Three Tips to Happiness!

Listening to the news each day can be, frankly, very dispiriting with forecasts of economic gloom and environmental disasters: if we’re not careful we could find ourselves getting caught up in a downward spiral of misery. Similarly, talking excessively about problems and concerns (and I don’t mean sensible evaluation and taking action, but getting to the point when it’s all you focus on) has been shown to cause anxiety and even depression.

Good News

But the good news is that happiness and good humour is contagious too! There are some things that no economic crisis can take away from you, like your innate talents, resources, family and friends. Take a few moments to reflect on those each day.

Three Cheerfulness Tips

1) Stay calm and carry on! By which I mean don’t let yourself get dragged into a cycle of moaning and complaint to no purpose. Go on the complaint diet. Even one tiny moan a day uses up masses of cheerfulness calories so go for a smile instead. When someone starts up a litany of complaints, tell them you are following the complaint diet and will have to decline! Hopefully that will make them smile!

2) Share more! Start talking to neighbours, colleagues, friends about what you have which you can share. Like a power washer perhaps or books? Maybe you have a glut of vegetables you could offer? Once you start opening up in this way it’s amazing what you discover. Sharing a car to go shopping can lead onto sharing the buy one get one free offers which tempt you into buying too much, for example. But it also brings you a closer appreciation of your local community.

3) In times of economic downturn it can feel like you are in competition with everyone else for fewer resources, particularly in work situations. To counter this, think about joining a group and nourish your community spirit together. It might be a coffee club at work, a sewing group, a reading group at your local library, or an allotment club. Find one that interests you or start one of your own!

Try at least one of the above and see if it impacts on your happiness levels. Making yourself more happy is a very altruistic thing to do. Research in the US has revealed that happiness really is highly contagious. The findings show that when you become happy, any friend of yours who lives within a mile becomes 25% more happier too! And a friend of that friend is likely to be 10% happier, and a friend of that friend’s friend (still with me?) will be 5% happier!

It’s a positive civic duty to be a happy soul! I wish you much happiness today!

And please do share your own happiness tips!

Femageism? Watch out!

The population of the UK is ageing. Over the last 25 years the percentage of the population aged 65 and over increased from 15 per cent in 1983 to 16 per cent in 2008, an increase of 1.5 million people in this age group.

Over the same period, the percentage of the population aged 16 and under decreased from 21 per cent to 19 per cent. This trend is projected to continue. By 2033, 23 per cent of the population will be aged 65 and over compared to 18 per cent aged 16 or younger. (Office for National Statistics),

So why are major employers (with a few notable exceptions) still discriminating against older people?  And are you ageist in your attitudes? Do you make jokes about older people that you’d never make about other groups in society because they would sound so bad, yet we don’t notice with older people? Do you put yourself down for being older?

Over 40, Over the Hill?

A good friend of mine has just started a fashion web site for women over 40, called Fashionable Maven. It launched this week but Vicki Day, site owner, has been researching and working on it for months. She plans to feature fashions for women over 40 and as such approached several big clothes manufacturers.

And some said “I don’t want my clothes associated with women over 40″.

Can you believe it? Apart from it being blatant femageism, it shows a sad lack of understanding of the power and increasing number of this age group of women. I’m not going to name and shame but Vicki might on her site at some point!

Fight Back!

Time to take a stand I think. Whether you are over 40 or not, try this exercise for one week:

For the next seven days eliminate all ageist vocabulary and comments from your life. Notice how often you are having ageist thoughts (e.g muttering, ’stupid old fool, shouldn’t be driving’ when actually you may have experienced several ‘fools’ on the road of all ages!) Just try and eliminate the ageist bit, you can still be ‘drivist’!

When you look at someone older than you, don’t see wrinkles and decreasing ability, see wisdom and beauty. Don’t be taken in by the advertising that worships eternal youth! After all, with luck, we’ll all be old one day!

Interview

Vicki interviewed me for her site, which was a novel experience! I’m normally doing the interviewing. You can read the interview in full by clicking here.

PS Interestingly, it was not easy to find a positive picture of an older woman to illustrate this post! So I used my lovely Mum, taken on her 80th birthday!

The Paradox of Change

The Universe is Change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Marcus Aurelius Antonius

Change is a paradox because actually nothing ever stays the same; all is change. Our bodies today are not the same bodies we had yesterday. There have been masses of tiny changes, small but incrementally they add up to something very significant. I do not look the same person from 10 years ago, but I don’t notice a significant change in my appearance today from yesterday, yet I am different.

In nature the changes may appear slow as we go through the seasons, watching day to day changes in plants and flowers, the weather.  There is a cycle of nature which we understand. And yet nature can surprise us often with volcanic dust clouds, heat-waves, floods and earthquakes. It is changing all the time.

Understanding that life is constant change is a fundamental concept to grasp if we’re to manage other changes in our lives successfully. Everything you have experienced has brought you to today, is part of you today and impacts on you and your future. You have an extraordinary and immense capacity to cope with change.

You are truly amazing!

Follow Your Dreams!

In a recent article Jane Asher, actress and  successful businesswoman said, “If you have the choice, pursue what you enjoy”. Good advice, as long as you know what it is you enjoy!

When coaching I am always encouraging women to follow their dreams, whatever they are. And it is the knowing what we want that can sometimes be difficult. So many of us know that what we have is not fulfilling us, but just don’t know what we want instead (which is why I wrote ‘When Work isn’t Working‘.)

Any Age

Whatever age you are, it’s worth investing some time to work out what you want to be doing with your life. It may be something you can’t possible ever imagine achieving at this point in time, but it’s always good to have an aspiration. Knowing where you’d like to be in life will help you with all your decision making.

Maybe you have what currently seems like a fantasy of giving up the safe and reliable day job and instead running your own business? It may seem an impossible dream now but there will be things you can be doing now right now which will take you nearer your goal.

Free Help

For example, did you know that the tax office in UK provides all sorts of free seminars for would be business people? Or that Business Link has masses of information freely available on its web site? Get yourself a dream folder and when you see something helpful, put it in your resource pack!

Or maybe you can take up a part time role, perhaps unpaid with a charity, which will help you develop the skills you need to achieve your ultimate goal when the circumstances are right. Remember, luck has been defined as preparation meeting opportunity. Successful people in all walks of life have taken advantage of opportunities that have come their way but they have almost always put in the leg work beforehand.

And don’t let age stop you! Many dot com millionaires are still in their teens when they make it and equally many who have achieved their dreams have done so later in life. I was in my late forties when I pursued my dream working life! And Beryl Cook, at one point the most famous popular artist in Britain, didn’t sell a picture until she was in her sixties!

So what is your dream for your life? And what can you do right now to help take you a step nearer?

And if you’re not sure, please do try out my free visualisation- simply click the link up on the right ‘Your Perfect Day‘.

Change – How to Survive Tip 1

Change is most definitely in the air at the moment. But actually there is rarely a time when change is not with us – thankfully, or we’d still be scratching our heads wondering if a wheel might be a good idea or not!

I work in a lot of organisations who are undergoing change and the initial response is nearly always the same. Employees feel threatened and anxious, sickness levels go up, productivity suffers. And the toll on individuals can be enormous.

That’s the downside. But don’t forget change can also be hugely positive! It’s hard to remember that when change is being imposed but you will probably have had as many positive experiences of change in your life as negative ones. It’s just that we remember the negative ones so much more clearly!

If you are experiencing a lot of uncertainty in your personal life, a change at work over which you have no control can be the final straw. The Holmes and Rahe stress scale is still a useful guide to thinking about the impact more change might have on you.

Managing Change Tip

My first tip is to take a look at it, see how you rate and then take steps to look after yourself. It might be that you join up with a friend to help and support each other, or make sure you are eating healthily and look after yourself physically. Or find out what is on offer in your organisation to help you – mentoring, counselling, even subsidised gym membership!

Resolve now not to be a victim of the changes but take some control where you can.

This is the first in a series on managing change. If you want to be certain of getting every post you can sign up for them simply by putting your email address in box at top of this page. And you can unsubscribe at any time.

What’s Your Perfect Working Day?

One of the reasons I wrote ‘When Work isn’t Working’ was the number of coaching clients who came to me dissatisfied with their work. People were unhappy with the job they had, for all sorts of reasons, but just didn’t know what to do instead.

And so I wrote a creative visualisation especially for them, which is in the book, and is now available for you to listen to!

Free Download

Simply reading a visualisation doesn’t work as well as hearing it. Which is why I have recorded it and it is on the site, entirely free of charge for you! If you have the book already, you will find it enhances all the exercises you have already done. And if you don’t have the book, don’t worry – it works well on its own too!

Just simply click on the link to the right of your screen called ‘Your Perfect Day’. You don’t need to enter any details. You can either listen to it directly from your computer, or, (recommended) down load it to a player and take it somewhere calm and relaxing for you, where you won’t be interrupted.

I hope you enjoy listening to it and that it takes you closer to achieving your ideal job! Please do let me know what you think!