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!

Feel The Fear and Do It Anway!

‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway‘ by Susan Jeffers is an absolute classic in the self help genre. It was first published in 1987 and has been a best seller ever since.

Susan acknowledges the fears that we all have, fear of failure, fear of success, and so on. She takes you through what she describes as three levels of fear. Not with the idea of eliminating the risks of life, rather facing your fear full on and training your thoughts to work for you rather than against.

Here’s an extract from the book:

“Taking responsibility means not blaming yourself.
I know that sounds contradictory, but it is not. Anything that takes away your power or your pleasure makes you a victim. Don’t make yourself a victim of yourself!
For some, this more difficult than not blaming others. Once you’ve become aware that you have created so much of your unhappiness, you have a tendency to punish yourself and put yourself down. “There I am messing up my life again. I’m hopeless. When will I ever learn?”
This, again, is not taking responsibility for your experience of life. It is important to understand that you have always done the best you possibly could, given the person you were at any particular time. Now that you are learning a new way of thinking, you can begin to perceive things differently and possibly change many of your actions. There is absolutely no need to be upset with your past, present or future behavior. It is all simply part of the learning process-the process of moving yourself from pain to power.”

The book contains stories and lots of exercises you can try yourself. There is a particular exercise illustrating the power of our thoughts over our body which I use on my Renewyou course which never fails to amaze people, and is really powerful. It is a classic book and each time I pick it up I am reminded of something helpful, for me and for my coaching clients.

If you haven’t got a copy I recommend it to you. And if you have one tucked away somewhere, dig it out and read it again. It’s available from all major booksellers and libraries, or on line from Amazon

6 Questions to Help Your Thinking!

At times we can fall into a pattern of thinking that is unhelpful to us.

Here is an example:

You are late for work one morning and when you arrive a group of your colleagues are in a little huddle. You automatically assume they are complaining to each other about your lateness.

Because you think they are talking about you, you don’t offer an explanation for your lateness but go to your desk without speaking. And you have a miserable day, reviving in your head every negative experience you have ever had at work, feeling more and more miserable and unhappy.

Challenge Your Thinking

Here’s a list of questions to use to challenge your perceptions:

What are the actual facts?
I was late for work and people were engaged in conversation when I arrived.

What are my perceptions?
That they were talking about my unreliability and my being late.

What evidence supports my perceptions?
No one talked to me all morning

What evidence contradicts my perceptions?
No one has made any comment about my lateness. We’ve all been really busy this morning, heads down because it’s reports day. Generally there is a friendly atmosphere and I haven’t had any problems before.

Is my thinking unhelpful?
I am immediately jumping to negative conclusions.

How else can I look at what happened?
I didn’t offer any explanation so they are respecting my privacy. They may have been worrying about me, not talking unkindly about me. They may even have been talking about my birthday which is next week. I have no evidence of what they were talking about at all. My silence stopped them talking to me as they may have thought I was upset.

In fact, there are loads of alternative explanations so ask yourself why you have chosen the one with least favourable consequences for you?

Socrates

If you can teach yourself this form of self questioning you’ll be following a long and noble tradition begun by Socrates. You are employing Socratic questioning and holding your thoughts up to logical scrutiny. Try it out next time you find yourself jumping to conclusions, and let me know how you get on!

Tips to Boost Your Confidence

Do you sometimes find yourself losing confidence? Do you have flashes of seeing yourself failing at whatever you want to do? Is lack of confidence in your abilities holding you back from living life to the full?

If you answered yes to any of the above you are not alone. Very few of us get by without the occasional blip in our confidence levels. And even the most confident of people have moments when they feel they just can’t do it. Honestly!

The good news is that we can learn to be confident! Confidence is a feeling and we are in charge of our feelings!

I Feel…?

The next time the confidence wobble strikes, take a few moments to acknowledge just how you are feeling. Make a conscious attempt to slow your breathing (just being aware of it can help slow it) and note how you feel physically and emotionally. Are you hot, or in a cold sweat, or even shaking slightly? Do you feel anxious, nervous, or even angry? Try to be quite specific and honest with yourself.

Slowing your breathing will help with the nervousness. Practise doing that until it comes easily to you, but don’t hyperventilate!

Internal mail

Now focus on what is your internal mail saying to you. You may be so used to hearing it that you don’t even realise it’s there. It’s like spam, unwanted messages piling into your in box.

But in this case simply deleting it is not enough because once it’s in there it’s already infecting everything else, so we have to neutralise it. Your automatic spam mail is sapping your confidence, slowly and insidiously, like a virus.

You may hear phrases like:

“You’re getting above yourself here”

“Keep in the background, no one is interested in you”

“You’re too stupid to take part in this conversation”

“Don’t challenge the status quo, don’t rock the boat!”

“People like you don’t get jobs like that”

Ring any bells? Honestly we all do it; the trick is to be aware of it, and then stop it before it gets too strong a hold in any one situation.

And then make it work for you.

Work for You

Take your spammy message and make it positive.

Keep it simple.

Keep it positive.

Keep it real.

For example, “You’re too stupid…”. Where did that come from? If you spend long enough thinking about it, it might have been a phrase from a teacher that haunts you, or even a casual throw away comment from parents or guardians that hit you at a vulnerable time. And you may have been unconsciously nurturing it ever since, allowing it to grow and flourish.

Time to let it go. You are clearly not stupid but constantly giving yourself that negative message is sapping your confidence. You are making yourself feel stupid.

Saying it to yourself has become habit, possibly even a comforting habit. So simply not saying it will be difficult. You need to replace it with something that works for you, and only you know what that is. It has to be something that you would say so taking someone else’s words or mantra probably won’t work.

Your new message needs to be something along the lines of “I am as good as everyone else here” or “My views are useful” or “I’ll give it a go – I’ll survive”

Confidence Mantra

Take a moment now to design your own confidence mantra. Think of it as your spam control. When that insidious  message creeps in again, zap it with the powerful mantra. You’ll need to practise a few times but it will work. Those little messages are well lodged and will want to stay, but you can get rid of them! You can you know! You are much more powerful than a few words!

“No one can make you feel inferior without your own consent”- Eleanor Roosevelt. Great quote!

Three Questions for Helpful Thinking!

I’ve written before about the benefits of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, C.B.T., and positive thinking so here’s some practical suggestions!

At the core is the idea that our thoughts can block us from viewing life in a positive way, a way that’s helpful to us. Positive thinking helps us to identify those beliefs we hold which drag us down and distort our thinking (In my RenewYou course I call this our internal mail), and change them.

The first step in managing your unhelpful thinking is becoming aware of the negative thoughts. Jot them down each time they pop into your head:

“I can’t do that”, “I’m no good at that”, “I’ll fail this” etc.

Each time you find yourself falling into the old pattern try answering these three questions:

• What is my evidence for this?
• Is there any evidence that doesn’t support this belief? Be as honest and objective as you can; treat it as an academic exercise.
• How might someone else interpret this event? What’s an alternative way of explaining what’s happened?

What are your best tips for keeping in a positive frame of mind?

Be a Good Friend to Yourself

How many times day are you rude to yourself? Stop and think about how you talk to yourself for a moment or two. Do you use phrases like: ‘I‘m so stupid‘, ‘ I never get that right‘, ‘What an idiot I am‘, ‘I’m so fat, I have no will power’.

Talking to Yourself?

We all do it from time to time with varying degrees of rudeness! And much of the time it doesn’t matter. But sometimes the balance tips and we can actually create self fulfilling prophecies in our lives; we make ourselves feel worse and less able to combat the behaviour we want to change.

I have an exercise in my RenewYou course when we look at some of the self talk that goes on almost unnoticed in our heads, and the negative impact it has on our behaviour. I call it ‘Internal Mail’, some of which should go straight to the junk box! That exercise doesn’t translate well onto the page but below is one that does.

Try This Exercise

Pay attention for one day to the way you speak to yourself. If you can, jot the offending phrases down and what was happening when you ’said’ it.

At the end of the day, review what you have written. Now imagine yourself with your best friend and that she/he is telling you of similar incidents to the ones you have experienced. Do you tell them they are stupid, or do you offer support, encouragement, advice and sympathy? I have no doubt it’s the latter. I am sure you are a much better friend to them than to yourself!

Try the exercise again, noting down your self talk. Only this time respond as if to a friend. Give yourself the same level of support, encouragement, advice and sympathy that you give to your friends. Be a best friend to yourself for a change!

Question

What’s the worst or funniest thing you say to yourself?