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Happiness is only a thought away

Written by: Ingrid Cliff

Article Overview: Do you want to be happy in your life? Not the constant blissed out happiness of flower children, but genuine happiness on a day to day basis. Happiness is only a thought away. What do I mean by that? One of the key indicators of how happy you feel is how optimistic you are and one of the causes of optimism is how you talk to yourself. In a previous issue, we talked about your internal guidance system and touched on self talk. This month I would like to explore this concept a bit further.

Happiness is only a thought away

Do you want to be happy in your life? Not the constant blissed out happiness of flower children, but genuine happiness on a day to day basis. Happiness is only a thought away. What do I mean by that? One of the key indicators of how happy you feel is how optimistic you are and one of the causes of optimism is how you talk to yourself. In a previous issue, we talked about your internal guidance system and touched on self talk. This month I would like to explore this concept a bit further.

When you make a mistake - do you beat up on yourself? Do you call yourself names like "stupid", "failure" or "idiot". Do you "should" all over yourself, "I should be doing this" or "I shouldn't be doing that". When we were born, we did not have these negative critics in our head. As we grew, we adopted them into ourselves from our parents, teachers and other kids.
Most of us learnt the art of criticism really well - after all we didn't want to get above ourselves did we? In fact many of us learnt the lessons so well, that we outdid the originators of the criticism. Whatever they said, we thought it twice as strong and twice as fast. Sort of like if mum was going to send us to our room for 5 minutes time out for something we had done, however we had already sent ourselves to our rooms and decided to lock ourselves in for a whole year, not eat for a week and remove the TV for good.

So what can you do about it? Martin Seligman in his groundbreaking book "Learned Optimism" gives some simple tools to turn around your thoughts.

1. Listen to your self-talk. When do you do it most? What do you say to yourself? Would you speak to your small children the same way that you talk to yourself? Are your "shoulds" realistic measures of you or are they setting unrealistic benchmarks for your behaviour?

2. Think about some times when your behaviour contradicted the self talk (eg: if you think you are a bad mum, then find some examples of when you were a good mum).

3. Find some different explanations for the situation or event. This is not about justification, it is about finding different possibilities. (eg: It could be that the person that yelled at you for something you did was having a bad day and their anger really had nothing to do with you)

4. Distract yourself from going over and over the bad thoughts. Tie your worries onto a worry tree or a into a worry basket and come back to them later if you really have to. Find other "lighter" thoughts to think about. Listen to music, do some exercise - anything to interrupt the flow of negative thoughts.

5. Question your underlying beliefs (eg: I must be liked by everyone I meet, I must be completely competant and make no mistakes ever if I am worthwhile, it is easier to put off something unpleasant than deal with it). Underlying beliefs can be hard to shift, but they are not impossible.

So if you really want to be happy in your life, listen to your self talk and take some action.

In the words of Groucho Marx:
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself:
'I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be.
Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it."

Julius "Groucho" Marx, 1890-1977

Related Articles
  Pursuit of Happiness
  Money Does Not Buy Happiness
  The State Of Happiness
  Happiness Is A Decision
  Marketing Happiness

Article Tags: benchmarks, blissed, expl, failure, flower children, genuine happiness, groundbreaking book, guidance system, internal guidance, martin seligman, measures, mistake, optimism, parents, simple tools



Related Forum Posts
Re: The secret to happiness - Happiness comes from within. We choose whether we want to be happy or not. Circumstances can influence our feelings, but in the end, it's up to us how we deal with our circumstances, positively or negatively. I admire anyone who can stay strong and be happy through adversity. There will always be challenges that we face, but I believe that if we face them with our heads held high, the odds of overcoming them are much greater. This reminds me of the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness." Happiness spelled wrong for a reason. One of Will Smith's greatest movies. I encourage you all to watch it as it's very inspiring.
Re: The secret to happiness - Happiness is working on the job you love. I forgot who said this, "give a man the job he loves doing and he will ever work again in his life"
Re: The secret to happiness - [quote="barrysarner":2awy1urv]I agree and happiness is different for every individual.[/quote:2awy1urv] Happiness is something that comes from within each person it not something that we can find externally. Something from outside such as an exciting event or a new car can make us happy, but this is a fleeting emotion. True happiness is within each person if we choose to it over misery. MichelleJ
Recommended Books? - Hi Kevin Just a thought, have you ever thought about placing a section on your homepage called "Recommended Books"? It's often a known fact that people will be interested in what an expert recommends and could possibly increase the popularity of particular book reviews that you might like to promote more than others. Let me know if you've thought of this before or not and if it worked. Kind regards TheAnonymousMan
What is one of your favorite sales and marketing book? - One of my favorite sales and marketing book is called Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. It tells a story of how a guy quit a high paying corporate job after graduating from Harvard in order to pursue a business dream, while working with a group of friends. They eventually built a business that is now worth over a billion dollars called Zappos.com. The entire books concept was on how to market a successful business. I enjoyed reading the book and learned a lot from it. What is one of your favorite marketing books?


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