Dr. Isadore Rosefeld recommends to get yourself someone to talk to, to listen to your thoughts

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

This morning on Fox News their resident General Practitioner Doctor Isadore Rosenfeld was instructing on how he feels many practitioners recommend pharmaceuticals too often, and to early.

He recommended that individuals need to simply get someone to “ventilate their concerns” whether that person was a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or even as simple as a good friend. According to Dr. Rosenfeld just talking out your concerns to another human being is theraputic and beneficial.

He recommended that this course of “ventilating one’s concerns” be attempted before any issuance of pharaceuticals.

As a happiness coach I facilitate the growth and achievement of goals for individuals who are looking for improved happiness and want someone to listen and help.

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While we’re at it, let’s document happiness, too.

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Use this free form Happiness Journal to document your happy points of your day.

You’ll learn more about yourself doing this and the corresponding Unhappiness Journal than almost anything else you do.

These two tools are the foundation of improving your happiness in your life.

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To improve happiness, first find yourself unhappy

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

In order to find happiness, unhappiness needs to get documented.

This may not make sense at first, but this is one of the first exercises I recommend my coaching clients complete.

It sounds easy, but it’s definitely more difficult to do than it seems.

It is beneficial to isolate the points during one’s day that make unhappiness flare up.

The difficulty is recognizing all of them by writing them down.

It is often difficult to admit the number of occasions that one is outwardly expressing unhappiness or inwardly just feeling unhappy.

The points and issues that are documented are only a starting place. One must sort through the listed items to ferret out a cause or a symptom.

A commute that generates road rage could be due to a job that one feels stuck in, or perhaps just a tight morning schedule getting kids to school and other morning obligations completed.

Download and use the free Unhappiness Journal worksheet right now. Print these and use them to learn more about your day.

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How to get a quick dose of happiness without meds, alcohol, or guilt

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

I went to the gym this morning in my Jeep with the top down. It was 62 degrees so that was quite a brisk ride.

It was still mostly dark when I left. The nearly full moon was still lighting up the sky and I could see clouds and the silhouettes of trees on the hillsides adjacent to my route.

I’ve always wanted a convertible and I now have one. I still smile every time I run with the top down.

Why is that?

It must be a combination of things.

One, I only go through the motions of manually removing the top on really nice days. There is no button on a Jeep, it’s kind of a project. It’s best if I can do it on Friday afternoon and put it back up on Sunday evening so the whole weekend should be nice weather. So one of my observations is that the feeling of experiencing comfortable outdoor weather firsthand makes me happy.

Second, I like having the vertical views that I get when the top is down. How silly is that? When you’re driving a car, who cares if you can see a helicopter, clouds, the upper portion of a larger vehicle next to you in traffic, stars, clouds or the sun? But I do.

It may have something to do with seeing something novel. Perhaps if I drove in a convertible every day it may not be so darn entertaining to me.

Perhaps there is so much stimuli from the wind and the noise that there isn’t any bandwidth for the brain to contemplate heavier topics so the pleasure comes in part from relief of mental burden.

As I write this it’s the beginning of Fall in Atlanta, Georgia where I live. I expect a good number of days with the top down in the next 60 days.

If you’re looking for a quick dose of happiness without meds, alcohol or guilt, I recommend you beg, borrow or steal yourself a ride in a convertible ASAP.

You may have a friend that owns one. Invite that person to a meal at a restaurant. Tell them you’ll buy if they drive and will put the top down for the ride to the restaurant and back.

Some of the car rental places rent them. Look them up on the Internet and go get yourself one for a day.

I’m not fully certain why convertibles bring so much happiness. I don’t always need to know why something works in order to determine that it works. I’ve never seen anything but smiling faces on a driver or passengers in a convertible.

Go drop the top somewhere, somehow… right now.

I bet you’ll come back happier than when you left.

Tags: happiness is a convertible
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Observe and correct negative personal behaviors faster

Monday, September 15th, 2008

I noticed an article on Google News with the headline:

Man finds happiness with 25th wife

The brief article states that the now 49 year old man from Nepal has now been married to this now 23 year old woman for 7 years and is now “happy” and wants to get serious about his children’s education.

Over the last year we’ve seen countless examples of bad behavior by celebrities such as Britney Spears.

I could go on with examples of people that continue behavior that doesn’t serve them very well in lieu of replacing those behaviors with better behaviors.

How many weight-loss commercials have you heard and seen lately? It seems they’re everywhere.

We simply have to get serious about identifying negative personal trends and replacing these behaviors with positive ones, and liking the result.

Many times people know what they’re doing is wrong but continue out an inherent lack of self esteem. Or they believe that ignoring poor behaviors because they’re “too busy” to do something better is justifiable or akin to martyrdom within their family. Which is simply a bad choice.

These are the types of behaviors that a coach can help you identify (shouldn’t be too hard) but that same coach can help you identify a replacement behavior and help you execute the transition to where the new behavior becomes automatic.

The longer you stay in the old ways, which you know very well aren’t beneficial, the longer things are going to stay the same for you.

You have to develop a want for the results of the better behavior more than you value the way your life is today.

Keep reading these articles or go ahead and join the Happiness Boot Camp Virtual Coaching Club monthly group teleclasses and newsletter. Or inquire about retaining a personal happiness coach.

If you keep doing what you’re doing you’re going to keep getting what you’re currently getting.

Do something different today!

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Goobers

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

I read something today that people with kids lead happier lives.

This evening I was “being interviewed” by my 10 year old son as homework. He was to interview Linda and I individually about voting. I was explaining why we vote and in which elections in answering his specific questions.

He was understandably a bit overwhelmed by the subject and maybe bored, too.

Then he got to the word “gubernatorial”.

Once I helped him pronounce the word, he leaned forward, he looked at me and his eyes got big and he said…

“Did you say goober?”

He and I laughed for the next five minutes.

I guess these may be moments that teachers encounter every day, but to me, it was hilarious and special.

I don’t think my kid will ever look at politics as boring ever again.

And I think that whoever wrote the study that stated that people with kids lead happier lives may well be right.

Tags: happiness
Posted in Catching myself happy, Happiness observations | No Comments »

Who cares about national studies of happiness, I care about my happiness.

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Many articles and discussions that I see on the topic of happiness purport to summarize the findings of happiness studies both current and/or historical.

My thoughts are mixed on these articles.

I’m convinced that the goal is “happier” not “happiness”.

And that’ entirely a personal matter.

In my coaching I help people by helping them identify their hotspots and temper their reactions.

I also share the concept that happiness doesn’t equal a yellow smiley face and a pollyannish approach to life. I recognize that bad things happen to good people and there’s no getting around that. And there’s no reason to try to make yourself ignore pain and the phases of grief.

My thought is that happiness is more like a personal fitness regimen. Happiness improves with practice just like personal condition improves with exercise.

I read and learn from high-level studies but that is not my focus.

An expert teacher understands high level research yet interprets concepts down to the level of their students and finds creative ways for students to put tactics and concepts to work in their lives.

For that reason I focus not on reporting on scientific studies of happiness, but on helping my students develop basic happiness improving skills and put them to work in their lives.

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Train Your Happiness Reflex

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Training your happiness reflex can lead to a more effective you.

Yesterday I walked over to a convenience store near my office to get a late afternoon snack.

Quite a few customers were pouring in the doors and trying to queue up near check out registers with employees standing nearby. It’s one of those stores where the employees ring up customers that approach the right or the left side of the register. These check out artists are pushing buttons like crazy, being polite, making change quickly with almost a bartender like zeal and style.

One lady approached the register from across the store and wound up near where I was lined up. She realized she inadvertently had sidestepped her way into one of these loose queues that I was standing in.

When the clerk asked “Next please” she looked at me and said “Go ahead”. I told her thanks but to go ahead, I wasn’t in a hurry I was just going back to my office down the sidewalk.

She said thank you and immediately started mumbling comments about how the clerks in this store are always behind, that they never are organized and that the store itself never has enough people to check you out.

This exchange happened within just a few seconds.

I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I had just witnessed someone’s happiness reflex.

Her happiness reflex, or lack thereof I could say, was trained to be whiny and negative. I believe she actually surrounds herself at home with people that whine, bitch and complain instinctively.

Her reaction happened lightning fast in an environment where there was no reason at all to complain specifically about the situation that she chose to instinctively grouse about.

I stood there in amazement. I wished I could start coaching this lady right there on the spot.

The store is known for their speed at checkout. They’re known for loudly greeting all entrants to the store, even if 10 people come in the door at the same time. They make eye contact and say thank you loudly and quickly. It’s borderline annoying, frankly. Not as annoying as 15 waiters clapping and stomping up to a restaurant patron’s table and singing happy birthday, but just on the edge of annoying.

At least the staff at the convenience store seem sincere with their individualized greetings. It’s obviously part of the chain’s training but the clerks are in a groove, they know it and they must be paid well because their radiance is consistent across State lines and across years that I have been their customer.

The bottom line is that there I stood, aghast at the fact that this lady thought it would be socially acceptable and actually friendly to gripe to me about the line.

How is your happiness reflex trained to react?

Is your first instinct to bitch?

Stop and consider, are you trained to reflexively gripe or smile?

Are the people that you have surrounded yourself with trained to bitch first, as a sport?

These are key observations that you need to make about yourself and the people that are close to you.

I call this the happiness reflex.

And I can help you train yours.

Your happiness reflex can be trained to react in a more productive and less stressful manner.

In my next article I will lay out specific steps to recondition your happiness reflex to actually be, well, a happiness reflex and not a sour grapes reflex.

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Happiness is not about checklists

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Checklists are overrated.

Many self-improvement gurus, myself included, put a lot of emphasis on building and staying focused on checklists of goals.

My assessment of this type of activity is that it often leads one to defer happiness until the goal is reached.

Happiness comes from living in the now, not the future.

You may well find that a comprehensive list of goals and consistent activity toward those goals makes you happy.

Just don’t defer celebrating and experiencing happiness until after the goal has been accomplished.

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Top Happiness Secret Exposed by John McCain

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

United States Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain inadvertently proffered advice that happens to be one of the most effective methods to increase personal happiness levels.
John McCain uttered the sentence “Nothing brings greater happiness in life than fighting for a cause that is greater than yourself” during his nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night, September 4, 2008.

This is an excellent recommendation for increasing global happiness.

We live in an era of pursuing excellence in career, family, and finance. Yet many people believe that they are doing right by aggressively working toward achieving excellence in these areas but actually end up feeling empty.

The truth remains that there is always someone worse off than us. Many times this is overlooked by modern citizens caught up in their busy, achievement seeking lifestyles.

What happens when one individual helps another is that the helper takes greater notice of the positive elements in his or her life. The individual being helped is often reassured by witnessing that there are good people both willing and available to assist with their situation at hand.

Pursuit of happiness has a long history in politics in the United States. The famous line which contains the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is actually the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, dated July 4th, 1776.

Over one million people search the popular search engine Google each month using the word “happiness” according to Google’s keyword search tool.

John McCain’s advice to help others in order to increase ones’ own happiness is certain to improve the lives of many if they just take action.

Tags: how to find happiness
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