The Benefit of Benefits: Zen Tips To Happiness

By Mark James

If you’re happy with your job or career, if you feel your work/life balance is fine or even if you feel content with your life, this book is probably not for you. That said maybe after reading a few chapters you may see your life through different clearer eyes. If you have ever felt uncomfortable shopping for overpriced products on your high street, while passing the homeless, this book may appeal to you or at very least provoke thought.

Our health has deteriorated due to working longer hours, in jobs that are not as physically demanding as they once were. Remember if we have food in our fridge, if we have clothes in your wardrobe, if we have a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head, we are already financially wealthier than over 75% of the world’s population.

Have we become greedy, materialistic, unhealthier and unfulfilled, at least in comparison to previous generations? The author attempts to explain that there is a strong correlation between a modern working life, depression, deterioration in health and general unhappiness. Near all religions and Greek philosophers teach that a simpler way of life is the key to happiness, but despite of thousands of years of knowledge on the subject and solid research, we still seem to be moving away from what we desire the most. Happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark James
• Release date: Jan 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310908163

Mark James

Mark James is a former soldier who worked in the British and New Zealand armies before becoming an intensive care nurse. Mark lives in Wigan with his wife and children and loves reading, writing and listening to music. Freddie and the Magic Heart is Mark's first book, and was inspired by his passion for organ donation and the difference it can make to so many people's lives. When Mark grows up he wants to be Dr Seuss, Julia Donaldson or own a record shop.

Book preview

The Benefit of Benefits: Zen Tips To Happiness

By Mark James

Copyright 2016 Mark James

Smashwords Edition

Table of contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Our life in finite, so wake up and live!

Chapter 2: Maybe it time to stop chancing the wind.

Chapter 3: Learn to live without and gain everything.

Chapter 4: Getting our shit into perspective and be grateful.

Chapter 5: Unhappiness is the new happy.

Chapter 6: Karma can be a fatal boomerang.

Chapter 7: It cost nothing do be healthy, it costs everything not to.

Chapter 8: Let’s remove the die from the diet.

Chapter 9: Changing our perception and expectations for a better life.

Chapter 10: Learn to love and forgive others, even the twats.

Chapter 11: From the horse`s mouth.

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

Statistically, the workforce in the UK is among the unhappiest in the world, in fact reports show that 1 in 4 employees have work related mental health problems. Statistically, If we can satisfy are basic needs such as housing and food, we automatically become some of the wealthiest people in the world. Statistically, our relentless search for happiness through consuming has at best increased our unhappiness at worst increased diagnosed depression and suicide.

If you’re happy with your job or career, if you feel your work/life balance is fine or even if you feel content with your life, this book is probably not for you. That said maybe after reading a few chapters you may see your life through different clearer eyes. If you’re the type of person that feels uncomfortable while shopping for overpriced products on your high street, while passing the homeless, this book may appeal to you or at very least provoke thought.

I will hope to point out to the reader that our sole purpose in life is to be happy, and that near all religious teachings throughout history, openly encourage a simpler way of living as the key to happiness, even the Greek philosophers knew this to be true. This book will attempt to explain to the reader the key to happiness is not via the BMW and the penthouse, but through love, compassion and service to others, which costs us nothing (honest). Although the title of the book implies living life on the dole, the books intention is not encourage you to quit your job and sit on the sofa, but to prioritise your mental and physical wellbeing above all.

The target audience for this book is those that are not happy with their lot, sick to death of their shitty, thankless, meaningless excuse for job, those people that are disappointed on how their lives have unfolded, fucked over by a capitalist system that tells you If you work hard you, you can buy stuff and then you will be happy., this book will give another option, another way of thinking about your fucking joke of a existence. Obviously moving away from a negative part of our life is s good start, but it’s not the beginning and end all, because if it was, the job centre would be high streets equivalent to Disneyland. Along with giving the dead end job the boot, we need to add some new shit, things such as gratitude, compassion and contentment, now we are on the path to uber-level happy people.

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. George Monbiot

This book only encourages us to be happier and healthier people, I would only ask please don’t judge before you have read the whole book. Malcolm X once said Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do, or think as you think. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.

There does not seem a day goes past that I hear or read some negative propaganda about benefit claimants or more specifically benefit cheats, rags such as The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail seem have rolled out a hate campaign aimed at anyone who is claiming money off the government, these hateful articles includes attacks on the disabled and the needy. Anyone who watches the news or reads these type of newspapers will know what I mean by hate campaigns, and would be forgiven to think this was always the case, but it was not.

The media has intentionally altered the public’s perception of people claiming benefits, today claiming benefits has a dark stigma attached, even the disabled who are incapable of work are made to feel like social outcasts. These attacks on the most vulnerable people in society have gone too far, at the time of writing, there have been several thousand deaths due to cutting the benefits of people who can’t work.

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident that they are acting on their free will. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment, Nazi Germany

Let’s get something in perspective, even if there was a single death, that person has a mother, farther, wife or children who now is without that loved one, these people will endure lifelong pain from the loss of their relative, most of us have lost loved ones, if you can remember how that feels most would not wish this on our worst enemy. Maybe the cuts are not so much of a good idea, would we rather have a handful of benefit cheats, or stadium full of body bags.

The philosopher and social justice activist Avram Noam Chomsky once said The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.

The way the government and tabloids portray benefit claimants today reminds me of a story I was told by a historian friend, the storey was about how a small number of American slave owners in the 18th century, and how they managed keep huge number of unruly slaves from overthrowing them, apparently the slave owners used to stir trouble with their slaves within the slave camps by starting rumours, this made the slaves to turn on one another, ultimately directing the anger of their oppression on themselves and away from the owners. Some believe this behaviour still continues to this day, if we think about benefit cheats as people taking money from our pockets, it feel like a personal attack, so we focus our anger towards some poor bloke who’s looking to buy a few Christmas gifts for his kids, but maybe he is not the enemy. During an interview in 2015 the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein compared British tabloids to Nazi propaganda.

I don’t want to sound like I’m politically ranting, but some facts need to be pointed out. The next time you hear about welfare cuts, remind yourself that every year the UK government gives out company grants, subsidies and tax breaks, these amount to over £93 billion per year, also known as corporate welfare, these payments are nothing less than a backhanders that go to companies such as such as Google, Amazon, Starbucks, eBay, Apple, Ford, Nissan and Facebook, incidentally many of these companies have avoided paying TAX in the UK for many years, this is estimated at over £11 billion per year.

The UK spend is over 10 Billion on international aid every year, to countries such as India, who has one of the worlds most financed space programs (which is not an essential, to be fair), in fact an India minister openly said they don’t want or need UK hand out money. The UK donates hundreds of millions to Brazil every year, although Brazil’s economy is wealthier than our own, also China the country that is known as the factory of the world and the planets second largest economy, gets huge amounts of aid every year. I would like to say I think international aid is a good thing and if we can help people who are less fortunate, we should, but this is nothing less than taking the piss. Every year there is over £24 billion in unclaimed benefits, that’s over £66 million every day is unclaimed. Over 60 billion is spent on military every year in the UK, billions of pounds every year of this huge budget is wasted on supplies that are never used, incidentally there are over 20 counties around the world that don’t have an armed forces, they seen to be getting by just fine. My point being that there is more money wasted on unnecessary supplies than the entire benefits system combined, aid to countries that obviously have already very got deep pockets, but sadly it’s the poorest in our nation are the ones that get all the negative media headlines. They say that people on benefits aren’t contributing to society, but if anything they contribute the most, that £56 per week is not going into an offshore bank account, or going to a high yield ISA, it going straight back into the economy as it’s impossible to save any of it, the money is being used on essentials