“How to live 365 days a year”

During 2019 Christmas break, I read a book called “How to live 365 days a year” by John A. Schindler, M.D. This book was originally published in 1954 and revised editions were published in 1982 and again in 2003.

This book contains simple wisdom that bad emotions and stress causes illness, what the author calls EII or Emotionally Induced Illness. The author states that our parents, schools, friends and religious institutions fail to teach us how to manage stress and achieve emotional stasis.

To gain control of our runaway emotions, start with the key thought,” I am going to keep my thinking and my attitude calm and cheerful – right now!”

If the going gets rough, then try to stay outwardly calm and cheerful as possible. Use humor. Don’t pity yourself (don’t fall in the victim mentality trap). Set out plans to turn defeat into victory.

Keep these values in mind: Equanimity (“stay calm”), Resignation (“accept the setback gracefully”), Courage (“I can take this, and more”), Determination (“I’ll turn this defeat into victory”), Cheerfulness and Pleasantness.

The author states 12 principles to make your life richer:

1. Keep life simple – Don’t rely on unusual to please you. Learn to get your pleasures from the world that lies immediately before your five senses like the natural beauty, simple healthy food, a beautiful flower, the smile of a baby etc.
2. Avoid watching for a knock in your motor – Keep a positive outlook towards life, avoid looking for something wrong and accept life’s aches and pain. If you are looking for it, you will find it and then you will complain about it.
3. Learn to like work – Chances are that you, like the rest of us, have to work for a living so you might just as well like it. A lazy loafer is not a happy man. If you learn to like your work, you will have learned the simple joy of doing something well and you will be generating pleasant emotions for yourself all the time you are working.
4. Have a good hobby – Without a hobby, spare time becomes boring span of time during which our minds dwells on our troubles.
5. Learn to be satisfied – It is useless to be dissatisfied when a situation cannot be altered like complaining about the weather. It is easier and much healthier to be satisfied with what you have than to be dissatisfied and grumpy.
6. Like people and join the human enterprise – This world is full of people and you encounter people everywhere. It is disastrous to emotional stasis to dislike people. Don’t let people get in your hair.
7. Get the habit of saying the cheerful, pleasant thing – There’s rarely a moment in your lifetime that wouldn’t be better served by a cheerful comment than a barb. Get up on the right side of the bed. Be pleasant to your family.
8. Meet adversity by turning defeat into victory – When you can’t change something, you’d better accept it and figure out how you can keep living the best possible way. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Plan to change your defeat into victory.
9. Meet your problems with decisions – Of the total number of decisions we have to make, only a very small percentage will be improved as a result of long continued study and consideration. Make your decisions without a “long huffing, puffing rumpus, and fuss”. Decide what you are going to do about a problem, then quit thinking about it.
10. Make the present moment an emotional success – Keep your attitude and thinking as cheerful and pleasant as possible – right now. The only moment we ever live is the present moment. It is the only time we ever have to be happy. Plan for the future but don’t brood on it.
11. Always be planning something – To have the expectation of a new experience coming up is always a lift to the present moment, and you should always be planning an experience.
12. Don’t let irritating things get your goat – Don’t let worries or irritations get under your skin.

The best part of being human is that you can learn!