from all these years lived, convinced
that happiness will be real when we manage to permanently
consolidate Inner Peace within ourselves. Not an Inner Peace of
caves, which hides from every problem life has, but one that
makes us live in friendship with everything that moves around
us. A street and bustling peace, friend of the party and nature,
as well as the dance and the whisper of the waterfall.

CHAPTER ONE.
LOSS OF ADDRESS

THE EASY AND THE HARDNESS OF BEING

HAPPY

People are usually so happy

as they make their minds be
(Abraham Lincoln)

It is difficult to be happy when your dignity has been beaten and

violated since before you were born. Hard to be happy when
your neighborhood is beautiful while your own space is a
scavenging nest covered in cardboard and old cans, with floors
that breathe moisture and mold.

It is difficult to be happy when your children do not have a piece

of bread for their stomach or a lemonade for their thirst. When
the person you decided to live with, uses you and abuses you
like an old rag, and then replaces you with someone with sexier
skin.
Difficult to be happy when everyone is going to receive a lecture
on the wisdom of the world in the best colleges and universities,
while your boys must get a coin at the traffic light cleaning
windshields to ensure half a loaf in their day.

It is easy, however, to be happy when your body breathes health.

when your social security is paid, as well as your studies in the
best educational centers. Easy when your genetics gives you the
talent to sing in a big concert. It's easy when you have a family
with a dad and a mom who watches over your dreams. When
you have someone who fills you with hugs every day and tells
you "Go ahead. I love you. Take my help. I am here for you".

ONCE UPON A TIME THE HAPPINESS

The rag dolls, the paper plane

they left never to return
(Carlo Vives)

Where did those childhood days go when we laughed aloud with

our neighbors, and the smile was the natural thing on our face
while we shared a candy or a glass of lemonade? And since when
did we give up our good vibes, to set up a red light for all those
who flirted with our friendship?

Since when did our heart go away from the smile? Since when
did we stop dreaming our best dreams, so that the days and
nights turned into scary nightmares? What happened? What
happened? What event damaged our inner chip? Which demons
pierced our skin to possess it? Did adolescence find us lacking
in hugs and good advice? What happened so that one day we
dedicated ourselves to collecting rivals and enemies, to let
ourselves be frightened by the wind and the storm, by the
shadows of the night and the howling of nocturnal dogs?

Time to ask ourselves, what reasons did we have to oversaturate

our skin and declare war on our soul, making vice our best friend
and putting virtue as the great spoiler of our lives? How did we
get to be so narcissistic and quarrelsome, or so timid to defend
our dignity and our place in society? What led us to remove from
our inventory the virtue of love towards our fellow men, to
emigrate to the planet of greed, ambition, revenge, selfishness,
and all mockery of God's Creation?

We cannot believe that the evil on the planet was inaugurated

by an apple in paradise, or that it was a certain Eve who started
this entire suicidal debacle of human tyranny. It would be naive
to marry a story like that, with a text that says that the Humanity
was born as a failed project.

Ask ourselves… What happens to us that anything breaks our

patience? And why does fatigue seem to take over all our
muscles, as if the reasons for living had already been exhausted,
the reasons for making this planet the best corner of the
Universe?

In what old room did we put that Wonderful God who delicately
built the fibers of our body and manufactured this huge and
beautiful stage for our life?

Observing the children's room, it is good to tell ourselves...

Where did the hugs and laughter, the ice cream time and the ball
game, the picnic and the pool, the tickles and the fairy tales go?
Pitifully we fill them with toys born in the market, and we gave
them little time to listen to their worries, their pains, their
dreams, and fantasies.
Ask ourselves... Why do we turn our kids' weekends into new
classes to try to transform them into neighborhood
superheroes? To hide them from the filth of society? What do
we want with them? To suffocate her tears and her tantrums,
just like that? Mortgage their childhood and their laughter,
anticipating adulthood with productive practices in the name of
such “adult responsibility”? That they remain in the rigor of
success and discipline to teach them the strategies of how to
appropriate the planet, turning them early into puppets of the
wonderful world market?

Ask ourselves... When and where do we stop looking at the sky

to concentrate on building a monument to our own navel, to
our own pride? What is the desire to try to consume the planet
in one bite, buying a thousand things, as if everything were going
to end tonight? Ask us, ask us

We became consumers of suffering, rivalry, ambition,

selfishness, anxiety. We wanted a world that accommodated our
tastes, a highly paid job, a stable relationship; we wanted to be
listened for everybody, we wanted to be applauded, we wanted,
we wanted. But life did not behave according to our
expectations. Then came the despair, the frustration, the lack of
motivation, the tension, the low energy, the tears, the cry of
anguish, the anger, the disapproval, the tedium, the annoyance,
the bills to pay, the family envy.

We became losers and started looking for shelters and strategies

that were associated with violence. The toxins began to eat away
at our fragile joys, and at the process they were taking our skin
to the cemetery.

And, while we went low into depression and discouragement,

we masked our face with a thousand artifices, to make believe
that everything was going smoothly, while our soul was
submerged in an ocean of doubts and worries. The back hurt,
the migraine appeared, the colon worked at half speed, the dark
circles become evident on the face, the gallbladder collected
stones, the heart disarticulated its rhythm, the brain became
forgetful, the body screamed what the soul suffered.

And it seemed that no matter how indifferent we wanted to

show you in the face of difficulties, nothing was enough because
in our square meter situations were so penetrating, so harsh and
insulting, that we could not avoid them with the required
character, simply because that character had not been built
enough.

PAIN OF HUMANITY

Tell me…
Why abused children?
Why had the elderly forgotten?
Why the forbidden dreams?
(Jose Luis Perales)

Must hurt us that broken happiness of the child unfairly beaten

for ignoring the rules that we adults establish to control their
joys. We must feel pain by those children of the Universe whose
skin we saw bursting in a single suicide blow, because
opportunities were denied to them from before they were born,
and because once they were born, they were never sufficiently
valued and loved, because in the absence of hugs what they were
given gave was discrimination and violence.

We cannot hide the tsunami of undesirable emotions that

television news, the press, the social networks produce in us.
Each note causes into us an emotional storm, which takes us out
of our comfort zone and puts us in front of the screen of a
Prometheus chained and torn by eagles.
A thousand questions must jump in our heart; questions full of
pain… those of who created those sewers of human misery that
settle in the rotten canals of our cities, those subjects of glue and
drugs that roam like zombies through our streets and avenues
carrying a smelly blanket on their shoulders and rickety, dressed
in rags, leading a miserable life, and whom we call disposable?
Who do we put in the dock for those lost angels? Who do we
claim for that blessing thrown into the dump?

Let us worry those children beaten by parents who have not

understood that they are just little apprentices of life who begin
their journey around the planet with a clean brain and clumsy
muscle, as if it were easy to follow all the juggling that requires
us to live in this capricious and crafty society, used to shouting
and humiliation: don't jump, don't touch, don't open, don't
damage, don't yell...

It is unfortunate to see elderly humiliated by their own children

because they take a long time to walk a hundred meters or forgot
to take their medicines at the prescribed times. Let us worry
about the young people who have decided to plug their ears with
hearing aids of all brands, perhaps to no longer listen to those
who want to build them a life according to their size.

Let us worry about the women who, by signing a paper, or

without their signature, ended up turning their bodies and souls
into the private property of some characters who do not have
the slightest respect for them, as if for a pregnancy, a kiss, or a
coin for the hunger of their children they had mortgaged their
skin and their destiny.

May the workers who work from sunup to sundown to bring

home a piece of bread until they see all their youth worn out,
just for the feeling of seeing the dreams of their offspring come
true; and that it hurts us more to know that their little income is
subject to taxation; taxes that become the petty cash for the
luxuries of some gentlemen who abuse everything in politics.

Let us worry about every believer exploited by their fears of the

hell or abused by their eagerness to save some credits to obtain
their visa to eternal life. Pain of each patient begging his right at
the doors of a hospital or dying there like a criminal trying to
sneak into the line of Right Citizens. Pain of each user of the
transport service that must achieve cross a hell of a city to make
way for their small finances, their insipid dreams.

And let us worry about the Indigenous people on the platforms

of the city of "civilization", far from the paradise that saw him
born, frightened by traffic lights and the sound of horns, and
seen as a weirdo at the middle of the skyscrapers. Let us hurt.
Let us hurt. Because where there is pain, we must put too much
kindness.

It is reasonable to say, then, that behind this dream of happiness

hides too much anguish, too much sorrow. Pain of not being
able to change the world in one fell swoop and at just now, so
as not to have to see the tears of the humblest roll anymore, nor
listen to those voices that demand our presence in solidarity.

This is what I call the pain of Humanity. Pain for who is the
most vulnerable being on the planet, maybe; the one who must
fight against a million pains every day, because the fact that has
millions of sensors on his skin... the human being.

CLASH OF EMOTIONS

I never thought that in happiness

there would be so much sadness
 (Mario Benedetti)

It is impossible not to be frightened by the economic failure that

puts all the successes at risk, and leaves us, not only in the mouth
of others as losers, but also in the face of the constant
persecution of the banker who demands the last cent of his
loans.

Impossible to remove so much pain when we were encoded

with millions of body sensors that awaken all kinds of emotions,
from the most sublime to the harshest.

Impossible not to be afraid of the dark with so many children's

tales of demons and ghosts that slip through the shadows of
solitude to punish disobedient children.

Impossible not to get bored when our favorite toys are taken
away. Impossible to escape those who make fun of your body
because it does not meet visual standards; to those who make
fun of your fears, to those who humiliate you, especially when
self-esteem has been broken for a long time and without courage
to stand up, and face without cowardice the attack of those
social executioners.

Impossible not to have laws or social rules that put our cracked
freedoms in trouble. This is how the system dictates it, and in
that small age we must learn to smile.

Impossible to find the most accurate and wise answers to all the
dilemmas that each sun brings us while our brain is busy
designing a plan to feed our intestines.

How ugly the heart feels when it doesn't know how to defend
itself against the sword of frustration, when it doesn't know how
to manage problems with the tribe, when it doesn't know how
to read the positive part of failures, when it has difficulty holding
a conversation without getting angry, when you do not know
how to take no for an answer, or you feel that life has lost all
meaning because of the partner that left or simply moved to
another bed.

This is life. It is not square, nor round enough to always generate

with it a worthy and calculated output. It has a thousand faces
thousand curves; some that open, others that close. Nothing is
the same, although it looks like it. Nothing is done twice. The
settings change, the characters change, the motives change, the
times change. And what seems safe at noon is different at
nightfall.

And if you add forced loneliness to all this, then things get worse
for solving. The less advice and affection, the more complicated
it is to respond to every inconvenience that the day brings us.
And the less hugs, less moral resources to face the challenges;
more escapes and hiding places; more unhealthy survival
strategies.

FAIL EXITS

From two evils,

choose the smallest
(Erasmus of Rotterdam)

Suicide has become for many people the gateway to their

personal conflicts, their frustrations, their defeats, their jealousy,
their anger, their humiliation, their spite, their economic losses.
Human beings that seem to live in a strange land, on a planet of
persecutors and misfits.
Other people fill the insides with liquor until one of those drops
puts the emotional system in stupidness mode. Or they smoke
cannabis, inject heroin, sublingual barbiturates, in short, a whole
universe of drugs that disconnect them from the demons that
torment their minds and give them a heaven of dependency and
alienation. End of story.
Many people believe that the best way to escape such an
embarrassing situation is to anchor in the comfort zone:
indifferentism, loneliness, abstraction, survival, and thus remain
immune and encapsulated in the face of change.
Repairing relationships using imagination is not usually our
forte. Traveling to the world of mental logic to harmonize our
relationships has not been the most common. Solving for good
seems slow and humiliating. We think that it is better to let go;
entrusting time to deal with making problems die through the
aging of our brain or the onset of Alzheimer's.

Meanwhile, others will choose to work, work and work, in order,

to keep their brains busy, away from the annoyances caused by
their children or their partner, from the anxieties created by the
responsibilities and commitments of life.

To others will prefer to try a fleeting luck at the casino at the

expense of their family's hunger. Others will want to do it with
video games, and there will even be those who want to take a
gun to go to war to kill the ghosts of the past, and hunt someone
who opposes their ideology. And those who will pray more for
their sins are not left behind, hoping that death will find them
on their knees with their hands folded and their eyes fixed on
the firmament.

The boutiques have become a real shelf where we will find tons
of makeup to cover up our miseries, and incidentally make a fine
flirtation that feeds self-esteem, forgetting that the best makeup
is the smile.
There are not a few who have preferred to abandon their lives
to the best buyer of labor, for a few dollars, in exchange for a
little food or a crumb of happiness that breaks the next minute;
individuals who prefer to leave their dignity aside in order to
give their stomach a piece of bread, and feel that their presence
in this life is almost the result of a fever of their parents in a
night of drinks, which launched them without a pinch of love to
this universe, which they call garbage.

Hideout and cave have become the home of people who fear
life. Lonelynism (rejection of social contact), perfectionism
(constant fear of error), mysticism (exacerbated religiosity),
puritanism (fear of eternal punishment) had also been
transformed into capsules that make us lose contact with the
true happiness for which we were conceived by the Great All-
Thinking… God.

There are no a few, who looking for peace of mind for their
anxieties, live in a world of permanent excesses. Engaged in
over-igniting their senses and forgetting to ignite the soul to
enjoy peace. All because no one taught them to put healthy and
fair numbers to their decisions. The thing would be to eat too
much, drink too much, smoke too much, shout too much, play
too much, work too much, get angry too much, pile up too
much. As if they forgot that it is not about having more but
about managing better. As if they had misconfigured the
numeral system. As if they wanted to eat the world in one bite,
in one sitting, and thus distract their routine anxieties. As if they
thought that the Universe would end before nightfall. And
maybe it is true, but if not, the next day can become something
with a disgusting taste and detestable, because there is nothing
worse than being given the same thing every day, because when
the surprise is lost, the fascination is lost along with the emotion.
We can verify, it is certain, that a good percentage of human
beings have never contemplated the idea of projecting their next
second. They have rubbed their hands together, closed their eyes
and said: what now? How do we spark this thing?

Millions of guys have ignored the call of their souls to visualize

their next successes, to dream their next adventures and
illusions, forgetting that dreams are the star that guides our early
mornings. And that is why that we see them go from one
improvisation to another, sailing blindly in ocean of frustrated
adventures, which not only makes them losers, but also slowly
leads them to lose their affection for life, which they end up
handing over to four or five handlers.

THE ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS

The snail exclaims:

Little ants, patience.
Why do you mistreat your partner like this?
What he has done, I will judge in conscience.
You tell it, little ant.
And the half-dead ant says very sadly:
“I have seen the stars”
(Federico Garcia Lorca)

We get up ready to eat life. We bathe. We fix. We go through

the mirror. Two taps on the cheeks. Well breakfasted. We
deliver a kiss here and another there. We entrust ourselves to
God. And we went out to conquer the planet.

But a few minutes after and the obstacles lined up as usual: the
bus did not come when it was most needed, taxis were scarce,
the phone had connectivity problems, the boss was furious
about the results, the printer had copy failures, and other, and
other.

How time have we said: today is the day, and nothing and no
one is going to take away this desire to hit a home run at life,
because it has been decided... this is going forward and there is
no turning back. Full smile. Full vibe. Cheerful outlook.
Excellent results… But it was just that they let go of the bull to
see how the task became more difficult each time.
Getting up early with the batteries on is good, but it is not
enough, because this purpose of smiling at life 24/24 has
hundreds of enemies, internal ones, and external ones. Ones are
generated by our heart… desperation, impatience, hatred, envy,
arrogance, anxiety, resentment. Others are creatures of the
social environment in which we live...chasing, bullying, tripping,
discrimination, harassment, slander, accusations. Others are the
result of economic imbalance... hunger, unemployment,
illiteracy, marginality, exploitation. Others are pure lack of hugs
and kisses... loneliness, alienation, sadness, discouragement,
restlessness. Ones, the result of bad personal practices...
laziness, alienation, obesity, anorexia, irresponsibility,
improvisation... others, tricks that we learned from family...
insults, violence, tricks.

We got used to negotiating with lies, we became allies of

deception, of double standards. Shyness made us miss a lot of
opportunities. The unforgiven anger has made us waste millions
of seconds made to smile. Unresolved frustrations left us sailing
in a rotten and smelly past. The ghosts of a poorly supported
religion anticipated us a hell of fears that contaminated every
second available for our happiness.

Perfectionism and its philosophy of fear of error only made us

see swamps of quicksand everywhere. The disability for love, to
make other people's lives happy, made us turn this skin into a
prison for pride and overwhelmed self-esteem. Easy money
made us give up the school of virtues to emigrate to the planet
of brittle ambitions.

A simplistic and empty spirituality made us disconnect from the

Center of the Universe, to lead us to believe that our brain was
the creator of God. Improvisation led us into a jungle of
mistakes that wasted our few minutes to achieve the success that
would finance our dreams. The spirit of rivalry would make us
despise the value of the other to stay and live with the pet that
does not challenge or question our personality. Funding
problems made us suspicious of our successes. Over-
indebtedness showed us that eye was bigger than the pocket.

The monotony arrives to take away any desire to survive the

next second, like a murderous barrage of motivations and new
sensations. The atheism of pride made us postpone God for the
hour of death who, with his eternal salvation, we imagine, will
come to repair the joys that we despise and never enjoy.

A whole list of enemies that ride day and night against our
happiness, and we disguise by fantasy that breaks at the next
minute.

But there is an enemy that, although it has an elusive facade, we

must not rule out... this is mental and physical fatigue. Which is,
perhaps, the cruelest of all, as it has the ability to put our energy
at its lowest levels, depriving our logical thinking system of
oxygen, making us enter the land of stupidity to become easily
sour human beings; with the ability to break the rhythm of our
commitments, making us look like we were shameless and
irresponsible.

Hundreds of enemies of happiness are in every corner, besieging

from all sides, like in a battle where machine guns fire from all
sides. And all for one great reason… We are human race. The
same breed that was conceived for freedom and the project is
not spared from energy wear, joint pain, and stress overdose.

There are, then, a thousand things that will try to extinguish the
flame of happiness, take us off the path we have taken... But that
is when we must return, quickly return to the idea that the
rudder is in our hands, that we ourselves are the ones who one
day decide that nothing and no one would take our happiness to
the dump. Neither the inconveniences of the past, nor the
challenges of the present, nor the prophecies of the future. So,
we squeeze our skin to our soul, and we push forward, without
letting ourselves be frightened by the ghosts, by the fears, by the
scathing words, by the hard realities of everyday life and its
challenges, by this circus of death that knocks at our door trying
to fracture our happiness into a thousand pieces, trying to break
our inventory of illusions and joys.

KINDNESS WITH LOW SELF-VALUE

What limits people

is the lack of character
(Jonh C. Maxwell)

Unfortunately, people say… “My thing is not to think, I was not

born for those works. Make me count money, push cars, move
screws. Anyway, something that does not make me blush. Give
me a computer that I manage it. I am a work donkey. I move
the cables. I will take care of the little boy, but please, I beg you,
do not make me think”. And that is how they spend their lives,
that is how it goes, with too much muscle in action and a quarter
of a neuron in execution.
Wonderfully generous people, but unfortunately with a great
inability to defend their own dignity with force and courage.
Excellent for the job, but with little voice to claim their right.
Particularly good at shouldering the problems of the planet, but
without time for themselves, pretending to be the messiahs of
humanity, or naive little applauded and poorly paid.

Too many sacrifices for others and little consent and affection
for themself, where life becomes an endless run. A permanent
time trial that leaves no room for love, for the landscape, for
himself, for happiness. Could it be that they suspect the
potential of the other people? Could it be that they think that
God is a lazy guy, not able to move the Universe? Could it be
that they calculate that if they do not do it, no one else will?

It is our duty to learn to defend our free time, to reserve a space

in the planner to take our fantasies out for a walk, because life
is short, and we do not know at which curve of the road this
dream of the gods vanishes.

Kindness is not always enough to make us happy, to reach a

state of joy. Because there are overflowing worries that end up
annihilating inner peace, making us lose the tune with life, filling
the soul with constant anguish that ends up damaging our
tranquility. Our parents are witnesses of this, who jealously
caring for their families, conduct their days and nights in a
labyrinth of worries that annihilates the few joys they manage to
conquer with their work.

Parents who do not allow themselves to accomplish their

dreams because they have insisted on prioritizing their children's
dreams. Parents who do not consent themselves because they
are thinking about consenting others. Parents who give up their
own happiness in exchange for seeing their loved ones to smile.
Overwhelmed goodness that instead of dreams produce
nightmares, tiredness. and exhaustion.

It is good that we get involved in the worthy causes of the planet,

it is good that we want to keep our family on the island of
fantasies, but without going to such extremes of believing that
we are the only messiahs, the only saviors of humanity.

Family happiness is a collective task. Question of joining forces.

To distribute burdens and responsibilities among all, with an eye
on the construction of human communities guided by
generosity and good practices of coexistence.

Kindness yes, but calmly, without the stress of drowning,

without the suspicion that Universe also does its part.

THE RENT OF NAIVETY

It has not been easy

have an opinion that asserts my vocation,
my freedom to choose
(Pablo Milanes)

There was a time when we inaugurated our brain, when we

began to question everything, to believe that one shoe and
another shoe were not the same. We were leaving our
adolescence and entering the world of adults. And that was
when we questioned what we had learned up to that point.

We wanted to be happy with our own brand. We wanted to

make a world in our own style, but soon they branded us misfits,
crazy, revolutionary. So, they pressured us, and pressured us,
until we could not take it anymore and we ended up accepting
the return to the cave where we had been tamed. We did it in
the name of survival. And we played idiots, and idiots we stayed.

So, they, the ones who manage the finances of the planet, used
our naivety, and made it profitable. And they sent us to their
schools, and they made us believe that we were the best, and we
became so good at our trades that they promoted us to new
positions, to new levels of stress.

And since our resume is never complete, we always end up

accepting the salary they want to give us. And we grew old and
wore out, and when we were no longer useful for them, they
sent us home to rest, when it is too late to live, when the bones
hurt more than usual, and the mind no longer resists more than
a game of rummy-q.

They, the builders of the system, that dream-busting and

manipulative machine, know how to turn our ignorance into
income, hunger into production, fear into tithes. And they are
happy to know that we are frankly terrified of unemployment
because we are truly terrified of a hungry day, thus verifying that
the visceral handles more fibers than the mentally because of
fact that convictions produce greater dismissals in factories than
obedience.

And so, the planner for happiness became narrower, because

the minutes on the clock, which are his best ally, were also
becoming scarcer. Eight hours of work a day, and up to twelve,
because productivity and competitiveness should set the pace of
a successful company, which knows how to stay in the global
market smoothly.

Happiness drop by drop became the philosophy of great human

majorities. Children will have to wait for ice cream time, and
tired parents will have little to hand over their children when
evening falls.

The world being a true firmament to fly, we were the object of

a great surgery that dismantled our wings to make way for an
army of slaves. With our lives, a society tailored to the great
families of the earth was built. Turned into tin soldiers, we were
uniformed and sent to war as cannon fodder to protect their
properties. They also sent us to their schools, and we went up a
level to be consecrated as workers. And they graduated us. And
they even let us dream, and then they taxed our dreams.

And the nation that should have been designed by humanists,

was left in the hands of clumsy legalists and fantasy merchants
who think that the more idiots bite the bait, the more inheritance
they will leave their generations.

They gave us bread to eat, and we ate bread; they fed us

mistakes, and we swallowed them without scrutinizing their
contents, accepting them as infallible truths. They repeated the
lie a thousand times until it became true in the minds of those
who do little to question their learning. They embellished the
words with cream, and we, unwary, consume their prehistoric
concepts from generation to generation so as not to see
ourselves accused of heresy.

And that is why our happiness has been so fragile, so vulnerable,

that any inconvenience usually puts it in trouble. The million
laws that have been structured to contain our dreams have
ended up plasticizing it increasingly, by squaring every step of
our life, every sip of air, every inch of water, every letter, every
thought.

Paying for "civility" has become a difficult cross to bear. Living

in this society has become an odyssey, a difficult tribute to
sustain. The price of pavement has become so expensive that
every day we must reevaluate whether to give our soul to
cement, or to happiness. It would be less complex and stressful
to look for a piece of the jungle where we could meet again with
the song of the bird, the clean air, and the leaves of the trees.

Our ingenuity has become the food dish of cunning men who
know how to make it profitable. The ingenuity of the good ones,
that we go to their schools and universities, and continue writing
resumes, instead of dedicating ourselves to creating our own
company, our own source of financing.

BETWEEN HUNGER AND FEAR

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost

When character is lost
everything is lost
(Billy Gaham)

I cannot let go of that notice that can be guessed in many places

of exacerbated poverty: "Factory of Miracles". And the warning
is followed by hundreds and thousands of people who want to
find the remedy that will stop their misfortune and illness in one
fell swoop. A potion, a remedy, a prayer, a spell, an incense...
something urgent that prolongs life and solves the economic or
sentimental problem. They just want a little taste of happiness
before death arrives, and they are willing to do whatever they
are told to do so.

Miracles are not needed here, what is needed are better attitudes.
We even forget that illness is a purification filter, a cable that
grounds us with the frailties of our fellow human beings, teacher
of humility that makes us kneel before the Great One of
Creation.
The disease reminds us that we should not play at being gods,
that our skin is made of corn and potatoes, fish, eggs, and beans.
That the best thing is that we learn to treat each other like
people. That we consider that we belong to a humanity, not to
an eternity.

Hunger, fear, and ignorance. What a bad trio. Place for

exploitation and slavery, for begging and humiliation. Synonyms
of cold nights and street recycling. Failed self-esteem that only
think about the minimum... the smallest, a cart, a little house, a
little trip, a few trivial things... Being able to think big, instead of
doing it miserably. Beings who imagine that their manufacturers
were second-rate gods, that their lives are merely a recycling of
exhausted souls.

Because if we do not think tall, someone will take us for idiots,

someone will expand their slave barracks with us, they will use
us, they will abuse us, and when our talent is already replaced by
new talent, they will abandon us to the fate of the vultures or
the cemeteries.

Learning to define ourselves - learning to say I am - is learning

to recognize the dignity and character of our own existence, to
give value to each piece of our profile, to turn our weaknesses
into challenges, our talents into great undertakings. Learning to
say that I am made for great projects is learning to give the brain
the place for which it was made, the role to establish our
difference with the genetics of the tree, the star, and the rabbit.

WORLD IN DRAFT

I can't believe in a god

 who wants to be prayed all times.
I will only believe in a God who knows how to dance.
(Nietzsche)

There are millions of us who were raised with the idea that this
life will be followed by a better or worse one, according to the
measure of our behavior. In this scheme, hundreds of preachers
offered us all kinds of remedies to tear our soul from the curse
of sin, which would be, according to them, the culprit of the
failure of this life project. The triumph over the diabolical beast
would assure us the stay in the paradise of perpetual light for all
eternity. That is the reason they carry in their backpacks the
perfect recipe book that would help us conquer the kingdom of
heaven. And as a travel agency we would only have to pay tithes
for God to authorize our entry visa.

But you must ask yourself, is there a need for a new heaven after
this beautiful Universe? A flower more splendid than the one
we find in our garden? a better guardian angel than our parents,
our best friends and teachers, or our mustachioed pet?

What is this habit of ours to interrupt the Creator more to bring

him a new wish list every day, as if the Universe did not contain
everything for our happiness? Aren't so many loves enough for
us in the middle of so many blessings? Why so much waste of
joy today, as if we lived in a world made in draft? Have we
conditioned our minds to believe that we are living in a universe
of only shadows and mirages as the philosopher Plato thought?
What is this habit of forgetting to enjoy this moment, instead of
projecting our imagination on worlds after death? You say: that
is what we learn from the preachers. Yes. But that is what do
not let us profit fully what we have now.

And so? why not live from today and live beautifully? What is
really missing from our life if everything has it? There is nothing
worse than wasting this time, this day of millions of minutes of
beautiful creation. Was this masterpiece worth nothing to God?
Because, it is true, that this contempt for today's world gives rise
to the criminal to do his evil, to the dictator to grope our
freedom. It gives permission to the misfit to enter our territory
to violate and harm. It gives the astute a chance to keep our
dignity. It offers the State license to send us to war. As they have
made us believe that this is a mirage, then they want to take full
advantage of this "circus" while it is passing through.

Let us be realistic. We must be aware that what is really missing

here and now is a life project anchored to happiness. A
happiness with arguments; arguments that become convictions;
convictions that become motivations; motivations that become
decisions; decisions that become principles; principles that
become challenge; challenges that answer to the needs of life.

What we really need is not another heaven other than the one
that holds our feet. And that is why it is imperative to inject
more faith into our soul to better live this time and this place.
That changes the attitude towards everything. Facing ourselves.
Facing God. Facing the neighbor, which is the same me, but in
someone else's skin.

We think that the problem is the fever, forgetting that that extra
warmth is restorative energy. We believe that this diarrheal flow
is the problem, not knowing that it is a detoxification flow. We
think only of healing the body, ignoring that life has the soul as
its refuge, as if the essence of the apple were its skin and not its
interior.

The soul does not admit miracles, as if it were put on paper

masks… it admits processes of continuous improvement, which
will help it to root itself enough so that it can resist all hurricanes,
as well as challenges.
It is a pity that we make everything pass through the prism of
our religions, of our fantasies of eternity, where even God
himself is not saved from our ideas. A pity that tyrannical and
perverse gods come out of our brains who annihilate children to
save humanity. A pity that we have turned our schools of
spirituality into markets for miracles and extraterrestrial
salvation.

FANTASIES’ MARKET

We live in a world
where the funeral matters more than the dead,
the wedding more than love,
and the physical more than the intellect.
(Eduardo Galeano)

The best should be to happen it is not to have to invest money

in happiness, but in this society of numbers, happiness and
money have become allies. You do not receive health services in
a hospital without money. You do not even go to a concert
without first going to buy the ticket. Christmas presents do not
fall from the sky, nor do children's computers spring from the
ground.

The market has discovered our needs and fantasies and puts in
its windows those devices that relieve stress and renew our joy
chip, trying to fleetingly encapsulate our pains and our anxieties.

The world is full of proposals, of all kinds and colors, for Black
people, for White people, for the rich, for the poor, for the
beautiful and for the ugly, for children and for adults, for
diabetics and for the healthy... Everyone gets up early to take
advantage of each one of us. All of them, like true schools of
the art of seeming, fill us with continual fallacies, busy with the
pride and vanities of our arrogance. With offers that do not feed
the essentials, because they only know about finances and
profits.

They got us used to filling our houses with all kinds of junk and
decorative objects, and they made us forget that a simple flower
attracts better energy, and projects much more tranquility to our
emotions; or that a simple prayer oxygenates the heart much
more than any of the accessories on our shelves.

They taught us to disguise reality, and we became their best

students. Now we daub everything with fantasy because we
know that in the art of looking beautiful is important to look for
an extra help, so as not to be at a clear disadvantage with the
bragging of the neighborhood, forgetting that true friends only
care about our laughter, our love and our company.

We have ended up believing those sellers of illusions. We have

taken our bodies to their surgery rooms to hide our frustrations,
and our need to look for the coquetry of others. We dress with
pride with elegance forgetting that at nightfall the problems are
still as new as when everything started. We want to conquer
others, wrapped in appearance. It is our sneaky way of entering
a society that reserves the right of admission.

RIVALRY AND OSTENTATION

These that were pomp and glee

waking up at the dawn of the morning,
in the afternoon they will be a vain pity
sleeping in the arms of the chilly night
(Calderon de la Barca)
We buy their latest model cars, and we travel to their tourist
destinations, and we dress in gold and diamonds. And from one
BBQ we move on to the next. And then there were increased
expenses. And we were able to tell those on the side that we
were not willing to be left behind, that we did not want to
experience the shame of being seen in the last row. And we
entered the club of ostentation and waste. And then came the
headaches and the worry because the collection of accounts
began to run under the door. And the nights came without a
wink, and the days of arduous work to pay bank obligations, to
hold tight a fictitious little smile that would send the image to
those around us that everything was going perfectly, that success
was our flag.

They taught us to rival, to compete with others and not against

ourselves... and they turned us into despicable people, into
beings so dangerous that we were not disgusted by making a fool
of the rest of our people.

This rivalry and competition killed the angel that we carried

inside, and what is worse, it is killing the angel that our children
carry in their hearts, because we also make them compete so that
from now, they can take over the planet and give freedom to all
their ambitions.

People were pitted against each other. A warmongering

language appeared in the media that divided us into rival
factions. Each one had to dig their trench and install their wire
fence to impose their flags. To combat machismo, a new
philosophy was inaugurated that bombarded family affection
and relationships between the masculine and the feminine,
where the victims were the most vulnerable, the children.
Each man had to compete against his partner in a race of
numbers and freedoms. The human family exploded into a
thousand pieces and the State appeared to collect what was left.
The schools adopted our children from the first months, or a
community mother or a domestic service lady oversaw filling the
void left by that war of thrones.

We fracture humanity into a thousand pieces, and for that we

ally ourselves with the sexist terminologies that the twenty-first
century dictionary offers us, as if the universe had upset its
creation codes. Wombs became the place of frivolous butchery
for their undesirable residents, while we relegated the human to
the place of the cute pet.

Pride reached its highest levels and with it increased the number
of eternal untouchables. Those who are annoyed by other
people's smiles, who disguise their smallness with gadgets
offered by the market. The same ones who look at you over their
shoulders with contempt and the air of little wrens. Those who
do not accept no for an answer, nor allow the opinion of others
to contradict them; lovers of applause and permanent approval;
solitary entities that seek to have their own barracks of
sycophants, who do not know how to serve humanity without
calculation or generosity, nor do they feel scruples about
damaging the world in which they live.

SICKNESS OF THE CENTURY

Life is quite simple,

but we insist that it be complicated
(Confucius)

This is how people have come to call the “stress” – the disease
of the century. That stormy devil that puts every nerve in the
body on edge, lover of migraines and muscle spasms. The same
one that knocks down doors and smashes desks when affairs do
not go according to plan. The one who yells and throws things
away without thinking twice. The same one that prevents the
muscle from breathing calmly, causing the body's energy to lose
its rhythm, and promoting the appearance on the scene of those
genetic diseases that live in rest under our skin. The one that
turns the pillow into a rag braid on sleepless nights. The one that
makes us hypersensitive and arrogant in the face of the slightest
claim, the laughter of others or the smallest mistake. Last minute
partner, despair, perfectionism, arrogance, improvisation, and
haughtiness.

But this is the “illness” that brings us the most life, that makes
us travel to the beach the most, that multiplies the most friends.
A beer there, a whiskey there, an impromptu party, a walk to the
mountains, an ice cream with the kids...

People take it to the psychologist's office, others to the park, and

there is no shortage of someone who takes it to the soccer game.
Someone goes hand in hand with her to comedy, while others,
unable to do more, end up with the psychiatrist. Each one seeks,
according to their experience, the remedy that best suits their
taste, and their needs. For somebody, a simple cigarette
deactivates their pumps, for others, gossip gives oxygen to the
heart. We all look for the quick fix based on the size of the
tension we carry in our skin.

True answer or escape? Repair or hideout? Each one will know

how long their remedy works. The truth is that we cannot spend
our entire lives deactivating bombs in our brains because life
itself would not be enough to do so if we do not change the
rhythm of our activities if we do not transform our life scenario
and the customs with which we usually carry out our tasks. Even
if we do not choose well the herd with which we go out to face
life. That spirited horse needs oxygen, fresh look about life,
different landscapes, and new friendships. That wild colt does
not admit confinement, nor mistreatment. Affectionate words
come in handy to reopen their smiles.

If we continue to ruin our timer with so much activity and

worries as we do every day, if we continue facing against our
neighborhood in luxuries and brands, there will never be a
mattress that accommodates our tiredness, there will never be a
switch that stops this stress machine. So, if we don't change our
attitude towards the assumed tasks, and the challenges of
survival, could be happen that one day, our soul burst, to take
away not only the vitality of our brain, but also our own skin.
And pity to see this project of humanity vanished.

It is not a matter of evacuating all the flow of stress from within

us. Impossible. Unnecessary. Mistake. It's about making it
manageable. To lower level while we ... have fun. A perfect
world does not exist, and if it did it would be annoying. The
brain would be left without action and the heart without
emotion. The beaches of Cancun would be empty, and the
Caribbean Sea would miss us. The comedians would have
nothing to do and would mourn the bitterness of our perfection.
Fortunately, stress will be there waiting for us, and we will meet
it with all our artillery to take it on vacation.

The important thing of all is learning to modulate our concerns,

without letting them grow beyond our own strength. Success
over stress will be in taking the reins of this spirited horse and
putting it to march according to the health of our kidneys.

What we need is fewer drugs and more nature that leads to

cleaner air and higher levels of throttle more manageable. Less
sedentary lifestyle and more physical activity. Fewer vehicles and
more walking. Fewer late nights and more afternoons with
friends and family. More songs of praise and less religious
speeches that speak of hell, sin, and eternal damnation.
It is evident that when the pocket is tight, the level of stress rises,
that is why it is good to keep the ticket machine on and ensure
a success that provides the minimum finances to our fantasies,
tastes and needs. That is the reason we must learn to turn our
worries into a field of creativity and fantasies, instead of one of
overflowing anxiety and anger.

SHORTAGE OF LOVE

Love, in its greatest sense, is never a game

where we extend ourselves at the expense of one another
(Leo Tolstoy)

And what about love? Or, rather, heartbreak? How too many
victims because of spite? How too many broken hearts because
the castle of love collapsed, or because the partner simply has
not arrived to build it? How too much happiness is lost for not
having found the ally that fits our scars and our projects? How
too much waste of happiness for having hastily and without any
sanity chosen that fellow traveler? Perhaps, no one told us that
life on the planet is a path full of obstacles, which should be
accompanied by the best of the dictionary of love? Motivating
words, tender hugs, repairing kisses?

It cannot be that our love is only a game of the skin, because it

could happen that when it loses its youthful attributes, we
abandon it as an old garment is abandoned... “Bye, it was nice
meeting you. Do not ask about me because I was just passing
through. Mine is freedom. Commitments scare me. I am not
trained to be between four walls. I do not want to miss the
flight...” And all this happens while there is youth, while the
pocket puts up with all the parties and all the excesses.
And while I speak of heartbreak, I think of the thousands of
citizens of this world who have been relegated to the bottom of
society for lack of a hug, because from childhood instead of
motivation they were offered insults, instead of instruction they
were beaten. A whole factory of criminals of children of the
planet who saw their lives cut short by discrimination and
violence from the first days of being breastfed. Angels with
spoiled wings due to lack of affection, due to the lack of a voice
that would tell them: “Here I am. Count on me”.

LOSS OF CENTER

If, crossing a mountain in the direction of a star,

the traveler gets too absorbed
for the problems of climbing,
he risks forgetting which is the star that guides him.
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

Unfortunately, most human beings have stopped understanding

that life is a divine project, imagined from the Center of the
World, where God supplies his love second by second to the
smallest corner of Creation, to the last blood vessel of the
Universe, like a root that sends its sap to the smallest leaf of the
tree. A God who knows the particularity of each thing he has
created and knows how to interpret the pain of each of his
creatures. A God who has a thousand shades in his skin, who is
white with the white people, black with the Black people, Indian
with the Indian people. That dresses as a flower in the flower
and in stripes in the wild zebra. Has a voice to talk to the
Universe and vision to see his work. Nothing of ours is strange
to It, not even the evil of people, which becomes a laboratory
to manufacture Its best angels.
We cannot rule out the idea that human beings are creatures
conceived with a DNA marked for freedom, imagination,
projection, happiness. A great family that extends throughout
the planet, which is born and reborn in each generation. Some
people more studied, others less clever, some more creative,
others more fortunate, others more fighters... But all equal in
dignity and sensitivity to suffering.

Unfortunately, we lost God's path when one dissatisfaction was

followed by another, and the other by the other. The axis was
lost and we were drifting like a ship without a rudder. The
Center of everything, the Heart of the Universe, is and will
continue to be that which we call God, and we, as fools, have
ended up mortgaging our skin and our soul to the first fantasy
that were placed in front of our eyes, the same ones that turned
our minds in a cave of anxieties and restlessness.

Hence, this proposal, this dream of happiness, is a call to return

to the Center, to return to the original project, to return to God,
but not to the God of those preachers who should have been
teachers of virtue and never were. I'm talking about God of
children, trees and pets, the God who codified the neuron and
the functions of the heart, the God of Gandhi and Mohammed,
that of Mary and Jesus of Nazareth, that of Luther King, that of
Siddhartha and that of Tagore, that of Moses and King David,
that of Mandela, and that of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, that of
the poet and the singer, that of the father and mother who get
up early every day to work for the well-being of their children .

Return to this God who speaks catlike for his cats, and doggish
for his dogs, Leonese for his lions and humanish for his humans.
To this God, who is not made of paper and who does not hide
in popular cartoons. Who is true Universe and more than
Universe, who knows laughter of those who laugh, and the tears
of those who mourn their relatives.
Return to the Center to find inner Peace, the same one that is
built with virtues and gives force to our soul to face storms.
Return to the Center to reach a heaven smile called happiness, a
reward for kindness, a reward for generosity and actions that
bear the seal of true love.

CHAPTER TWO

LIFE PROJECT

HUMAN PROJECT

If it does not exist in your mind,

will not exist in your life
(Anonymous)

Isn't it wonderful the idea that among so many other beings I

am one born with the genetics for the project, the dream, self-
construction? Doesn't that make me special? a lucky being? an
individual, even, capable of virtue and faith? All this of putting
together plans, of visualizing oneself in the future, of solving
puzzles, shows the difference with the other passengers of the
Universe, always in the eagerness to look for our place and fit
our living space.

My eyes, my ears, my nose, my touch, my tongue. Five senses

are my great access channel to discover the world, as my
mother's womb once was. Five senses are today my access door
to live the sweetest or the most bitter of the adventures on this
World. Five senses that each have millions of sensors to
establish a bridge between the landscape and my mind, between
the flower and the cells of my heart.

It is wonderful to know how that microchip of the human

neuron makes the difference between someone and something,
between being or not being, between humanity and the star,
between the individual and the crowd.

That powerful little thing that has been linked to my senses - the
neuron - carries within it the energy to conceive virtue and vice,
to give life to the angel and the devil, to create heavens or hells,
schools and trenches, drugs and poisons, tenderness, and
cruelty. Immeasurable power. A nuclear bomb. It is just a matter
of giving her a good reason and it will dance to your rhythm.
Talk to it about peace and it will be an angel, incite it to war and
it will be the cruelest demon. Power. Real power. And that is
why some people learned how to manage it, how to lead it to
satisfy their evil purposes, how to manage it for their ideological
purposes. It is so fragile when it is afraid and so dangerous when
it is hungry. It is the same that uses the writing to extend and
project science and art into the future and allow next generations
of humans to find answers more easily to the problems of
everyday life.

Perhaps we have never asked ourselves, if with seven notes of

the staff music teachers have managed to make millions of
songs, if with twenty-seven characters of the Latin alphabet
writers have managed to write millions of books... How many
wonderful things can my brain create with eighty-six billion
neurons, spread over the two cranial hemispheres?

Humanity was born in that neuron charged with a divine spark,

and with it a being was born that had to create its own history,
its own universal seal. In that original event the light of the star
was less than the light of human intelligence. And there is no
better happiness than knowing that I am in your inventory, and
I am part of this Project born in the Entrails of the Universe,
imagined in the Cosmic Soul of all present Reality.

SEEKING WISDOM

I have come so that you may have life

and have it in huge measure
(Jesus of Nazareth)

The life of the human being is like a riddle, sometimes difficult

to guess. Hundreds and hundreds of questions run through our
minds, one after another. What am I? What made me become
part of the Universe? Am I an animal that suddenly stumbled
upon an extra handful of neurons, or a divine spark? Am I a
hobby of the gods, or the creation of half-crazy aliens who
discovered on earth the perfect planet to set up their wildlife
laboratory? Or am I part of a plan devised by Superior Beings
with a well-defined purpose? What kind of being were my
makers looking for when they set out to plant my life in the
universe? Which reality hides behind this dreamer, this
intellectualized mud? Or am I just another number in the food
chain of the Universe? What, really, is my reason for being in
this whole story? Should I understand my life as an individual
who is born, reproduces and dies, or as part of a human
collective that goes from generation to generation until
extinction?

It gives the impression that the reason for being of the animals
would be to eat, reproduce and beautify the landscape; The
plants thing would be to nourish the being that moves, give
protein to the being that roams the planet; but mine would be
to build a life signed with my own name, lit with my own
experience, colored with my own brushes, all under the help of
that light that shines in the intellect, where the neuron is an
inspiring angel, which we manage to project through our most
passionate actions.

This quantum particle, called human being, has a gram of gods

inside it that is not to be wasted. So, this thinking sand, which
has been charged with heaven ions, must not lose its energy in
the ocean of sadness, apathy and hopeless.

It must be recognized that the greatness of our species lies in a

redesigned neuron. It was there where the brittle was
empowered. This is how the keys of the Universe were given to
the human being. It was there, in the territory of reason and
imagination, where we were made part of the conscious world,
where we were placed on the top of the mountain to look in all
directions.

We must not forget this high-level detail... that, maybe, we are

the only beings in the Universe capable of changing the genetics
of the planet, of creating the next inhabitant of the universe, one
who replaces this race of obsolete whims and degrading
characteristics, one that can bring humanity back to coexistence
and harmony.

In a recoded neuron we were given the power to unveil the keys

that join things and feelings. The post-Jurassic world witnessed
the phenomenon of seeing how from a primary, instinctual and
visceral neuron, we would pass to another that, joining with a
hundred thousand others, would give birth to an idea, a concept,
a computerized decision; from a solitary neuron, emitting
screams and howls, we would pass to another that, joining with
a hundred thousand others, would build the best words and
songs; of one who goaded by hunger running after a piece of
meat, it would go to another one that, together with a hundred
thousand others, would build the best gastronomic recipes;
from a lover to the comfort zone, laziness and the shadow, she
would pass to another more daring one who, joining hundreds
of them, would call the project, the change, the innovation, the
adventure. And likewise, love, hope, the arts, and even religion
would be born as a way of seeking harmony with the One or
Those Beings who gave Shape and Breath to the World.

Mistake or affection of the Imagineers of the Universe.

Overconfidence or simple result of sharing wisdom with the
Coders of the World.

The truth is that we are now part of the race that gathers wisdom
from generation to generation, which has been given the power
to transform reality and build a day different from the previous
one; a being selected to fit an illuminated neuron, which would
take him on his way to the territories of autonomy and freedom.
Divine excesses? Or simply reality with which we must live now
and assertively.

Such a power in the hands of such a fragile and vulnerable being,

the being of lights and shadows, in whose chores is forced to
build his destiny, to give the pace of his history, to be able to
show his "Builders" all his ability to stay on his feet in front of
the challenges of every morning. The flag of happiness would
be his banner after the battles of each day. He would fall to his
bed tired, but with a smile plastered to his face, a sign of
satisfaction at having conquered a bit of wisdom with which to
face the days to come. This learning would have common sense
as an ally, which would ground it to the ground over the years
and would link it with greater force to good behavior in daily
actions.

It is clear, that this little god, this child of the Universe, requires
special attention. That this being born in the country of light and
shadow needs guardian angels to help him collect the sap that
nourishes his heart, to help him find the fountain of eternal
youth. His skin needs shelter for his cold, his heart asks for a
permanent teacher to lead him to put his emotions in order; his
soul needs a friend to guide him to the world of virtue and
generosity.

It is a priority that we help our heart to rediscover the original

meaning for which it was conceived, that we favor the path to
happiness, that we empower it so that it can write in its own cells
a true gospel of love, of success, and satisfaction, in such a way
that their wandering through planetary life becomes the most
marvelous of experiences in which a child of human skin can
take part. And just as we help to discover the reason for being,
we must also help to find the reason for doing, so that people
can give height and meaning to the next minute that Life gives
them.

MYSELF’S BEST VERSION

What would I be without me?

(Joaquin Salvador Lavado)

Today I want to be inspired by happiness to rethink my destiny,

the days that remain for my existence. I try to think aloud. Travel
to the history album to draw lessons. It is not about making a
primer to appropriate the sky from one day to the next. Just to
give an invitation card to my heart to get out of the valley of
monotony, laziness, foolishness, to stop being so basic, so
zombielike, so irrational, so fearful, so anxious, so dependent,
because I don't want to become my life in a failed project. I want
to tell God that his minutes building the universe of my skin
have been worth this love.
I challenge my heart and my skin to design a new me of myself,
without any similar copies. Because my happiness cannot be the
size of others, because there is no same story for everyone,
because there is no DNA that tells us that we were
manufactured in series system. No. What for me is a source of
joy, such as my pet, my dreams, and my fantasies, for others it
may not be. I am not a mind machine that responds in the same
way to a pre-established programming, because that such
existential programming does not exist for me, which will
stablish my destiny.

I understand that my happiness is not a song that is written with

the same tones, the same rhythm, and the same keys of the
neighbor. No. It would be stupid to think that I am the object
of a pre-established programming and that I am condemned
until the last second to live like a puppet moved by divine forces.
No. And if I could confirm it, I would believe that life loses all
meaning; because there would be nothing to manufacture,
nothing to create, nothing to experience, nothing top fight,
nothing to project, nothing to dream...

The beauty of life is that; that we have an open sky to reinvent

ourselves every day, and a lot of neurons to teach them the art
of life to the fullest, and a lot of muscles to enjoy the space, and
countless sensors to savor the Universe. That is the beauty of
life, which in its subtle imperfection leaves us the space to
participate with our own hands and adapt our own spaces,
shaping our own happiness.

This is with me. Today I decided... I decided to be happy, and

in the best way. Because life is to be lived and not endured, and
living it means creating my own roadmap. Because despite the
regrets, there is still a lot of sky to discover, a lot of land to
explore, a lot of friends to invite, many desserts to savor, many
hugs to receive, a lot of science to learn. There are still on my
planner many paths to travel, a lot of music to listen to, many
kisses to give, many dreams to live, many flowers to enjoy, many
books to read...

I know that I am not even halfway through life yet… that the
path that God has extended for me still has many birthdays to
live and many kilometers to go. I am aware that millions of
blessings have gone to the dump without having been released.
I recognize that when the disease hits my body, I have not
known how to manage it properly, when death has knocked on
the door of my house it has taken half of my heart for not
knowing how to explain the event, for getting used to looking
at life from a single terrace.

So, I feel that it is time to move from impulses to convictions,

from whims to arguments, from joys to happiness. And give me
24 hours of good vibes, making problems my best school of
Life.

From today happiness becomes the main purpose of my

existence. Yesterday my project was success, freedom,
profession, finances, salvation… today it is called HAP-PI-
NESS. So, in capital letters. Easy to identify. Easy to love.

THE FORCE OF MEMORY

Today could be a great day.

Think of it like this.
Take advantage of it or pass it by,
it depends on you
(Joan Manuel Serrat)

I want to make happiness my great territory and fill its paths

with graffiti that remind me of all my friends, all the beings who
have illuminated my life with their hugs and their words, with
their details and their smiles, with their lessons and their hits.
Hundreds of memories that walk stealthily through my mind,
and that still supply my life to resist the most intense and
unexpected gales.

I have decreed that good memories will be eternal sources of

happiness in my life. They belong to a world so real that,
although they seem to have been left behind, they have so much,
but so much energy that they continue to be a factory of good
vibes inside me, able to fill my eyes with brightness, and put the
muscles of my face in joyful mode, to the limit of tears and
praise.

That internal dopamine generated by the great emotions of the

past continues to be part of the constant renewal of my cells and
the energy that encourages my muscle to fight from the first
seconds of each morning.

So, I will look for mine among photographs, songs, paths,

places, objects, and memories to reconnect my mind with the
emotion that has already happened and subtract from there the
light of a candle that still shines, and the smile of a past time that
still awakens fantasies.

THE SIZE OF LIFE

Today I am alive again

I raise your life again
on my shoulders.
(Pablo Neruda)

Life is an invention born in the Heart of the Universe like a Lego

construction, like a seed designed to open and become the most
beautiful of paradise. The stage where my body has taken shape,
where my name should be embodied for a thousand
generations. An ocean of love with the size of the world. A
territory full of blessings with the extension of millions of
kilometers, with the participation of a multitude of actors, where
I am one of them.

Life is clinging to my skin, has found refuge in my heart, is the

same that fills the forests and the seas, which adorns the entire
landscape with beauty and color. It dresses up for a party and
for joy, it hides in the smile and the tears. Friend of the rain and
the sun, of the waterfall and the mist, of the flower and the little
bird.

And I am that. I am skin of its skin, and sap of its roots. I am

the light of its sparkles and the color of its rainbow. This
blessing has been granted to me as a Divine Caprice, as a dream
dreamed by the gods, as a story to write with the own letters and
the own emotions; where each one must decide the best
environment to enjoy the happiness in this world that is a real
emotions market.

That is why I must know that I must try my best to show the
Maker of the Big Bang how far this little creature can take its
breath. Because I am convinced that I am not only made to take
my skin to the land of bread, but, better, to that of love and
happiness.

This is the life that has been granted to me by the will of the
gods, the same that I do not intend to waste even for a single
moment, from day A to day B, where what seems like a
stumbling block is nothing more than a challenge, where the
problem and the inconvenience are the best land to turn my
brain into a true factory of solutions and projects.
It is sad that hundreds of human beings, with the power of life
in their hands, see how their minutes are undone for not
knowing how to give meaning and functionality to each moment
that life provides them. Many people want to do it eagerly. From
one activity they want to move on to the other without stopping
to observe the “super wow” of the wonders of nature.

The wind and the flower come together to shout at us in their

dance that they are there as a gift to deflate our stress, to clean
our energies, to make a wink to our heart and grant a gram of
peace to our soul. But the wind and the flower, like so many
other wonders, do not seem to be part of our love dictionary.

The stress, the tiredness and the persecution of finances have

ended up ruining the time of our happiness. Hence, it is
necessary to think seriously about withdrawing our clocks, to
believe again the crowing of the rooster and the sunset of the
sun.

BETWEEN MY SKIN AND MY SOUL

The happy man is not the one who laughs,

but he whose soul is superior to events
(Seneca)

I will call skin my entire body, place of my organs and my senses,

laboratory of all my earthly experiences, universe of external
sensors, playground of my angels and my demons, of my erotic
sensations and my childish joys.

I will call heart the library of all my emotions, the most toxic and
the sweetest, the rottenest and the most sublime, of my hatred
and my attachments, the place of my likes and dislikes, of my
joys as well as my longings. I will call heart to the village of all
my smurfs, the brave and the tender, the wise and the willful.

I will call soul, instead, the teacher of my virtues, in charge of

sweetening the bitter moments, of wrapping my heart with her
advice in the cold hours. Territory of prayers and harmony with
the Creator. The lamp that helps me move forward safely in the
middle of storms. The muse that fills my mind with poetry when
dark clouds come over me, and when the rainbow reminds me
that there is always a huge door for my happiness. The same one
that offers me reasons to continue fighting, even if things seem
not to be in my favor. The one that limits my skin, making my
actions reasonable. The one that trains my heart for a clean and
successful fight.

There, between my skin and my soul, there is usually a constant

tug-of-war that gives rise to a thousand emotions inside me;
sometimes sweet, sometimes sad; sometimes toxic and bitter
allied with despair; sometimes childish and wild full of laughter
and guffaws.

Three brothers who live together under my name, like Siamese

twins who invented the Universe to give life to my life; three
actors who share the same territory, forced to agree on each
decision, or condemned to live the worst if they do not ensure
a harmonious plan at every election.

I agree that the skin asks for its dose of nature and hedonism,
that the heart asks for its dose of visceral emotion, while the soul
asks for its dose of common sense; without it being easy to
agree. Although I am sure, and it is my conviction, that we all
need a happiness that is triply good for our skin, our heart, and
our soul.
Thus, happiness is presented as a three-way game, with three
players that cannot be left out: the skin and its senses, the heart
and its emotions, and the soul and its virtues. This would
resemble a carriage pulled by a Percheron horse, where the
carriage is the skin, the horse is the heart, and the soul is the
driver. But if the coachman does not know virtue, then the heart
would shake its reins and could drive the chariot over the
precipice.

SOIL OF DREAMS

Thinking, talking, dreaming, crying, fighting, laughing,

feel, love, suffer, that is living, living.
(Nino Bravo)

Dream. Dream big dreams, I tell my heart. Dream to the size of

the Universe. Without asking the neighborhood for permission.
Dream your best dreams, as if the future were taking land at this
very moment. Dream in the style of the gods, who do not keep
any secrets, nor are they afraid of adventures. Dream from the
deep of your guts, from the very source of your own fantasies,
the wildest and the most sober. Do it. Do it without mediating
any greed, so that death is not jealous of your happiness. Dream.
And always remember that your dreams have in God their best
mentor, their best ally.

Happiness knows that it lives in a mud skin, built with

constellation dust, and that it requires for its manufacture:
patience, sacrifice, wisdom, virtue, money, and time.

Happiness has hundreds of faces... some more lively and others

more sober and reserved. It has the face of a child when he
laughs, or of a farmer when receives the payment for his harvest;
the emotion of the fan when his team wins, or of the man who
knows that a child will soon be born to him. Happiness has the
face of the believer who has seen his own illness overcome, or
of the innocent who was acquitted of the crime he never
committed.

Happiness finds residence in people with sensitive hearts,

capable of tears and laughter. It does not have a good
relationship with the indifferent, nor with the one who has only
designed his mind and heart to take over the planet.

Happiness has a thousand places where it shows its face.

Sometimes it's subtle, like at the shrine, and mostly raucous at
the town´s carnival.

Happiness does not belong to a perfect world, nor does it

pretend to manufacture it. It recognizes very well what materials
it is built on. Accept that you live in this brittle, vulnerable…
transient skin. It accepts imperfection as a place of flight,
creation, risk, search... of self-construction.

You cannot be happy if you are not free. And you cannot be
free if you do not learn to place limits on the actions, goodness
to the decisions. Freedom is the best scenario to install wings to
our dreams, and to be able to fly to the world of what
unimaginable, to the nirvana of happiness, the perfect place to
take our children's soul out for recreation and put into action
one by one all those desires that have been lining up since we
were just infants.

Defend. Defend your dream, because is the star that guides your
life. Defend it that time is short, and we don't know at which
bend in the road this dream of the gods vanishes. Remember.
Remember that your dreams are your sacred territory, where
only those who absolutely love you, those who care about your
happiness, have an entry visa.

THE ART OF BEING HAPPY

Me too, I kept my illusions,

still about to have to give up,
hoping to see better times come,
I have paid a high price for living.
(José Luis Rodríguez)

Happiness is an art that is learned. It is the learning to manage

emotions in the smart way. It is the art of exorcising pain and
fear, anxiety, and ghosts from the old time. Pains of the skin due
to a cancer that has arrived, or pains of the soul due to the loss
of a being who was our guardian angel for many years, our
happiness source. Anxieties that are born from a religious
narrative of heaven and hell, of sins, of guilt, of eternal
punishments, of the wicked god and his recycling place, of life
after life. Stress caused by this society of the market of fantasies,
of accounts payable, government tax policies, business
competition, the level of productivity to keep us current in the
market, the care of children before the vices of a society
overwhelmed by the relevance of money, the irremediable death
of our loved ones...

The art of happiness starts when we are the ones who dictate
the rule to our own life, without waiting for others to give us a
class of heavens or hells. When we start a process of new
narratives, based on our own convictions, or at least on our own
intuitions. A project that does not consider taking over the
planet but better managing what you have, already talent, and its
fruits, and knowledge.
Happiness is the companion of an open mind, which has
anchored its habits to respect for the other and for the other
people. It is not frightened by the realities of the moment, nor
is she scandalized by human sins. It only knows how to give
each thing its true value, guided by rules of goodness and justice.

Happiness is the ability to successfully overcome all the

challenges that the fact of being born brought us, and to give
our face a smile every day that does not come off at the first
inconvenience. This is not, then, the sum of small joys, like when
we savor a small sweet. It is a primer that each one must build
to try the best version of themselves; so that at the end of each
day no one has complaints about us, neither the Universe that
invited us, nor the vulnerable and brittle being that inhabits our
landscape.

In any case… happiness is not the absence of pain or failure; it

is not a vaccine against all the ills of the planet. But it is the best
manager in adversity, the girl who sets the rhythm to the song
of life in the middle of storms and hurricanes, the fireworks that
makes the darkness glow with its beautiful colors.

Happiness goes through many places... One day it's buddy with
the taste buds in the middle of exciting flavors, in that restaurant
that has the recipe to take you to the heaven of your flavors
without causing any indigestion or leaving in your conscience no
remorse for that invoice of several zeros. Another day is
associated with the pleasures of hearing, in the rock concert,
classical music, or, that one that makes your heart explode with
the song of rock and roll. Thus, one day it is skin, another... it is
pure heart, tears and praise.

ENDLESS YOUTH
 It had to be a madman like me,
an individual with a tendency to tester
that will teach you to navigate the stars
that will addict you to enjoy beautiful things
(Dyango)

Happiness is not a puzzle of uniform tiles, nor a recipe that is

equally adaptable to the existence of all people. It is like water
that takes the shape of the containers that hold it. Happiness is
not imposed on blows, because if it were, it would not have our
personality, nor would it be an experience of pleasant emotion.

For some people it is the sum of joy and satisfaction, while for
others it is pure inner peace. At times it is what is palpable in the
money collected because of the success of a business, at times it
is the enthusiasm produced by a glass of wine with friends,
meanwhile for others... a lively prayer of praise to the Creator.

In some... it is a dream come true, in others... the failure

overcome, the disease alleviated, the opportunity awaited. And
so, we could qualify it as the desired fountain of eternal youth.

We must understand that happiness is the positive force that

gives us the spark to ignite the noblest purposes of our lives and
has as many meanings as human beings inhabit the planet.
Because while for the child it is the synonym of a sweet, for the
traveler it is the embrace of his mother or, well, the return to his
homeland. In that there are no equal sizes. The heart vibrates at
higher levels, and that makes it worthy of its name.

So, happiness isn't just dopamine, or a brain chemical like it. It

is simpler than we think, more innocent than any rational act. It
is not only the payment of duty fulfilled, but also the feeling that
our boat has found a sea to navigate without any restrictions.
Happiness is so magical and tangible, at the same time, that it
seems to live in wonderland. It is like a dream where the loving
embrace between the creature and the Great Architect of
Creation takes place, that Eternal Source of Happiness that does
not go out and keeps us on the fight not to let our best dreams
extinguish.

Happiness represents 24 hours of each day connected with good

vibes, with the best attitude towards what works, or what has
failed, what brought profits and what only generated learning
experiences.

Happiness is not the result of stressful perfectionism... but the

ability to write on these bodies of paper a story with the greatest
number of joys, a watercolor with the most varied landscapes.
Happiness is not a form to make angels disconnected from the
planet, but the reason to tell every human being that life is not a
valley of tears, but a paradise that deserves to be lived,
experienced, savored... until when? until the curtain falls, until
the last sensor of our skin says: I'm not going anymore... Thanks
for the time. Sweet time, sour and happy.

A TRIP FROM ILLUSION TO HAPPINESS

The man has illusions

like the bird wings.
That is what supports him.
(Blaise Pascal)

Without illusions there are no dreams. They are the raw material
with which dreams begin work. They are that spark of joy, that
colored flashlight that makes us guess a promising future, and
that makes us imagine that everything will turn out extra well.
Illusions begin when you say: “I want that”, and you begin your
searches.

Without dreams there are no projects. They are the most

beautiful design of our mind about our own life, the movie of
our best future to see in the present what we expect in the
coming days.

Without projects there is no success. Projects that contain the

best of our fantasies, our own passions, and our quality of
future.

Without success there is no happiness. A success that must

provide finances to satisfy our dreams and must grant security
to deflate anxieties and strengthen self-esteem. Different from
poverty, which is nothing more than the result of a sum of
repeated failures and unlearned lessons.

Without happiness, everything becomes a tiresome burden to

carry. It would be like belonging to a black and white world
while others live and enjoy a beautiful multicolored paradise. It
would be nothing more than enduring another day, renouncing
the embraces of Life that the Universe extends to us from all its
warm settings.

So, from today I will fill myself with illusions, new projects, new
destinations, new friends, new fantasies that put my body and
mind in happiness mode. I will gladly answer the alarm clock
every morning because now I understand that in its sound the
World invites me to a million joys from the first rays of the sun.

I don't want to be another sleeper, who hides between blankets

and sheets from the challenges imposed on me by living big,
dreaming big, working big, while others have been doing it for
a long time, and have given themselves to the joy of enjoy this
beautiful paradise, ready to savor the delights of life, trusting in
the Will of the Great Sage of sages, God.

So, from today I will consider each morning as the beginning of

a new opportunity to live in a pleasure way. I will activate new
neurons in my brain cave and turn them into true disciples of
knowledge.

I will train my muscles in new projects with which I can achieve

all my goals, because happiness will not be a platonic idea for
me, nor a shadow of a tree, it will be an evident reality like
creating a new company, proposing love to a person, making a
family, building a house, traveling to the Caribbean beaches,
study in a good academic center, getting a pet…

I will get up every day ready to enjoy new blessings, and to turn
every second of the clock into a chance to give my existence one
more centimeter of happiness. Why should I give up happiness
while there are so many blessings to explore? Why should I take
a bath in a dirty water well, when I can do it on the beaches of
the sea? Why would you eat reheated food when you can savor
some good freshly prepared steaks?

BEYOND SURVIVAL

Life is full of things to face,

but even so, it is too much beautiful and we must continue
(Martin Valverde)

The happiness philosophy appears when we wisely train our

brain to win the battle against ignorance and naivety. When we
bet on continuous improvement, to build a space that
assimilates and works to make our desires come true.
It is proven that when the exercise of Happiness manages our
lives, it does not allow pain to steal our peace, nor does it allow
fears to contaminate our nights with nightmares, nor does our
relationships make us enemies.

When Happiness manages our emotions, our partners multiply,

our friendships become stronger, and the soul finds more
reasons to get up early at each dawn.

Life is too wonderful to be reduced to the mere toils of bread

and sex. Because perhaps we are the only beings in the Universe
with the ability to imagine our future, to project our present, to
create illusions and fantasies, to design a life program with the
best standards of flavor. Build a happiness to our size.

If we continue to listen only the voice of our skin, we will end

destroying the reason of our genetics. We would be nothing
more than an ape on the planet, one more accessory to the
landscape, one more victim for the hunt.

HAPPINESS WITH IDENTITY

I must begin to be myself

and know how much I can,
and that I walk for my skin.
I had always been a half, without knowing my identity
(Ana Belén)

It is healthy that we begin to believe more in our own talent,

even if this talent is not half the talent of others, who cares! it is
our life, and we will not be willing to throw it away just because
others do not like it. If the Universe saw fit to invite us to its
wonders, encoding our entrails with the best of its repertoire...
what could make us give it up? Here we are, and nobody and
nothing is going to take away this desire to hit a home run at life.
This happiness will have a first and last name… ours. And it's
already started.

We must say that our happiness is an attempt for our life to live
again, because it is good to consider that happiness is pure
passion for living, for filling each sensor of our skin with
everything that tells us about life; It is our trip to the market of
colors, to paint our own watercolors, in this world where there
is no green like it. But yes, we must do it with the passion of the
moment, with all the love that our hearts can achieve, without
paying attention to whether this will be liked or not liked by
other people.

THE BEST TEACHER

The only moment in life when I feel myself

It's when I'm with my friends
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Happiness appears when we cut the threads with that groping

society, and we decided to ask the Universe for a good provider
of wisdom, a good mentor to help us bring our talent to the sight
of the entire world. And that is how we went out into the street
to collect the best resumes of artists, gardeners, teachers, writers,
peasants. To choose the lovers, those in love with life, the
children who wipe away tears, the creators of humanity, the
peace workers, the beings of light... those crazy people who do
not fit into the social order, those that system has never been
able to tame.

Welcome the sages that each generation gives us, here and
around the world, without a religious filter or moralistic
schemes. Welcome them just because they are angels in the
making, because their lives are homes of peace.

Happiness requires the recipes of people who have victoriously

crossed the threshold of pain, human beings who one day were
pinched by death or crude disease, or who had past agendas due
to failure and frustration. Beings who knew how to stand up in
all the battles, despite the persecution, without ignoring that they
once felt the silence and abandonment of their God. People who
follow no other truth but that of their own convictions, which,
although they do not have the rigor of scientific proof, are the
evidence of their total harmony with the Universe.

Happiness needs those recipes that tell us how to make it our

own, how to make it part of our veins, of our heart. A guide that
offers a fresh look to our eyes, a new horizon to our destiny. a
kind of guideline to help us improve this character of bad
temper where these family sins jump like frogs. A rule that
instructs us in the art of kindness rather than competition and
rivalry. A gospel of coordinates that teaches us to put our trust
in God before human pride and its power games.

FULL OF ENERGY

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

It has made me laugh and it has made me cry.
So, I distinguish happiness from brokenness,
the two materials that make up my song
(Violeta Parra)

Happiness has so much to do with the bourgeois, but it is at the

same time so proletarian. Such a friend of fine things, but also
an ally of the natural and the spontaneous. Mostly undisciplined
and little etiquette in its style. Irreverent in friendship and
respectful of other people's tears.

Happiness is the constant encouragement to live 24 hours a day

with the sweetness on your back, with your head up, your chest
swollen, and your eyes set on the future. Twenty-four hours a
day, connected to Life, no matter what. It is vibrating to the
rhythm of the planet, by the birth of each flower or the pain
caused by the death of each forest. It is getting up early for life,
without staying up late for death.

It is having enough wisdom to allow us being strengthened by

the pains and misunderstandings day to day. It is to maintain
control over the whims of the skin and the emotions that they
can create into us. It is a roller coaster ride of daily events that,
between fears and adrenaline, reminds us of the parameters of
fragility in which we were manufactured.

Happiness has not married any religion but has God as its origin.
It does not despise any skin color, nor does it allow any social
group to reserve it for itself. It enters where people offer their
shelter, and it turns skin in the cup of coffee or in the music of
the dance.

Happiness is not a photo where we impose a smile, where we

hang our cheekbones to our ears while the moment passes. No.
Happiness is the friendly connection to everything that swarms
around us; in the desire that everything functions with a party
spirit.

We must be attentive because at its lowest levels, joy usually

replaces it, acquiring the face of a fake illusion, which disguises
itself as euphoria, infatuation, a white cloud, but once the
moment and the circumstance have passed, it can evaporate to
leave us once again exposed to pain and tragedy.
If it is true that happiness should fill 24 hours a day, and that
our existence should be a continuous connection with life, it is
also true that not everything should be dopamine, that excesses
of euphoria and joy also kill, that between laughing and crying
there is a thin wall of paper that is very fragile and easy to break,
and that when parties are held on rooftops without walls around
it, it is very likely a fall into the void that puts us at least on the
way to the hospital.

From today, I will try a happiness tailored to my convictions,

not my stomach needs, for what from this moment I take in my
hands the reins of my dignity, without selling my conscience. So,
my stomach will no longer dictate a primer on how to live, how
to relate to the planet, what to do with the foreman's proposal.
It will not be bread, hunger, or fear, what guides my decisions.
It will be my projects, my aspirations and dreams that will give
way to my sunrises.

LOVE

Teach me to console as you console,

to trust as you trust,
to spread smiles like you do.
(Emmanuel)

There is no better place to be happy than a land where

everything is full of love, where hugs are our daily bread. There
is no better setting to smile than a space where respect is the
most practiced virtue. There is no better atmosphere of inner
peace than where the word is motivating and empowering. In
this way we can apply ourselves to the idea of that love is the art
of making the other's space happy, as an incentive and
nourishment for one's own happiness, without given up of one's
own state of satisfaction.

People say that a nail drives out another nail. And this is
evidence. But the second must be better than the first. Better in
qualities and in appearance, lest it end up making things worse,
breaking more than necessary.

We cannot forget that the human being is a puzzle of emotions

that are easily altered, a universe of living stories, of multiple
experiences where there is a mix of tears and laughter. A
notebook of photographs of joys or misunderstandings that,
when shared with a good friend, becomes a source of hope and
happiness. Because that is what love is... a true and permanent
factory of smiles that awaken the most beautiful feelings and
help to renew the deepest illusions.

It is not about filling with any material the holes left by the bad
relationships of the old time; to fill the broken tooth with any
chewing gum; to fill the wounds of the heart with whatever we
stumble upon at the fair. No. The thing is more serious. All
because our life is not a passing game, absolved of pain. It is a
living reality full of millions of sensors, which requires an
environment that provides the best physical and emotional
conditions for its truly growth.

If we want happiness fits in our soul, we must ensure that the

resume we accept meets the minimum of friendship: good
humor, simplicity, kindness, availability, spirituality, and
sincerity. A skin that knows how to cover our skin in the cold
hours. Someone who knows how to be there where our life
happens, to help us shake our miseries and give sky to our wings;
not one that steals our peace and destiny, like a bloodsucking
vampire.
Make to grow this tree of happiness requires us to surround
ourselves with people that use to do good things, which have a
smile to give, a joke to combat our sadness, arms to warm our
skin and uncover the joys of our hearts. It is not necessary to be
someone with the best titles to advise, it is enough that knows
how to listen and smile. Someone capable of consenting to our
whims and putting our boat to safety when the fuel of joy runs
out.

Now, if we want to keep this angel of love, we must prevent

greed makes part in our live; that when that being knocks on our
door looking for comfort, we are willing to help him, to hug
him, to grant him the necessary time, because it is important to
recognize that love is a round trip, a door that opens in both
directions. A hug to give and receive.

We need a school of love. One that teaches us to heal the

wounded comrade, to receive the wrestler of life, the discarded,
the rejected, the humiliated, the exploited, the one who after
each day arrives at our shelter with broken wings. We urgently
need a change in the model of love that we practice, to bring it
to the level of virtue, to the level of generosity and strength, joy,
and peace.

We must avoid at all costs that arrogance continues to drive the

strings of our relationships. That pretentious selfish, and
stubborn SELF must transform their battlefields into paradises
of light and color. We must abandon our complexes of greatness
to make way for a relationship of affection, kindness and
respectful, that considers the other’s skin a territory of dreams
and aspirations, of scars and pains.

Love is a massage to the heart aching from the setbacks that

each dawn brings us. An explosion of joys and freedoms, where
the dreams of others are not kidnapped, but encouraged with
the sweetest kisses and the most tender words. A place for
laughter and tears, for wine and jokes. A war hospital where the
fighter of life is treated. A gluhwein for the cold times, and a
lemonade for the hot ones. A need, a search for strength, a sky
to spread the wings and place life above problems.

Life is beautiful when you find someone who helps you that
your projects become realities; someone who makes us vibes,
fly, live; someone who helps us place existence in happiness
mode. Because it feels good when you have a place that receives
you, where there are words of encouragement that tell you that,
although you are not Superman or Wonder Woman, you are in
the friend’s list, that you have a huge value.
How nice it is to find a shelter for your fears, and a sky to let
your fantasies fly! It is our duty to respect that refuge of love
because it would be disloyal to contaminate with sadness the
heart that opened its arms to get up us.

Heartbreak is cured with love. Love remains in force because

God exists, as long as the planet has many arms to hug, many
laughs to share. Love does not have an only source, nor a single
face. It is where we least expect it. Sometimes it is kind and
boisterous, sometimes lonely, and shy. But it exists, and it will
surely accommodate our soul, our whims, our angels, and
demons. The universe has so many corners that our desired love
will be in one of them.

How the spark of life is lit when we find someone with whom
to share our goals, with whom to enjoy our profits. How tasty it
feels when we return from a hard job and find someone who
listens to us, who helps us put our emotions in order. How
strong the heart feels realizes that someone take care of it in this
Universe.
 DEGREE IN HUMANITY

Because it happens that, between faith and felony,

heredity and heresy, the cage, and the pack,
between dying or killing... I prefer, love, love.
(Luis Eduardo Aute)

Graduating in Humanity means learning to watch over the

dreams of others, without forgetting yours. To make sure that
no one goes to bed with hungry. To give a generous payment to
the salary of the humble. To give a decent price for the artisan's
creation without asking for a reduction. To gladden the heart
with a good tip to the one who has done his homework well. To
help the fragile people on their path, those who barely can stand.

Graduating in Humanity means of developing relationships

based on respect for one's own life and the life of others, the
skin color of the other people and one's own color skin. It is a
permanent friendship treaty, where the others matter with their
scars, mistakes, name, story, beliefs, sins, and fantasies.

Graduating in Humanity means becoming the most accepted

individual on the planet, a human being able of establishing a
friendly relationship, awake smiles and encourage the other’s
heart. It is having the capacity for synergy, the ability to capture
everyone's heart, including the heart of selfish people.

Graduating in humanity consists of learning to look into the eyes

of the world with the certainty that at the end of the day no one,
absolutely no one, will have any complaints about us; neither the
friend, nor the rival; sure, that no creature will take us to the
court of the inquisition because our behavior.

It is a permanent attempt to return to the first pages of Creation

where everything felt natural; where the flower was happy to be
a flower, and the cat did not pretend to be a lion. It is a matter
of going back to the beginning, and re-opening in us the original
plan for which we were created. It is a personal effort to become
the best allies in the world and establish us as the loving
consciousness of the Universe. It is teaching our own cells to
breathe affection and tenderness through all corners. To add
virtue to our actions, removing the overdose of selfishness from
our relationships.

How beautiful the hands of the doctor when his life is graduated
in Humanity, because in his hands the life begins again. How
beautiful the life of the preacher when his heart is graduated in
Humanity, because in his word the peace become a reality. How
beautiful the teacher's teaching when his talent is graduated in
Humanity, because his wisdom becomes a place of success and
wisdom for many people.

How wonderful and happy are the lives of parents graduated in

Humanity because society will have the best allies and helpers in
their children. How beautiful and blessed all of us are when our
actions are graduated in Humanity, because the tears of the
planet have found consolation, the cries of the world have found
an answer, and the universe lives a new resurrection, since new
angels have enlisted in their ranks to install a rainbow around
everyone.

The world will never be the same the day that all human beings
graduate in Humanity, the day that we relearn kindness allied to
generosity, freedom guided by responsibility, spirituality
supported by love, peace without trickery or hypocrisy, truth
inspired by common sense, life embraced in dignity. These
habits will show in us the necessary human skills and abilities to
make our planet the happiest place in the universe.
And we cannot forget that between a good doctor and a
despicable one, between a good soldier and one non loved,
between a good journalist and another who slipped through the
ranks, there is a significant difference... ethics. Without it,
everything becomes despicable, everything becomes an attack, a
bomb that kills and leaves behind thousands of victims, millions
of sadness and anger.

The virtue of the ethical establishes the difference between what

heals and what hurts, between what gives security and what
causes anguish, between what is dirty and what is elegant,
between what kills and what causes life, between what is socially
correct and the punishable.

It is not religious affiliations, nor university degrees that make

us more than others, it is simply our alliance with ethics, with
sensibly conducted actions that awaken joy and restore hope.

THE BASICS OF HAPPINESS

Happiness is the true success of our life,

even above money
(Mother Teresa of Calcutta)

It is time to imagine a happiness project that fits reality, our

reality, to our profile. A scheme of life that believes in the
imagination, which knows how to do lot with little, that takes
time without worries for what can wait, and that rushes for what
is urgent.

There is no time for more drills. There are basic elements of

happiness, inevitable affairs when it comes to dignity, basics of
smile and peace that must start right now.
These are the basics of happiness: a proper and safe refuge
where to spend every night. An appropriate dress for our cold
or our heat. A tasty food that does not argue with what is healthy
and provides the strength to live with courage each day. An
academic training that makes us heirs to the wisdom of the
world. A physical activity that puts our muscles into action,
which takes us out of valley of monotony. A proper job with the
size of our strength that offers us the money to stablish a well-
being life. A quick medicine that puts us back to the current of
life. A generous friendship that shelters our fears and help us to
modulate our stress. A loving dose of nature that reminds us
that we are part of this Universe. A time for recreation and
laughter to ease our worries. A personality enough to vouch
what we are. A place of prayer for recognizing and thanking the
blessings to the Great Artificer of Creation. A freedom that fits
our dreams and projects. And a wallet that pays off all our debts.

So, we can pass from five minutes crumbs of happiness to

twenty-four hours of complete happiness. From a black and
white space to a colorful paradise. From supporting the planet,
to enjoy it. From the pavement streets to the flower garden.
From poisoned values to true virtues. From the creators of
dopamine to the forgers of inner peace. From anxiety
suppressants to life motivators.

STRENGTHENED HAPPINESS

If you want to discover the true character of a person,

it is enough to observe what he is enthusiastic about.
(Shannon Alder)

And if we are to imagine ourselves happy, then we must imagine

a happiness that will withstand all winds and all tides, all the
failures and all goodbyes.
Each birthday should bring us, then, a new level of happiness, a
new adjustment in the life program, of relationship with the
surrounding world, of close harmony with the light beings that
walk along our existence and are part of our everyday landscape.
That being of light is a friend, a relative, a pet, a flower, a star, a
waterfall. In short, something that makes our faces shine, which
renews the joy of our heart.

Then the desired Happiness will come to go through every

corner of our skin, filling our interior with peace. It will come to
set up shop in our skin, to brighten our eyes, to set up the
control center for our emotions and deactivate the last fear and
the last sin.

HAPPY CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

A sign should be placed on each child that says:

Handle with care, "contains DREAMS"
(Mirko Badiale)

Let us start with the questions: How can we help our children
to build their own happiness? How can we help them to cross
from little joys to a real happiness? How to help them find their
place on this planet of contradictions, on this land where to
resolve the problems is our source of wisdom? How to help
them to improve their level of energy in front of their losses?
How to help them make their dreams and aspirations come true?
How to help them find the territory of their best emotions
without overloading them with superficiality? How to help them
harmonize their feelings with the rest of the world and learn to
have a good relationship with everyone, establishing a
relationship based on respect and tolerance? How to help them
find their inner peace? How to make their nights not turn into
nightmares or days become annoying and boring? How to
ensure that one more young person is not lost because of drugs,
prostitution, alcohol. lawlessness or suicide?

The answer is spirituality. A healthy spirituality. One that, under

the leadership of the parents, places God back at the Center of
decisions and the feelings, and makes them discover themselves
as a masterpiece, as an angel project.

A spirituality that is not religiosity. One that is built based on

faith but not on fear. One that does not underestimate the Work
of God each second. Which means total harmony with the
Universe and with its Creator. A spirituality that heals the
present wounds and helps to heal the humiliations of the old
time. A spirituality that teaches them to be generous and kind to
everyone, especially those who think differently. A spirituality
that teaches them to forgive as a recipe to attract inner peace
and open spaces in our hearts for new friends. A spirituality that
turns love into the best program of life. A spirituality that turns
words into motivation and the example of parents into the best
mirror to look at life.

I am sure that it is easier for an adult to establish a state of

happiness in his life than it can be for a child or a young person.
If it is so difficult for adults to achieve it, that we have much
more knowledge of things and people, and more economic
possibilities to do it, it must be much more complicated for
children and young people who have not done all this school of
challenges and difficulties that we, the most adults, have gone
through.

We cannot confuse a joy of three minutes, or the time of an ice

cream, with a state of life that lasts 24 hours a day, where our
children go from being consumers to being main actors of their
own destiny. And this is the reason we should trust them.
Because there is no better motivation than to say: I did this.
There is no greater satisfaction than showing the world our
achievements. Small or large, but with our brand.

So, will we continue to despise our children's skills? Will we

continue to delay their happiness? Will we continue filling them
with objects that we get in the market to silence their tantrums,
instead of teaching them to build what they dream of? It is not
a question of doing their homework, of taking their positions so
that their qualifications come out very well. It is about bringing
them information, advising them on their schoolwork or getting
someone to advise them, but never disabling their abilities and
their dreams.

Reading is wonderful, but it is more satisfying to be able to write

the verse of a song, with its own rhythm. It is wonderful to eat
a sweet, but the one we made in the kitchen at home,
accompanied by mom, following a tutorial on the internet, tastes
better. Traveling is wonderful but being allowed to choose the
destination and even the color of the swimwear is a feeling that
does not end so quickly.

If in the adult conversation, we ask the children: "What do you

think?” And we consider their opinion, that really makes them
pride and the self-esteem fly. Better said, that the adult world
believes in you does not give you land, it gives you the
firmament, it gives you wings to fly far away, and the certainty
that being part of the Universe is the best gift your parents have
given you.

Because it is not the same to repeat a prayer with your parents

that to do a simple praise born in your own heart. It is not the
same buy a bread, that you go with your grandmother to put
some pieces of dough in the oven.
Everything changes when you are the main actor in your own
story. Feelings change, motivations increase, your way of
relating to others improves. Your self-esteem is strengthened,
you have more confidence to face challenges, you have a safer
word to express your opinion, there are fewer fears to face tricky
situations

Happy children and young people are also our responsibility to

build a healthier society. But happy children and young people
equally require happy parents and a natural environment that
facilitates it.

CHAPTER THREE

CHALLENGES TO BUILD
OUR HAPPINESS

The Challenge of CHANGE

The most dangerous human masses

are those in whose veins
the poison of fear has been injected...
the fear of change.
(Octavio Paz)

I understand that everything valuable has its price, and I am

willing to pay for it, putting a stop to my visceral tantrums and
my excesses of stubbornness. I understand that genetics can
sometimes be more than my good will, that my last name comes
out at the least indicated moment, that sometimes, without
thinking about it, family arrogance jumps out at me.
I will accept, convinced, that building my happiness will not be
an easy task; that putting my emotions in order is an urgent
obligation; that I will have to learn immediately to value what I
have neglected, and that improving my vocabulary and
becoming more patient in my commitments is a matter that I
must not put off another day.

That is why I will accept to leave my comfort zone, abandoning

that indifferentism in which my life sometimes enters, that
comfort that says to ensure almost everything, that contempt for
what is foreign in which my heart is sometimes placed.

Today I intend to abandon my autism and make new partners

in my family and in my work, so that I can more widely enjoy
the blessings that the planet offers me in each sun and in each
being that is part of its landscape.

I will abandon, then, my intellectual quietism and I will get ready

to remove the drawer of my monotonous and simplistic ideas,
accepting the arrival of new thoughts that will help my brain to
generate healthier solutions in the inconveniences that day to
day brings.

I will keep alive the desire to continuously improve, and I will

place in the trash that mental rigidity that has taken flight from
my wings and to my good intentions. Because I am convinced
that monotony is a killer of dreams and illusions, capable of
taking any life to a cliff.

THE NEW AGENDA Challenge

Life is a blank canvas

and you should throw all the paint you can on it
(Danny Kane)
I do not want my clock to turn off without having started life, I
do not want this opportunity that the Universe gave me to go to
the dump without having enjoyed it to the fullest.

Today I challenge myself to live, and to live in a beautifully way.

No scandals, no rush, no perfectionism, no puritanism, no
superiority complexes, or caricatured ostentation. Grounded
and realistic. No overconfidence. Natural and spontaneous.
Opened and universal. Kind and sincere.

Today I challenge myself to rebuild my life, to establish new

bonds of encounter with the landscape, to developpe a true
reengineering of my neural mass, place of my emotions and my
dreams.

I want to challenge my heart, my skin, my mind to create a new

agenda, to build a new story on this skin of paper, to polish my
usual dictionary much more, to write a new plan of friendship
with all the beings with whom I share the planet, to put more
humor in difficulties, to conduct my heart and my body to a true
happiness, one that withstands all gales and all storms.

And when I say CHALLENGE… I mean to conduct this task

of self-construction and improvement in a conscious and loving,
patient, and rhythmic way. Starting from the reality in which I
currently find myself, that is, my lies, my whims, my impulses,
my tantrums, my envy, my vocabulary, my cheating, my
duplicity, my abuse, my infidelity... to drive my life to new levels
of expertise, kindness, generosity, laughter, dialogue, humility.

This is for me, a disciplined purpose to lead my vices towards

virtue, to lead my fears towards the strengthening of my self-
esteem, to abandon the noises of pride to listen to the wise
advice of love.
I want to shout my God that letting me go into his agenda is not
a wrong project, including me in his Big Bang is not either. Now,
more than ever, I believe in his blessings, I believe in his loves,
the ones extend to me every morning, the ones grow with the
rains on my dry land.

My new agenda will have a special place for my family, the same
one that has gotten up early for me over the years and stayed up
late waiting me, the one that has invested its savings in my
dreams and my hunger, the one that has been appointed
guardian of my happiness, who has believed in my skills and has
wrapped my sadness with love.

My new planner will have room for new friends, those who are
willing to heal my pain with good humor, willing to empty my
break heart and my tears with the best of their collection of
advice, jokes, and laughter.

My new agenda has more books to read because I find in them

a wealth of wisdom without limit. Because they represent me
pieces of science that the Universe gives me, small rays of light
that appear every day to shine my path to the land of happiness.

My new agenda has named the Universe as a friend, the best

hospital for my broken emotions. My new agenda has named
God as its Center, where virtue and hope are born, where the
doubtful finds its meaning, and the cloudy finds its clarity, where
the void is filled with meaning and the inexplicable finds its
answer; filter of dirty tears; surgeon who removes the cataracts
to look at life with optimism.

THE NEW STORY Challenge

 Inspiration exists
but it must find you working
(Picasso)

I want to turn water into wine, the bland into tasty, and challenge
my paper religion until it becomes one of great loves. I want to
go down to my land, to my spoiled land, to transform it into the
most beautiful paradise.

I will author a new story about my scars, hoping that my friends

and family will be the judges and helpers in this pretty purpose.
I will fill my life with principles and values that help me achieve
my new commitments. I will put a brake on my old whims, to
make room in my skin for new behavior models, that multiply
my album of friends, that make me a winning person... winner
of inner peace, of self-confidence, of shine in my eyes, new and
better partners for this project called happiness, far away from
anxiety and despair.

I understand that I was not born into the richest family, nor I
did not attend the most prestigious school, but I am happy with
the chances that life has offered me, because with them I have
managed to manufacture hundreds of hours of joy, and I am
sure that the old blessings will be accompanied by new, colorful,
and hopeful ones.

My new purpose is to rewrite my story on the new pages that

Universe gives me. Because I absolutely believe that the God
has not stopped its blessing factory with this childish creature
that it summoned from its entrails.

My pain needs a new story to be recycled, as do my failures.

What is urgent for this face, more than makeup, is to wake up
with a smile that does not fall at the first inconvenience. A
change of company would not hurt. Or a change of roles in
relationships with those around me. Or better yet, a healthy
spirituality, of intimate connection with my Creator, that is not
fed by outside truths, but by a true trust in who one day in the
history of the planet put me to live in this beautiful scenario that
has built and decorated for millions and millions of years.

Why should I underestimate myself, as if I had less dignity than

the rest of the Universe, as if my life was not moved by the same
heart that moves the entire landscape? Why would I have to eat
a second-class pizza, with the possibility and the argument to eat
a first class?

Challenge of THE NEW ARCHITECTURE

The life of each man is a path towards himself,

the attempt of a way,
the outline of a path
(Hermann Hesse)

I want to give a new architecture to my existence. I will remind

my heart of its vocation for love, and my hands of its vocation
for hugs. They were not made just for the fight, to tear a piece
of bread from the earth; they are also instruments of friendship,
armor to protect the weak, a sheet to warm the skin and the
heart of those who saw how their joys were broken at the most
unexpected time.

I fully understand that this effort to make a new house does not
start from nothing and that it is up to me to work very hard on
an old structure, with dirty windows and broken terraces, with
rickety doors, walls that are in danger of falling and shallow
foundations.
It is one of my convictions that without principles there is no
identity, there is no personality, there is no way to shape
character, there is no way to better outline my citizen card. And
without character we are like weathervanes that the wind
snatches away, like sheep led by a blind shepherd, like a raft
without a rudder.

So, the principles will guide me to say YES, with arguments, or

to say NO, and be able to support it. And everyone happy; and
me with my head held high saying: this is me, listen to me. Proud
and with character. Enthusiastic about myself, but without
humiliating traces. Lofty and calm at the same time. Provoking
security and respect. Always remembering that my dignity has
the seal of Heaven.

I will give my heart a happiness that bears my seal, which bears

my style, without stepping over anyone, without ruining
someone else's project. A happiness that does not mock or
ignore the tears of the neighborhood. A happiness that does not
rule out my scars or my history. A happiness that does not
resemble that of the neighbor, which does not walk in the desire
for ostentation and rivalry.

I will give my life a happiness fed by passion and good taste, by

generosity and love for love; of a love without poisons or
banalities, without selfishness or jealousy; not one of those who
overwhelms, who damages the other's smile to satisfy his own
arrogance; but one who understands how to deliver joys, to
adorn the foreign world with smiles; a two-way love that heals
hearts and offers its own firmament for others to fly, for others
to spread the wings of their best dreams.

I will improve the concept I have of myself, and I will not go

around destroying myself because my mistakes. Who was born
learned? Who works with one hundred percent of the brain? It
is foolish to think that with a brain that works at ten percent or
less, somebody can become the greatest know-it-all of the
planet. And thank God, we are not those genius. Where would
be the teamwork if this is filled with this kind of beings? Where
would our dreams fit if everything was made if everything was
perfect? This would be an absurd world if only beings of high
and refined intellect inhabited it.

I want to be someone with a name in the crowd, ignorant but

not mediocre, clumsy but not incapable, willing to try my best
for my own happiness, without the cruel mirror of someone
who is trapped in money and ambition.

So I will take my strengths and capabilities to new levels, and I

will not beat myself up in case things don't go my way, rather I
will say: this needs to be improved, this needs more information,
this needs more investment, this needs more advice and time,
this needs more friends… Open mind and listening ears.

More than refining my body, I will refine my heart to prevent a

mountain of dislikes and dissatisfactions that make it disable for
the service and for the smile. That also tells me that I should be
careful not to get together with toxic people who are spreading
hate all the time, spreading frustrations in every gesture or word
they talk.

So, I will strengthen my heart, (understood as the part of my

mind that works as the central office of my emotions) so that
even the most acidic word does not corrupt it or steal its fragile
happiness.

Arrogance will no longer be a senseless devil in my life, and I

will not allow it to turn my body into a clod of sand where the
simplest loves have no place, because it is evident that it -
arrogance - only knows about humiliations, impolite language,
and point an inquisitive finger.

That of looking at others over the shoulder is not only annoying

but disgusting. So that I will recognize on time in other people
the pain that their lives entail, and I will be diligent to help them
get ahead with the best of my ability. It would be unfair to
remain indifferent to the need of those beings that are part of
the human race that was invited by the Great Creator to his
Universe, imagining that all this collection of blessings and
fantasies, of creatures and actors, were not intended as a
collection of disjointed subjects and things, but as a paradise of
a great family called humanity, where we all save ourselves, or
we all sink.

THE NEW SOURCES Challenge

Only your joy

calms my pain
and so, I know how beautiful it is to live
(Miguel Bose)

I put myself in a learning state. Thinking I'm a know-it-all

doesn't suit me. Humanity knows a thousand things that I do
not know. I accept that my stubbornness has only left me big
walls of loneliness and anger.

I will be attentive to listen to the advice of the wise, of the

experienced, especially those who have learned from failure and
have managed to get out of the quicksand of suffering.

I will give my life a thousand sources of happiness, a thousand

terraces to enjoy it, a thousand places to savor it, a thousand
friends to accompany it, a thousand opportunities to see it grow,
a thousand prayers to assure it the best blessings. I will look for
more art, more comedy, more beaches, more nature, more fresh
air, more reading healthy, more family, more friends, more
karaoke, more angels of light, more musical notes, more poetry,
better gastronomy.

My provider of wisdom will not be just anyone. Must be a

person with a very advanced profile, knowledgeable about good
and evil, wise, and sagacious, humble, and simple, sinful, and
renewed, kind and experienced.

It will not be one of those who conquer my heart in false

ideologies or religions, nor take advantage of it to reach into my
pocket. They will be beings in love with life, with each flower
that is born, able of tears and laughter, disable of mistreating
their pet.

I will not allow night to fall without having learned something

that will help me give my projects wings and sky. I want to
challenge myself so that each birthday is different from the
previous one. I will not fear the challenge, nor will I hide from
the discipline and responsibility that it asks of me.

REALISM Challenge

It is better to light a candle,

than curse the dark
(William Shakespeare)

I will look at the good side of things, without ignoring the less
good. And I will learn to call things by their name. To good I
will say good and to evil I will say bad. To the superficial, the
name it deserves; and if it is tender and beautiful, how wonderful
it is.
I will stop blaming others. And I will put on the table all my
excesses, all my injustices and all my vices, without ignoring any
of them. Like when placing a weapon, a cigarette box, a bottle
of liquor, and you say to yourself: "none of this will ever be part
of my property again." And there I will also place my hatred and
arrogance, and all that store of excesses that others criticize me.
Because I recognize that my new build is so wonderful that it
requires the best floors and finishes, and not a muddy or sandy
lot that puts my well wishes at risk.

I will be realistic. I will not forget that I still do not know how
life works correctly. That I am just a life apprentice. That in my
brain there is still a lot of white space, a lot of soot, a lot of moss
and a lot of cockroaches. That this mind lacks much reading,
science of a thousand generations.

I will be realistic. I will not forget that this mud skin needs to be
pampered, and that this heart needs to surround itself with
better feelings. That I can't alone deal with this daily routine.
That the experience of my friends must be my best school.

I will be realistic and accept that I am not the last coke in the
desert. At best case I'm just a good looking and lucky person. I
will be realistic and accept that time is fast and my days on the
planet are not protected. With me or without me the clock of
Universe will keep ticking without stopping to ask for my name.

I will be realistic and accept that others do not have my rhythm,

nor my character, that they were not born with my own genetics,
and for this reason I will show myself willing to accompany their
processes without humiliation or crushing arrogance.

I will be realistic and avoid those excesses of optimism that can

make me fall into the trap of overconfidence that leads to
disaster. The traveled paths are never written with the same
footprints. The waters that pass under the bridge never have the
same load. Thinking that my brain and my guardian angels have
everything under control could cause me serious problems. So,
the best thing is to live life as if I had never lived it before, lest I
suddenly stumble upon something unexpected that is bigger
than my own strength. Weighted risk is fine, but not the blind
stupidity of those who believe they live in a world of perfect
structures, who have total control of the Universe.

FIRST-RANGE PEOPLE

Let me into your dreams.

Prepare a place.
Open the doors of the soul.
I come to stay.
(Alberto Plaza)

Envious, arrogant, abusive, lazy, boring, liars... they will not be

titles of my profile. I will constantly remind my heart that a First
Range God have designed me to be first class person. That I
have been coded with the best quality standards, among other
beings that are part of the world. That a handful of enlightened
neurons have given me a radical level to surpass other species in
creativity and range of action. That those neurons were given to
me to fill my brain with knowledge, and it was not an old body
that gave me the Universe to start this path. That life has granted
me the terrace of a great building to extend my gaze in all
directions.

Now, I know very well that I am a being to be done, that I am

illiterate in things of life, that my body must accept the discipline
to learn the talent, that my brain must accept the teaching to give
roots to its dreams, that my heart must control its emotions to
make a good team with the planet. That I will have to choose
between caprice and friend, or between inner peace and the
noise of arrogance. Recognize that an overdose of skin and
senses can endanger the best virtues of my soul.

I will accept that my new state of happiness calls for new habits,
a new language of communication, new beliefs, new values, new
rules of the game, new ways of facing problems, new friends,
new guides...

It does not mean that everything in my life must be perfect, but

I admit that from my behaviors demand more elegance and
kindness. I accept that my new state is that of the apprentice,
that of the disciple, not that of the master. So, I will listen more
and talk less, to put my five senses and my heart in learning
mode.

So, I will look for teachers who teach me to design my best self,
the best version of myself, accepting that I am a unique being
amid this ocean of life and diversity, where no two fingerprints
are the same, no two identical snowflakes.

DREAM BIG Challenge

Never give up on a dream.

Just try to see the signs that lead you to it
(Paulo Coelho)

I will dream new dreams, which contain a first and last name,
and I will get up early to work for them until I see them take
flight, because I am sure that the future has already begun.
What would life be without a dream? What would every
morning be without an illusion? Emptiness and reluctance. A
slow journey to the underworld, to the place of the undead.

I have decided that dreams will be my way of getting hooked on

life every day. They will be tuned into the causes of a kinder
world, a happier world, where I exist and the other people too.

I call them great because of the number of beneficiaries that are

part of them. Those from my house, those who grew up with
me, those who helped me grow, those who support me, those
who teach me, the vulnerable, the despised, the unlucky...
Because dreaming big requires acting big, loving big.

CONVICTIONS Challenge

I am the captain of my soul

(Nelson Mandela)

I will accept that doubt is a great school, where great wise men
are forged. So, I won't take it as if it were a great sin to be
suspicious of what I've learned so far. I am sure that it will be a
slower but safer path, which will fill my soul with convictions
and satisfaction, with more power to smile at life and follow its
way.

It is because of my convictions that I realize that my brain has

already begun to work, that I have made my own idea of the
world, that I no longer just paste letters at the insinuation of
others, but I have also managed to write stories with my own
flavor, I have made my own dictionary of life, based on my
experiences or the experiences of those who knew how to
overcome their challenges with positivism and passion
I will stop being an errand boy for others who want to
indoctrinate my conscience, manipulate my needs, make me a
creed to the size of their interests. That thing that I say because
it is said does not suit me at all. How many speculations and lies
has humanity repeated until turning them into truths that have
gone around the world? "Truths" that have served great
ideological monopolies of religious and political hue to settle in
public squares and eternally enjoy the honeys of power, at the
cost of our intellectual silence.

I will be a principled person who bases his opinion on the

reasons that improve the living environment, and not on those
that crush and grind, divert and manipulate, or that incite fear,
and make the most fragile lose visibility. What I must do I will
do more out of conviction than blind obedience, more out of
social responsibility than to please the egos and interests of
others, or even my own ego, because I am convinced that
instead of obeying what I should do is act out of intelligence,
where ethics plays a very important role that leads us all to win.

Of course, I must accept that I am not always moved by

convictions, but in many cases I am moved by intuitions, that
there are certain readings of reality that have their calculation in
my heart much more than in my reason. Moments in which the
radar of some sector of my brain makes me change my mind
under the pretext of a better experience; like a prophetic angel
that tells me what to do, foreseeing a reading of the future from
the conditions as the present unfolds.

I will live with the conviction that it is not the color of the skin,
nor the religion, nor the sexual orientation that determines a
human being, but the size of their heart. And that is why in my
world there is room for all those with a big heart. No labels, no
baptismal certificates, no passport... Only kindness is enough to
find a visa to enter my love album. The rest will receive my
respect, and perhaps a coin for their hunger.

Conviction that the world does not need saints but sages,
teachers of virtue, people capable of dealing with problems
correctly using their soul and the experiences of their skin.

Conviction that my life has too many whims and hundreds of

lost blessings. Conviction that envy is the philosophy of the
unsuccessful people, and that is why I choose to look outwards
to learn from the success of others, and do not to try to trip up
someone who, with smartness and passion, has been able to
build a name and a history of greatness. Conviction that my life
began with the first code of the Creation of the Multiverse and
will end when there is no trace of my own creations.

WISDOM Challenge

The mind is like a parachute...

it only works if we have it open.
(Albert Einstein)

I will stop putting problems to problems and become an ally of

solutions, humbly listening to the advice of my good friends and
family. I will make the purpose of traveling to the hearts of
others to understand their actions, their anguish or concern, the
reasons for their anger or their decision.

I will listen, I will listen, I will listen, because I know that in the
heart of the small and the great human there is a world that I do
not know, a painful experience that I unknow. Even the simplest
being has its grace, even the silliest has its reason for being. The
world has interpretations that I would never have imagined. So,
I'm going to get into other people's shoes to see how much they
carve and how difficult the road is with them.

That craze for complicating things, that stupidity of inflating

everything to discredit others for their mistakes, does not suit
me at all. Exaggerating will never be a good formula to tell my
truth. So, exaggeration will be replaced by prudence and realism.

Who has not been wrong? Who has spent a single day of his life
without committing an inconsistency? Who was born educated
and free from all sin? Or who did not tell a lie to protect himself
from his victimizers? All. We have all made up lies to defend our
skin, we have all done mischief, everyone in this world of private
property has taken something without consent. So, I must not
believe that I am the only one empowered to do damage.

Wisdom to anticipate circumstantial cases, to deal with

problems before they begin to grow. Understood as the ability
to respond promptly and effectively to a situation that may
endanger the own project or the project of others. Understood
as the art of visualizing the greatest number of scenarios of a
fact and have the skill to surround it with adjusted solutions that
provide long-term stability. Like the virtue of finding gains for
all, even in situations of low profitability.

I am convinced that while lack of knowledge makes me quite

vulnerable in decision making, wisdom empowers me to
exercise critical, bold, and successful thinking; strengthening my
freedom and my autonomy, and enabling me to think for myself,
to dream my own dreams and decide what is best to make me a
winner.

GOOD CHOICES Challenge

 I am not a product of my circumstances,
I am a product of my decisions.
(Steven Corvey)

Today I must admit that making decisions under pressure is the

worst mistake a human being can make. And the pressure is...
the lack of decent work, bank commissions, forced solitude, the
demand of the boss who asks for immediate results, money for
the well-being of the parents, the illness of the children, the
payment of rents and public services...

If I do not correctly calculate the consequences that this or that

decision can bring, I could be trapped in quicksand that will
condemn me to a hell from which it is difficult to get out. He
could be buying a fake husk remedy, which would then let out
its rot when its true reality is exposed.

How many people there are that for taking the effortless way
ended up in jail or in the cemetery, or lost their family, their job
and their friends; imagining that no one would notice his trick;
they measured short-term results, without calculating the time
of pain that awaited them.

The desire to resolve our anxieties should not prevent our mind
from making a rational journey to define each action, the
minimum, but fair, list of reasons to make the right decision, to
avoid a step that will trip up our project and our happiness.

It's not about crying over the bad decisions of the past and
beating ourselves up for how clumsy we were. We must
understand that these were times of incipient experience, times
in which emotions had few teachers, in which using a pencil and
calculator was not our thing, in which we measured everything
for pleasure and not for convenience. Times without dreams,
nor principles, nor discipline. Times of arrogance where we
thought that two words were enough to survive. Time of ears
full of wax, and a myopia that did not let us see beyond the
mirror. Days in which no life project was thought of, only how
to raise a loaf of bread, and wait again for the arrival of night.

Therefore, I will tie my decisions to the best scenario I can

create. The previous hourglass has already emptied, and I will
not let this one that begins now pass by to give my life a new air.

I will justify my actions more, that is to say... I will think less

about my whims, my tantrums, my tiredness, and my anxieties,
and I will look for those arguments that can give me a firm smile
and can make me achieve a lot of satisfaction at the end of each
day.

I will open my mind without punishing the opinion of others.

The world knows things that I do not know yet. If I must use
pencil and paper, I will do so to reach winning solutions. That
"we all win" is my philosophy, and that ethics is my best pillow.
My loved ones will be in the front row on the list of my
decisions, as well as those that are part of my friends' album. But
at the end of the day, I have no debts with the world, and I feel
proud of my behavior.

And if I do not know what to do, because the dilemma is great,

I will look for one of those friends who know how to advise
from experience, one of those who do not live on other people's
truths but have managed to consolidate their thinking based on
their own convictions. I will look for those who help to identify
between two evils the one that does not threaten dignity and life;
and between two goods the one that produces happiness for a
longer time. I will look for those angels with human skin who
do not allow themselves to be robbed of peace by the first pain,
nor do they bow before failure or death.
I will listen to the voice of the humble who knows how to
maintain calm and height in the middle of the discussion, and
not that of the arrogant that everything goes to him in hypocrisy,
advising strategies in bad taste, putting up fights and destroying
happiness.

I will be careful that the pressure of others does not make me

make stupid decisions that I later regret. Because in a hostile
world in which we live, which continually plays between virtue
and vice, I have decided to collect virtues such as faith and
generosity, which make the soul and good relationships grow. I
have decided to annihilate the nightmares, strengthen my
character, and renew the contents of my mind through
everything that transmits wisdom to me.

HUMILITY Challenge

Your most dissatisfied customers,

they are your greatest source of learning
(Bill Gates)

I will accept gratefully that I was built with a skin of paper, and
that clay is part of the raw material in which I was assembled, in
which I am willing to lay the foundations for this noble project
of happiness. I understand that my entrails were not woven with
the best diamonds and steel, and that should remind me of the
fragility in which my fellow human beings also live.

Humility of knowing how to ask for help in time, breaking my

arrogance along the way, with the premise that four hands do
more than two and lighten the load, four hemispheres think
more than one and provide more points of view for a wider
range of solutions.
Humility clothed in dignity that helps me recognize my mistakes
in time without implying that I give up my esteem, my
convictions, and principles, or make me ridicule my name, my
achievements, my history, and my projects.

It is my decision not to feed the anger of others, but it is also

not my desire to turn the other cheek so that another strikes
without reason. I have already said it... I will be humble, but
without kneeling. I will recognize my mistakes in time,
suppressing that habit of blaming others for what is my mistake.

I will finish pedantry and arrogance and I will commit myself to

being kind to my fellow men, suppressing any gesture that seems
racist, discriminatory, or humiliating.

I will learn to fall on my knees before the Owner of the

Universe, to give myself the pleasure of feeling how his hand
lifts me up and takes me to fly in the sky, strengthening my wings
to place me above my dreams and my projects.

THE SUCCESS Challenge

Ideas can change lives.

Sometimes the only thing you must do
is to open the door to a clever idea.
(Jim Rohn)

Today I want to understand that my greatest success will be

about myself, and my ability to take my life to a new level of
goodness. To be more in titles of generosity and affection, and
less in academic titles of the great know-it-all. To make easier
more and better opportunities. To unfold my talent in new
horizons. To make an upward journey from the raw material of
my muscles to the most beautiful creation of my heart.

Today I recognize that opportunities do not come to the house,

that to savor them I must go out looking for them, that they do
not fall by parachute, that they are built to the extent that my
resume accumulates knowledge, new landscapes, and excellent
allies. I accept that success demand a great dose of self-value. I
accept that success requires a large dose of self-esteem. That
loving who I am and what I can do becomes particularly
important for the development of each enterprise.

So, I will ll get up early to build a company the size of my

happiness, not the size of my stomach. An enterprise that
ensures my expenses and my tastes, that offers me the time to
share with my loved ones, that proposes ethical and friendly
products that improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of
the planet. Because, for me, ethics will always be a relevant
virtue, understood as the ability to transform without hurting,
to build without damaging, to develop without spoiling;
guarantee that everything that is done or designed is conceived
under parameters of well-being and love for the Universe.

And then, I will see how the successes flourish, how the heart is
filled with new friends, how knowledge is bigger, how mistakes
become the best work material.

I must say that success is the best salary of our early mornings
and our late nights, of our discipline and dedication, of our
sacrifice and perseverance, of our investments and accumulation
of knowledge, because there is nothing better than being able to
pay the bills with our own money, and that we have enough to
go for a walk around the world and give the heart many minutes
of relaxation. A success that has in private property the best
incentive, because there is nothing better in life than to get a
space for yourself on the planet with the least amount of
humiliation.

How wonderful freedom feels when we generate and manage

our own financial resources. How self-esteem grows when the
wallet must answer for the bills. What a joy to be able to invite
our family and friends to an excellent restaurant, a bottle of
champagne, a beer, or a delicious meal, and have it left over for
the following days. Thus, success can mean the entrance to
paradise, the opportunity to multiply true partners, to help
dream our dreams, and that of another individual who is in a
tricky situation.

But I must admit that when success spreads its wings too much
it can become a real hell. When no number is enough, rivalry
makes an appearance, pride jumps to humiliate and repress, fear
stands guard, suspicion grows towards those closest to us.
Nothing is enough, everything is little. And what was originally
a season of happiness turns into karma at its highest level,
sweeping away one's own light and that of many others. So, if I
want to add profits, I must do it accounting for my own effort,
personal sweat, and not the hunger or humiliation of others.

The size of our happiness will depend on how we manage our

success. If mine is a conquest of earth at all costs, regardless of
the means, without avoiding the slightest scruple, I'm done, and
I'll be turning off many lights, many familiar smiles, many
human satisfactions. Then I will have to content myself with
caviar and some fancy shoes, because faithful friends will be
gone forever, and I will have to live by feeding a club of
sycophants who watch my back all the time. Alone with my
loneliness, full of simple fantasies that break at the first sneeze
of the world economy.
Life grants the egoist small joys, as well as the arrogant, but they
are only small emotions of the skin that are not enough to make
the heart vibrate; sea waves that quickly die on the beach of
solitude. Because I am convinced that if there is someone good
to achieve success, it is the proud. Disciplined and bold,
methodical, and neat, precise and perfectionist. Their self-
esteem can go over the dignity of others without asking
permission. His security allows him to build empires. His
ambition takes him to unimaginable worlds, but happiness is
elusive and slippery for him, his money gives him nothing more
than to buy a few fantasies, and a few dozen slaves.

All the above does not indicate that poverty should be my

philosophy of life. No. It is nothing more than the road map of
the unsuccessful, of those who have not been able to find their
place in the Universe, of those who have not been involved in
the search for solutions to their problems.

Why eat a second-rate pizza, when you can do it with a first-rate

pizza and with the best ingredients? What would make me think
that I am the son of a second-rate god? Son of some lost
meteorite, of the random game of molecules, or of the
mathematics of a half-unplugged god? No. No being in the
Universe is poor. It is enough to recognize that we are part of a
majestic ecosystem that constitutes the marketplace to feed all
our happiness.

But the success of success will not be that finances surpass me,
but that I put myself above them, because if the first thing
happens, I will be finished, turned into a vault full of gold. I will
have built an empire for the joy of a few who will turn it into a
party in a few years. So, I do not want the world to end up
remembering me as the one who lived poor and died rich. I will
give myself, then, to the task of successfully managing my
successes, in order not to see my best dreams shipwrecked, and
my best youth time.

I will take care that my expenses do not exceed my income, and

I will ensure that the next day I have enough numbers to finance
my needs and my fantasies.

I will arrange the numbers of my economy when circumstances

require it, open to the idea of leaving my comfort zone until the
tide allows sailing again with the intensity of good winds.

I will get involved in actions that bring joy back to others,

especially to those that life has denied them the minimum dose
of happiness.

My success will keep the face of a humble man who learned to

live with dignity, and who also has the virtue of defending the
quality of others life.

DISCIPLINE Challenge

The man who moves mountains

start by carrying small stones
(Confucius)

I will add to my character the principle of perseverance and

discipline, and replace my vices with talents, to strengthen a
social image that helps me create opportunities. Understanding
discipline as the constant commitment to do an action as many
times as necessary until I see that my body and mind follow it
spontaneously; until I see that my neuron and my muscle
become a single team.
I will call vice everything that takes light away from my
conscience and takes away strength and value from my will. The
short path, the shortcut that does not require too much effort,
that action that follows the laws of the skin, which has no center,
no rules, no order, no discipline to drive it. The one who does
not know about sacrifices because this one knows how to hang
them on other people's shoulders. The one that delays the arrival
of true happiness, because this one spends time quenching
anxieties with the first thing he finds.

I understand that provoking a chain reaction of virtues is not

easy. That if I want to light a bonfire, I must place a lit paper
and then another, and then another, until the flame takes
strength. I will have to do the same with my projects… add one
strategy and another, and another, until I see my plans take
shape, and take flight.

And I will call a virtue the ability of a human being to turn

difficult experiences into a school of improvement, the ability to
embody love through forgiveness, humility, generosity... A
bread shared a thousand times, a teaching, a kind word, a
healing, a generous hug, a company, a greeting, a smile.

Building virtues is not an easy thing. It requires education,

discipline, proven and upright teachers, time, motivation,
process. And it is more difficult to do it when the brain is an
adult, when for years it has been inhabited by hundreds of
whims, lovers of the effortless way. Because the weed grows
spontaneously, while the cultivation of vegetables has its
science.

Virtue requires connection with Heaven, as an attempt to return

to the original map of our life, a return to the plans with which
the God of the Universe made us.
And a virtue will become a virtue when I assume it naturally, not
as an action motivated by scolding, but as an action that arises
spontaneously with the calculation of love, and not reward or
punishment. Thus, we will say that discipline and virtue are two
inseparable sisters that build artists, disciples, and teachers,
success, and personal development, able to place our name in a
higher level of humanity.

PACE challenge

Embrace the rhythm of nature

His secret is patience.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

That accelerated breathing says that the adrenaline has

completely eaten my dopamine, making me lose the good
rhythm of my emotions. Those jaws with an air of bruxism
diagnose that the steam valve is about to explode. That
accelerated gallop of my heart exposes my total disagreement
with the current situation. That pallor and that vulgar instinct to
hurt or hurt myself says that I am a few seconds away from
bursting into tears.

Surely my pet does better than me when somebody take it out

of his comfort zone, surely his angry presents better
management and administration indicators in the face of
disapproval or changes of pace.

I must be aware that my brain does not always reach the

necessary speed to respond effectively to unknown situations,
that my muscles do not always manage to generate the
appropriate reaction to avoid all kinds of accidents. So, in
exchange for speed, I will use prudence and sanity, without
reaching those extremes of despair and anxiety that lead to
failure, but aware that what must be done must be done well,
with passion and joy, keeping the rhythm just and nice.

Speed and anxiety do not allow our brain to have enough oxygen
to propose the healthiest solution to the need or challenge of
the moment. Acceleration can lead to a short circuit in our
neural system that produces a chaos of emotions and decisions,
which easily results in a breakdown in our relationships with the
environment, making us in losers.

So, I will calm down. I will take it easy. Going into calm mode,
not into irresponsibility mode. I will take it easy, without despair.
I will be generous with my tired muscles or my exhausted brain.
And if I must rest… I will look for a nap for my tiredness, a
phone call, a walk, a tea, or a good coffee.

A change of pace will never hurt me, a change of activity could

be the precise remedy to break stress, to give my muscles and
my brain fresh air.

I will learn to modulate my emotions, to give each activity the

time it requires, without allowing some activities to run over
others. One step at a time. And each thing at the required pace,
without forgetting that the urgent does not wait, that if it is not
attended to, many plans could fail, many resources could end up
in the dump.

I know that it is not easy to feel how the disease changes my

schedule, however, I will try to maintain enough rest to facilitate
my body's proper recovery. Sometimes nothing remains of the
rush but major illnesses, because I must not forget that oxygen
does more than hundreds of drugs, and it costs no more than a
little period of good breathing and change of rhythm.
I have the right to get angry when the circumstance exceeds the
limits of tolerance, but I must also know that each attack of
anger subtracts my happiness, exposing my body to certain acids
that can unbalance the functioning of my organs with their
toxins.

And what about the modulator of my sadness? I will change the

leak system on that one. I must take it to a fine spirituality that
puts it on a balcony to look at new horizons and thus manage
to reverse attachments.

I should also consider taking my anxieties to a prayer or yoga

class so that instead of temporary medicine it is spirituality that
stabilizes my brain chemicals. The renewal of my beliefs is the
best dialysis for my life to enter happiness mode again.

So, I will walk new paths and travel to the Universe of God that
is full of beautiful landscapes yet to be explored, a beach, a
waterfall, a savanna, or a jungle. The skin of a friend that
understands that its best way to be pampered is another skin that
dresses it to its measure.

Who better than a good friend to help us disconnect from those

painful movies that sometimes hold our minds and spin nonstop
inside them until they take away our peace, until we put the
rhythm and speed of our lives at their lowest levels. What better
than the word of a good friend to help us unpin our minds from
those traumatic events that invade our thoughts day and night,
taking it to the point of madness and despair.

I will not forget that the voice of a friend can do more than a
walk alone, more than just a change of activity. The voice of the
friend is the way God speaks to us during disgust,
disappointment, and anger. It is the valve of catharsis, the
drainage of pain, the lens that allows us to look at the difficulty
in blessing mode.

It is never too late to learn to modulate my emotions, to take my

demons for a walk, to enjoy the sweetest and the most acidic
ones, without losing my sanity. It is never too late to learn to
take the reins of this spirited horse called heart, which
sometimes, by defending itself from the aggression of others,
ends up agreeing the rest of its days with loneliness and hatred.

Thus, I will remove from my face any trace of sadness or tension

that prevents me from attracting new friends. I will train my face
in the fabrication of soft smiles, and I will return to my eyes all
that light that Heaven granted my life from the first days.

INNER HEALING Challenge

We have learned to fly like birds,

to swim like fish.
But we have not learned the simple art
to live as brothers
(Martin Luther King)

Where there is pain, I must put a blessing. When life hurts me,
I must create new meeting points with life, I must attract new
friends. It is there that I must give entry to new angels of light
who come with their good humor to rebuild my smile. There
where the heart was hurt by humiliation, heartbreak, is where I
must put a motive, a reason, a cause more gigantic than my own
anger. It is at that moment when, instead of curling up, I must
spread my wings towards Heaven, and place God again as the
helmsman of my soul.
I must put a drain on my hatred, on those acid-laden memories
that I did not know how to shake in time to satisfy my own
arrogance, which at one point I called dignity.

I will recognize that I urgently need an internal cleaning that

forces me to throw away the anger that has crossed me all night,
those situations of humiliation and pain that have contaminated
my brain since I was a child, and that I continue to feed drop by
drop with hate.

I must stop this habit of dedication pages and pages to those

people who have made my days bitter while my real friends are
still on the waiting list for a coffee and a hug.

Why should I let my anger go through the night again and wear
out my sleep unnecessarily, just for the sake of cursing my
enemies and proudly looking good with my impoverished self,
as if I wanted to open a photo album to my detractors, and place
it on the nightstand near my bed, wanting to fill all the walls of
my room with its unpleasant memories?

Learning to forgive will be one of my biggest challenges, the one

that will open the doors to my happiness. Not because it is a
good business for my persecutors, of those who gave me a tough
time, of those who played with my skin, my need, my family,
and my dignity, but because my heart needs a break to help it
get into mode peace. Invest those energies in strengthening my
bodily health and my inner harmony, so that I can restart my life
as if I had a zero-kilometer engine. And change my agenda to
improve its colors, my feelings, and my projects.

I accept that "formatting" my heart is impossible. That only

death and Alzheimer's could completely erase my bad
memories. That an accident could do it. But since I do not
expect it to happen, I prefer to say: “No son of a woman is
perfect. No inhabitant of the planet is vaccinated against the
error. And that will help me understand the mistake of others.
Accept that I am part of this group that was born in ignorance,
of that human group that is also arrogant and talks nonsense
when they speak. From now on I prefer to walk a path of virtues
and love that competes with the old path of hate and arrogance
that destroyed my happiness.

So, before our own sin, there is nothing left but to forgive the
sin of others, and in this way recover the lost peace, recover the
gram of happiness that our soul lacks to find heaven.

We are very unaware of the pain of others, the reasons for their
actions and their anger. Many of us do not know the origin of
their evils, the causes that poisoned their hearts, the reasons for
their rebellions, the frustrations and the events that spoiled their
angel's hearts. Because no one is bad like that because like that.
If we could return the video of their lives, we would realize why
our persecutors has acted against us in the way they did, we
would realize why our words, gestures or actions aroused their
actions against us. I must admit that if my library of emotions
has its dark room, the library of others also has it, and in greater
deterioration. So, understanding others is already a good start to
establish an environment of peace that suits our hearts very well.

In case my friends are too busy with their successes and projects
to help me in this healing program, I will seek the forest and the
moon to tell them of my anxieties. Perhaps some bird wants to
accompany my tears, or the tree wants to drop one of its leaves
on my shoulders as a sign of a hug. I am aware that my friends
do not have to carry all the crosses that my arrogance, my fears
and my bad decisions invented. Who are my friends to mortgage
them all my pain, to turn them into the dumping ground for my
frustrations and my hatred?
This is not the time to render useless more calendar pages, to
waste their fleeting seconds. So, I will press my feet to the stirrup
of my horse, and with my eyes set on the lands of joy, I will
venture with a firm and serene step to live the rest of my life in
the best of styles.

Clear spaces within myself to give happiness a real chance on

my schedule. Inner healing. Heart reinvented. Journey back to
God's original project. Time to throw the vices away and give
the virtues the opportunity to stay forever as part of my
decisions.

ASSERTIVE COMMUNICATION Challenge

Listen to others, even the dull and ignorant.

They too have their own story.
(Max Ehrmann)

I will make my word a productive instrument that helps me

collect friendships instead of rivals. I will speak a new language
to the world, full of affection and understanding, full of reasons
and arguments that help me make my proposals come true, in
such a way that my interlocutors are totally convinced that
things should and can improve. I will speak to the world a
language of love without this meaning allying myself with
hypocrisy.

I will not be afraid of controversy or discussion, because I accept

that it is the beginning of many good things, the place of an
enriching multifaceted ideology, a library of experiences and
arguments that will bring us closer to the truth, that will help us
to build it, and they will offer us a microscopic lens that will
broaden our vision of the reality.
I will handle the information that comes to me by ear with total
prudence and respect, avoiding mistreatment of the dignity of
others, recognizing that the envy of misfits only seeks to derail
the causes of men and women of good will.

I will submit the comments and opinions of others to the scale

of justice, without letting myself be manipulated by hate,
resentments or emotions that distance me from others.

I will recognize that the word has its owner, and I will try to find
him without stopping at third parties. That the word has its
recipient and that is why I will get involved in reaching that
person first. That the word has its place, and that is why I will
say at home what belongs to the home, or in public what belongs
to this one. That the word has its time and that sometimes it is
better to let emotions cool down a bit, but always it is better to
act before the dough hardens and problems increase their
destructive power, before situations enter the comfort zone and
are left unresolved. The word has its way, and that is why I will
be attentive to the tones and gestures; lest my discourse be
tripped by the angry poison and contempt shown by arrogance,
because I recognize that cynicism and sarcasm, as well as
exaggeration, make the most authentic truths lose credibility.
And I will keep in mind the concept that one is the truth of
those who love me, and a quite different truth is the truth of
those who seek my downfall.

I will be quick to listen and slow to speak and judge. Although I

must understand that in the world of truths, many opinions are
mixed, with little dose of reality; almost everything is subjective,
with little objectivity. We always prefer to look from our
balcony, without giving ourselves the task of looking from the
backyard, where you do not see seas but mountains, which are
also part of the same landscape.
I will accept my mistakes in time and try to correct them without
delay or excuses. I will set my heart the task of putting myself in
the place of the other, their needs, their aspirations, their beliefs,
their pains, their frustrations, their stories, their scars.

I will expose my opinions with serenity and respect, without

allowing myself to be misconfigured by the contradictors, giving
time to the negligent to download all the deadly poison; and if
by chance that individual leaves me talking to myself, then I will
present my cause to his acquaintances, who soon or later will
communicate my arguments to him.

I will use encouraging language, which qualifies the

achievements, successes, and qualities of my interlocutor,
without ignoring their inconsistencies or lack of information.

I will keep my mind open to other people's ideas, without being

scandalized by anything human. But I will be rigorous in staying
on the side of justice, that is, on the side of dignity, that precious
Pandora's box that should never be violated.

I will travel to the world of the causes that made this or that
situation possible, without letting myself be hypnotized by the
last image of the film, by the last word heard.

I will not affirm things without knowing them in depth, nor will
I lend myself to echo the envious and losers, who have no
scruples or measures to destroy dreams and undertakings.

I will avoid all kinds of sarcasm, and I will recognize the power
that kind language has to soften the stubbornness of others and
unblock conflicts, maintaining an attitude of absolute
recognition of the value and dignity of my interlocutor.
I will choose a language that allows the discussion to flow, one
of pauses and listening, a green and red traffic light. That gives
way and that allows to continue. A language that considers that
in the middle there are many human beings, mutilated by love
but who want to dream; beings, regularly, with more future than
past, because success and happiness, perhaps, have been elusive
for them.

I will keep my heart in listening mode, careful that my arrogance

does not jump in to interrupt the arguments of others, thus
avoiding the ridiculousness of stubbornness. More than
allowing the words to reach my eardrums, it is facilitating the
message to reach my heart. It will not be a question, then, of
hearing the whispers of others but of understanding their
feelings, of tuning in to the dial of their emotions.

I will call things by their name, but I will always leave a window
open for explanations. Although I must accept that this world is
full of excuses and lies.

I will avoid the dirty game of hypocrisy. That calculating mania

of wanting to be on good terms with everyone does not suit me
at all, that mask could very easily fade with the arguments of
others and make a fool of my name and my trustworthiness.
I will try to reconcile before things get worse. To small
problems, manageable solutions. To big problems, solutions of
difficult mobility and great wear.

I will delete any label that means contempt towards my

interlocutors (sexual tendency, stratum, race or belief),
unpinning my mind from figures and references that it is not my
place to judge. I will focus more on the content than on the
forms, more on the force of the argument than on the evidence
itself, more on the “why” than on the “what”.
I believe that the most correct formula for reunion with others
is given in this combination: respect more, listen more, forgive
more, help more and consent more. Hoping that others see me
as an ally, not as an enemy, not as a stone in the shoe. In this
way I will avoid looking at others as beasts, as predators,
remembering that they were also wisely built in the womb of the
Universe, and that their dignity and life weigh as much as mine.

And finally… I will not leave the solution of my problems in the

hands of losers and arrogant ones, who want to throw
everything go, or assume muscle strength and shouting to solve
problems.

GOOD HABITS Challenge

It was streetwise by the own right.

Its philosophy of freedom
was to gain one’s own things without harming others
and above others not to walk never.
(Alberto Cortez)

I will cultivate my spirit with habits of kindness, and I will

present myself as a person of good manners. say good morning,
thank you very much, excuse me…it does not make me kneel,
but it does give me entry to many friendly destinations. Perhaps
there among my new partners is the person who will become
the guardian angel of my new projects.

I will learn to turn my body into a place of blessings, a waterfall

of laughter and hugs, a well where many can come to alleviate
their problems. Because I declare my life as a territory of peace,
where tears find their shelter and laughter their echo. I will be a
facilitator of joys, of good vibes, a helper of dreams, an angel of
opportunities, a guide of successful paths.
I will always try to listen with my heart, with the will to
understand more than to hear, to travel to the hearts of my
interlocutors, to the motivations that drive them, rather than to
the grammar of their vocabulary.

I declare that kindness will be my philosophy of relationship

with the Universe, for this reason I will ensure that my decisions
maintain a component of constant affection, so that no one,
absolutely no one, leaves with broken skin or a broken heart
from my behavior. On the contrary, I intend to help my space
of life and all its actors have their dose of happiness. In this way
I will build a happiness that goes hand in hand with goodness
and justice, betting that in the new day no one will have
complaints against me.t

DIGNITY Challenge

Do not hurt others

with what causes you pain
(Siddhartha Gautama)

I will recognize that others have as much dignity as I do, and

that their dreams are worth as much as mine.

I will make sure that my comments do not damage the good

name of others, especially the poorest, the most vulnerable,
under penalty of losing their children's bread and projects
because of me.

I understand that dignity is as sacred as life itself, that it is the

territory of love, scars, crying and laughter, both dreams and
fantasies, family, race, culture, like the name itself.
Then respect will be the strategy to enter the life of every human
being. Because if someone gives me access to his territory, I will
do everything possible so that when I get out everything will be
better than I found it.

GENEROSITY Challenge

All that is not given,

it is lost
(Dominique Lapierre)

I will remind my heart of the duty to pamper with love those

that life has placed in me as guardian angels, my parents and
siblings, friends, and teachers, those who get up early and stay
up late to fill my days with smiles and hope to those who teach
me, to those who make my days more bearable, to those who
receive me with a hug and a kiss after hard work.

I will break my selfishness and give way to love. I will open its
doors and windows so that many people come to enjoy my
successes and my earnings. I know that giving alms is not a bad
start, because I find them as a first step towards love, but I will
not stop there. I will expand my territory so that many people
come to savor my little or my great fortune.

I will extend my attention times to those who need it. I will listen
more and talk less. I will be affectionate in my language, in my
gestures and in the tone of my voice.

I will take the time to teach the slower ones, because I

understand that not all of us have the background knowledge,
mental agility, or muscular training for certain tasks. I will learn
to keep up with them, and I will be their guardian angel on the
path of learning, not their executioner.
No creature in the universe will be able to complain about my
presence because they will be respected and loved as if they were
the size of the God who built them.

Returning happiness to the world will be my task. I will become

the opportunity for many, the blessing for many people, those
who enter my square meter.

And I will not forget myself. I will take my stress to the lands of
multicolored green, to the deep blue seas, to the disco of dances,
chats, and friendship.

FAMILY Challenge

My heroes are and will be my parents,

I cannot imagine having other people as heroes.
(Michael Jordan)

I will maintain permanent love and respect for my parents,

understanding that they hold my healing and my dreams in their
hands. I will recognize them as guardian of my destiny, the
hands with which God wants to show me paths of success,
experts in character and responsibility, primeval places where
the Universe opened the doors of its paradise to me, sanctuaries
of sacrifice and permanent generosity.

Their young or broken bodies will always have all my care, their
hearts will have all my affection, their finances will have the best
caretaker in me. I will proclaim over them a holy word, a blessing
at every dawn. I will kindly welcome your advice, honoring their
teachings until the end of my days.
I will share my successes and my gains with them. I will pamper
them, I will help them, I will forgive them, and I will always
protect them. And I will put myself above their expectations,
not above their greatness, and I will make their teachings the
best discipline to win the hearts of my fellow men, and thus help
build a just and happy society.

And I will respect my brothers, inhabitants of the same womb,

children of the same breast, like the skin of my own parents, like
the blood of my own blood, like the flock of the same family.
They will have my honor and respect, my help, and my
company. their pains will be my pains and my joys will be their
joys. Rivalry will not be my philosophy towards them, nor will
humiliation be my habit. And when the time comes to say
goodbye to the ashes of our parents, I will take care that nothing
steals our blood ties, taking care that the most vulnerable among
us also have the share of inheritance.

FRIENDSHIPS Challenge

You can forget the one with whom you laughed,

but not the one with whom you have cried.
(Khalil Gibran)

I will shake hands with everyone, but my heart with few people,
reserving the right of admission. I do not want to see my life
wrapped in gall, being able to feel my soul bathed in honey. I
will choose my friends better, so as not to be involved in the
problem of enemies.

Each friend will be another angel of light for me, that I will take
care of as one takes care of one's own body, that I will consent
to because they are not made of steel, that I will respect because
they also have dreams, that I will help because they also suffer
from needs. They are the teachers of my projects, the demons,
and angels of my happiness, so I will be attentive to their claims,
jokes, and tears.

I will look at the kind of failures that constantly criticize me and

I will commit to fixing them as soon as possible. I do not want
to be seen as the captain of indiscipline and irresponsibility.

I will learn to share my spaces and my achievements with them,

and I will be careful to give them millions of hugs and smiles,
instead of trying to break their hearts. I will tell them my pains,
without turning them into the dumpsters of my problems. I am
grateful that they have the power to disassociate me from those
movies that steal my peace of mind, using humor, laughter, and
hugs as a remedy.

Challenge of SOCIAL INCLUSION

We men build too many walls

but we do not build enough bridges.
(Isaac Newton)

I will not only take care of my projects, my family, and my

friends, I will also think my happiness in terms of society. An
inclusive happiness that has in the foreground the most
vulnerable, the most limited in financial resources, those who do
not meet the minimum of happiness, those who were relegated
for not being able to genuinely enjoy human science.

I challenge my heart to suppress the moralism that divides the

world into good and bad, the puritanism that sees sin in every
corner, the comfort that becomes indifferent to all human
misery.
I challenge myself to see justice under the coordinate of love. I
challenge myself to respect the dignity of every human being,
their history, their name, their successes, their tears, their beliefs,
their loving tendencies, their bread, and their fantasies.

I challenge myself to favor the dreams of the human collective,

sharing my knowledge, experiences, and resources with those
who require it. I challenge myself to avoid any kind of language
that suppresses the joy of others, any kind of tripping that trip
up their dreams and the dreams of their children. I challenge
myself to live humanely, sensibly, without harming the territory
of my children's children.

I challenge myself to respect everyone's space, everyone's air,

everyone's water, everyone's rest, everyone's party.

NATURE Challenge

A bird does not sing because it has an answer,

It sings because it has a song
(Maya Angelou)

I will get used to going outside more, filling my lungs with fresh
air, putting my feet in the streams, and looking at hills and
valleys. Because I am convinced that where the cement ends
happiness begins, where the traffic light goes out life starts,
where the streets of the city are lost, a new story begins to
flourish.

I will consider each creature of the forest as an angel of light,

the waterfall, the tree, the ant, as the butterfly. I will find the
time in my schedule to give my heart greener, more grass to walk
on, more trees to greet.
I will learn to harmonize with the planet, which is what I call
spirituality. Maintain cooperation with each of its creatures, to
whom I will give all my respect and protection, accepting that
they are a resource for my skin, life for my life, my other self,
my great laboratory of happiness, the landscape in which God
signed a project of love for my existence. The most beautiful
setting imagined in the midst of this multitude of constellations.

I understand that I am pure fragility in continuous movement,

and that any little thing could get me out of the way. I
understand, I understand. How I understand that my entrails
were built with constellation dust and that one day we will be
one with the stars again.

Challenge of FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENTS

The search for perfection

it is a dangerous road.
(Giorgio Armani)

I will put my home spaces in order, giving an elegant place to

my everyday objects, without turning my house into a garage
sale.

I will prioritize green plants over other decorative objects,

because I recognize that their nature radiates a flow of positive
emotions that cause good vibes and tranquility to my heart.

I will turn the music, the painting, and the pet into a ground pole
to better modulate my hours of anxiety or loneliness.

I will get rid of all those broken junk that have already completed
their useful life, and I will make those artifacts available to my
friends, which have become obsolete and noisy.
Hygiene and order will be my beautiful Cinderella, to give height
to simplicity, and to be able to name my home with the adjective
"elegant and bright".

Music, arts, poetry, religiosity, gastronomy and good letters will

also be workers of my happiness, and always they have a holy
space in my home.

Challenge of THE MAGIC OF TALENT

Happiness is not to do what one loves,

but to love what one does
(Jean-Paul Sartre)

With so many brain cells on vacation it is impossible not to do

your creativity homework, impossible not to take the risk of
writing a song, drawing a landscape, making a game, designing
an artifact.

I will take those neurons and I'll take them to the fantasy factory.
There where there is no entrance payment, nor do we have to
ask for permission to build skies and dreams at our whim.

I will enter the universe of the unicorn and the centaur, where
what does not exist is possible. The land of the poet and the
singer, the novelist and the sculptor, Leonardo Da Vinci and
Michelangelo, Homer and Picasso, Rafael Alberti, and Gabo.

Traveling to that universe of the brain full of demons and angels,

stars, and darkness, and returning to reality loaded with great
tasks to accomplish.
This is the challenge of Homer's muses, coming from the lands
of Merlin and his allies, the muses that drive the hand of the
artist, those commissioned by the gods to paint the most
beautiful landscapes and draw happiness on the faces of the
planet, without asking for permission, without paying for a
single penny in consideration.

I will reserve a privileged place for that part of my mind what

want to create a new concept of this world, of this life, and to
take my stress and anger out for a walk, to change the rhythm
of my routines, to break the wings of my sadness to find a huge
firmament to the phoenix bird of my happiness.

HEALTHY DIET Challenge

Tell me what you eat

and I will tell you who you are.
(Brillat Savarin)

Those tasteless diets, poorly achieved recipes, which punish the

basics of flavors and smells will not be my thing. But I also won't
walk into pain and nausea by placing four in my stomach where
three can barely fit. The body will trigger its alarms and I will be
willing to listen to them, lest a repeated stupidity of sugars or
salts take its toll on me and deteriorate my plans early. So, I will
consider the beginning of a good diet before the body begins to
reject it, sensibly preventing excesses from destroying my body
before its time.

I will not forget that my body carries hundreds of diseases in its

genes that the crossing of surnames has left all human beings
with, and to which I must pay immediate attention when the
first warnings appear. Meanwhile I will eat wonderfully,
exploring the best of gastronomy, without punishing my taste
buds with second-rate flavors that exaggerate the calculation of
fats, sweets, and flours. Without forgetting the vegetables to
enjoy their smooth and healthy bitterness, and a few wines that
help me with their tannins to burn the chain of fat in my body.

Challenge TO FACE THE SICKNESS

There is no medicine that heals

what heals happiness
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

I will not allow the disease to steal the peace of my emotions. I

will treat it as an accident of the body, which should only remain
in the universe of matter, and as such it should be resolved. I
cannot forget that my body is made up of matter governed by
movement codes that inevitably lead to wear and tear and make
it vulnerable second after second. Just as I cannot forget that the
fuel that moves my body system is in a close productive
relationship with the way in which I guide my emotions and my
attitude towards each event of my day.

I understand that this organic wear and tear makes my path

heavier, my tasks more difficult, my projects more vulnerable. I
humbly accept that it puts even the smallest dreams at risk, but
I also understand that the more brain and worry I put into it, the
more painful and tedious it becomes to overcome.

Therefore, I will not allow sadness and hopelessness to invade

my heart and cross the door of my soul. I will seek to take my
pains to relaxing landscapes, and I will separate them from the
impertinent ones. A good diet will be my recipe, as a colorful
place and a nice friend.
I will avoid cursing the event and in a simple prayer I will ask
Heaven for strength, so that my heart relaxes, the crisis becomes
more bearable, allow oxygen to flow as the best remedy, and
innate defenses act more effectively. Because I am convinced
that where pain presses, a simple prayer of praise has the power
to align the vibrations of the body with those of the universe,
attracting the chemicals that do the job of activating the entire
biological recovery system.

Challenge TO FACE THE DEATH

Live as if you will die tomorrow

Learn as if you were to live forever
(Mahatma Gandhi)

I wonder... And why death? Why should this life project stop?
Why must we all walk through that door? And in the depths of
my soul a voice whispers: "This is how God consecrates the
angels, Its heavenly workers. This is how the Great Sage takes
the universe of vulnerable mud to another level"

Then the idea of death will not make me suspend my gaze

towards life. One day it will come to break into a thousand
pieces the ties that shaped my existence. It will arrive and I hope
it finds me well alive. It will come, and that makes me speed up
the step towards happiness; "without haste, but without pause",
as the Spanish singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat affirms.

And if I say that death finds me very much alive, it is because I

keep the fervent desire to know that it was not in the hands of
a fantasy where I ended up collecting the best seconds of my
life, but in the hands of the One who designed each one of my
cells in each blessing, in each day... the Wise of wise, Builder of
builders, the Great Virtuous, the Great Generous... God.
It will arrive, and I want it to meet me with a smile on board. It
will come, as it has come for millions of people, hundreds of
hundreds of generations. And when that arrives it will be my
turn to affectionately embrace the earth; return to the planet
what belongs to the planet, this skin in which hundreds of hours
of happiness, millions of minutes of love became visible. It will
be that moment to deliver to humanity this micron of science
that the years have taught me, even if it is to feed in a few lines
the wisdom of this race of the enlightened neuron. And stop
being me, to go back to being the Universe, like before Life
personalized this piece of planet. Stop being a drop of rain to
become an ocean again, stop being a coal stone to become the
finest diamond, stop being a bunch of grapes to become the best
of wines, stop being guitar wood to become be part of the most
beautiful musical concert. Stop being Me, to become wisdom
from the human library.

And when my loved ones leave the skin, when my eyes lose
contact with those tangible sources of happiness, when my
father, my mother, my son, my cat and my friend no longer hold
a natural conversation with me, I will fall on my knees and give
thanks, raising my glass to honor the Universe, to the Beings
who made possible those millions of minutes of happiness, who
filled the agenda of my existence with their blessings.

SPIRITUALITY Challenge

Fog, my dog comrade,

although you do not know it,
we have, in the middle of this heroic bombing pain,
faith, which is joy, joy, joy.
(Rafael Alberti)
I will start the day with a prayer to the Creator, seeking that each
journey bear his signature and his endorsement. This will help
me to recognize that the center of my life is not me, that the one
who really sustains and inspires my existence is that wonderful
God that my brain tells me about in bits and pieces.

I understand that many people went from dissatisfaction to

dissatisfaction for having placed their trust only in their own
skin, in their own navel... in that me, me, me that sounds like an
echo in all their spaces, erasing all the love, and blessings that
come from the Heart of the Universe.

For this reason, every time the sun rises, I will proclaim a prayer
of confidence: “Here is your creature, God of the Universe.
Open my mind to your Wisdom, my soul to your Peace and my
muscles to your Strength. I get positive in front of your Will.
And that all the opportunities that this day brings become a
blessing and a reason for happiness, for me and for all those
who need it."

Many people, due to a lack of faith, crashed into the planet,

thinking, perhaps, that they were children of the dance of atoms,
children of an improvised big bang, children of gods who
abandoned their creatures to go and found new universes. Then
their hearts had to endure in solitude all the duels and all the
failures, all the deaths and all the diseases. That is why they have
been seen to go from unhappiness to unhappiness, from fantasy
to fantasy until they see how their lives are atomized into dust.

All the above happens because we do not understand that the

only Truth of this entire universe of chemical elements that
make up our matter is above our thinking. A Creative Reality
that we do not know enough about because It does not fit in
our small brain, a Magical Being that we guess through Its
works, Its creatures and Its prophets; The Same One that once
a time our brain baptized with the name of "God". The One
that is not above, nor below. The One that from the Center
feeds each of Its creations with movement, displaying Its
affection for each vein that crosses our body, like small channels
that carry life sap to the last star of this organic being called the
Universe.

Sometimes we cannot understand that one is the True God and

another quite different one that our mind has managed to
conceptualize. We are inventors of religions, due to the faculty
that has been granted to us, through the illuminated neuron, to
try to connect with God's world, but it is evident that we are not
its creators. We only give it names that fit our limited knowledge.

I do not want to be one of those people who got lost in disbelief

because they gave up on their Center. Today my soul establishes
a twenty-four out of twenty-four connection of absolute faith in
the generous plans of the One who, I believe with full
conviction, designed each part of my being, codified each cell of
my body, and constituted me in a particular project of Its love.

I am sure that when we take God out of our daily agenda, we

start a pure and intense competition against life itself, where the
only harvest that our body has left is a miserable bread for our
stomach or a coin in our pocket to pay for the distraction of
anxiety or pain.

Therefore, I will not despise the faith of my brothers, and I will

never try to hijack the name of God for my own beliefs. I will
not be one of those who think that their god is more important
than the god of others, or that the god of the neighboring house
is less of a god than mine.

Paper gods will have no place in the soul of my virtues. The gods
of the indoctrinator will have no place at my family table.
Because I have declared that all human beings are my brothers,
even if their rituals of closeness with God are different from
mine.

I will align my religious beliefs with love for others, without

letting myself be carried away by stupid dogmatism, abandoning
the idea that my truth is the only truth.

I will no longer allow myself to be imprisoned by shields that

squeeze and restrict my happiness, by theories that condemn
hell or reward heaven... especially when my life is made under
parameters of kindness and justice, by a spirituality that
surpasses all religion and a commandment that magnifies
everything and illuminates everything… love.

I am sure that in the face of adversity I must maintain not only

my dignity, but above all my faith in God; absolute trust in the
One who has the power to redirect the processes of the world
to my favor.

Mine will not be a relationship with God for one or two minutes
a day. I will be a being of faith, a full-time faith, a human being
who has placed all his trust twenty-four hours a day in the One
who gave shape to what I call: angel project; because it is my
intuition to believe that God builds heavenly workers in the skin
of human beings. So, I will abandon the idea of thinking that I
must pass my humble prayer through the hands of third parties
so that my prayers get a satisfactory answer.

And when someone comes to talk to me about salvation, I'll tell

him that I just need him to help me make the most of the time
I have left. Because I have proposed to challenge my paper
religion so that it becomes one of great loves.
Should we be suspicious of the One who waters the earth every
day with his blessings? Doubt the greatest lovemaker on the
planet? Throwing dirty water at That Who get up early and stay
up late to make the daily schedule of the Universe more pleasant,
The One who paints the landscape with a thousand colors to
make our way more beautiful? Should we be suspicious of that
Mysterious So-and-So who, through his millions of angels, takes
care of keeping his troops' morale high? Is there someone more
credible than The One who is the Soul of the Universe? The
One that supports matter and drives each of its movements?

The being with a million sensors, the human being, will have to
return to faith, get down on his knees as a sign of simplicity,
establish new ties of generosity with the fragile world that
surrounds him, reconnect his thought with the Center of
Creation, and rethink your emotions from authentic and true
Love.

I, the golden dream of the Great Architect, the being of

spiritualized clay that was conceived in the womb of the
Universe, with more pain and happiness than any other known
entity... today it apologizes for this dictionary of whims in which
I turned my earthly stay.

I ask forgiveness because my happiness is far from the projects

of Heaven; because like a fool I allowed arrogance to enter my
territory to expropriate my light and my charm.

Sorry for having invented love charged with selfishness and

arrogant poison with which I have jeopardized the happiness of
those who accompany my landscape. Sorry for having created
religions to the size of my fears and my desires, where God has
become a piece of my inventions, a capricious illusion of my
network of neurons to satisfy my superiority complex.
Sorry because my prayers taste of suspicion and carry in their
words the tinge of incredulity. Because my prayers seem like the
pleas of an orphan to his unknown father. Because my faith has
so many fears that it seems more like a collection of litanies than
a real feeling that springs from tears or from joys.

Sorry for the despised days, for the forgotten children, for the
humiliated parents, the deceived friends. Sorry for every day
without passion and every minute without a project.

Sorry, in short, because the fear that my successes will fail has
made me go after gods of wax, religious artifacts that show that,
despite religious practices, I have never believed in the close and
restorative presence of The One who coded my entrails to great
adventures.

From now on I will not raise a prayer to ask for things. Better
still, I will open my mouth and my heart to ask for angels, beings
of flesh and blood who have the virtue of healing my pain, of
accompanying my loneliness, of teaching me to toast to life, of
closing my eyes when I have to leave my skin of walker, that day
which this drop of water becomes an ocean, this stone of coal
transforms into a diamond, this bunch of grapes becomes the
best of wines.

I will pray, yes. But without forgetting to knock on doors.

Although I recognize that it is not easy to put your face to ask
for help. I will pray, yes, but not to ask for things, but to ask for
wisdom, one that is enough to find worthy answers, one where
I have Heaven's suggestions.

So much noise from our voice prevents this Magical and

Wonderful Being from doing the task of suggesting the next
action, so I will look for a quiet and cozy place every day to wait
for his key words of strength and healing. It's about letting
myself be guided, putting my heart in peace mode.

My religion, that is, my ritual of spiritual connection cannot fight

with happiness. If this happens, I will be forced to change my
religion, not God, because mine is a Being of party and joy. I
have declared that my religion will be an ascending trip to the
lands of happiness, which found its best ally in inner peace.

NEW DAY Challenge

This is a new day to start over,

to look for the angel that makes our dreams grow,
sing, laugh, to be happy again.
(Facundo Cabral)

Today is a new day, and I do not want my fears to spoil my

projects and my dreams, or the death of those who have fallen
by my side to disturb my optimism. Today is a new day and I
open it with God as the Center of my inspiration and my
emotions. Today I want to transform my pain into solidarity,
into cane water that helps pass the bitter pill of those brothers
who have seen their landscape undermined by death.

Today I promise to think about life from the mountain of faith

and optimism, from the virtue of generosity rather than from
my list of selfishness. Today I want to put my hands in favor of
the planet; put my heart, my mind, and my resources to see that
we will soon inaugurate a new humanity together.

Today is a new day, and despite the circumstances, I want to

dress my skin with thousands of joys, because I am sure that the
blessing factory still has many joys to give me.
I am convinced that this is a day of opportunities to enjoy, of
blessings to live. A stronger day than yesterday, with more
reasons to live, with more happiness to taste.

THANKS

Today I raise my voice to declare to God, Soul and Body of the

Universe, all my gratitude. Wonderful Intelligence that tied my
life to the birth of the sun's rays, to the air that filled with great
energies all my body. Builder of Humanity who distinguished
me with an internal flight system able of imagination and
freedom, who gave me the vision to inaugurate a new dream
every day.

I have declared this Being who combines Reality and Magic at

the same time, to whose Will the gear of the Universe is tied, the
Center of my life. The same one that has circulated a million
emotions inside of me, filling my skin with sensors, is from now
the Star that guides me. That One Who injected codes of
smartness and development into every tree and every animal in
the jungle, has not been less with me.

To This One who has millions of Angels working on Its

Creations to see my life smiling, today I say THANK YOU. This
little word is my sincere praise to a GOD who called me from
the bowels of the UNIVERSE, Its Harmonious Creation, Its
Evident Heaven, Its Infinite Paradise. THANK YOU is my
childhood drumbeat to recognize the joy that comes from
knowing I am part of this wonderful scenario called LIFE.
jacevedovar@gmail.com
+573128667358