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Pope Francis has listed his top 10 tips for bringing greater joy into a person’s life and the first is “live and let live”.
Francis gave his list in an interview with an old acquaintance Pablo Calvo, which formed part of a feature article in the Argentine magazine Viva.
The interview was given to mark the first 500 days of Francis’s pontificate.
The 10 tips for happiness as recommended by Pope Francis were:
1. “Live and let live.” Everyone should be guided by this principle, he said, which has a similar expression in Rome with the saying, “Move forward and let others do the same”.
2. “Be giving of yourself to others.” People need to be open and generous toward others, Francis said, because “if you withdraw into yourself, you run the risk of becoming egocentric. And stagnant water becomes putrid.”
3. “Proceed calmly” in life with kindness and humility.
4. “A healthy sense of leisure.” The pleasures of art, literature and playing together with children have been lost, he said.
5. Sundays should be holidays. Workers should have Sundays off because “Sunday is for family,” he said.
6. Find innovative ways to create dignified jobs for young people. “We need to be creative with young people. If they have no opportunities they will get into drugs” and be more vulnerable to suicide, he said.
7. Respect and take care of nature. Environmental degradation “is one of the biggest challenges we have,” he said. “I think a question that we’re not asking ourselves is: ‘Isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature?’ ”
8. Stop being negative. “Needing to talk badly about others indicates low self-esteem. That means, ‘I feel so low that instead of picking myself up I have to cut others down’,” the Pope said. “Letting go of negative things quickly is healthy.”
9. Don’t proselytize; respect others’ beliefs. “We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. But the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyses”.
10. Work for peace. “We are living in a time of many wars,” he said, and “the call for peace must be shouted”.
Calvo noted that Francis only mentioned God three times in their 77-minute conversation, twice in reference to protecting nature and once in mentioning a book title.
Sources
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