19 Jan Check out these 3 new & interesting articles on happiness
I’ve just come across a few stories and articles that in various ways touch upon the issue of happiness. I hope you enjoy then and find them useful…
In Business Week Marshall Goldsmith talks about happiness and finding your mojo; here’s a short sample…
With the new year just begun, what better time than now to focus on finding, keeping, or getting back our mojo for 2011 and beyond? It’s easy to attain happiness and meaning when we achieve two straightforward goals: loving what we do and showing it.
This is what I call mojo. All the successful people I know have it. It shows when positive feelings toward what we are doing radiate from inside us and are evident for others to see. In other words, there’s no gap between the positive way we perceive ourselves_ã”what we are doing_ã”and how others perceive us.
To attain mojo, you need to combine four vital ingredients.
1. Identity. Who do you think you are? This question is more subtle than it sounds. It amazes me how often I ask people this question and their first response is, “well, I think I’m perceived as someone who _ã_.” I stop them immediately with: “I didn’t ask you to analyze how you think other people see you. I want to know who you think you are. Taking everything else in the world out of the equation, including the opinions of your spouse, your family, and your closest friends, how do you perceive yourself?”
What follows is often a long silence as they struggle to get their self-image into focus. After people think for a while, I can generally extract a straight answer. Without a firm handle on identity, we may never understand why we gain or lose our mojo.
2. Achievement. What have you done lately?
To keep reading CLICK HERE
The ABC website spend some time promoting the DVD release of the TV show Making Australia Happy and include some quotes and tips from their team of coaches including Tony Grant and Russ Harris.
Here’s a sample…
Some of us might have been born happier than others, but all of us can increase our happiness _ã_ and science is showing us how.
“With happiness, people tend to think you’ve either got it or you haven’t,” says Sydney psychologist, Dr Tony Grant. “But that’s only partly true.”
We all seem to be born with a tendency to be either jolly or morose or somewhere in between, says Grant, director of coaching psychology at the University of Sydney. We tend to return to that level of happiness, even after major setbacks or triumphs.
But research shows the choices we make in our daily lives can nonetheless make a big difference to our wellbeing, Grant says.
In fact, as much as 40 per cent of the variation in happiness from one person to the next is thought to be due to the behaviours and activities we engage in.
As US-based happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky puts it: “Sustainable happiness is attainable, if you are prepared to do the work.”
If you want permanent weight loss or fitness, you need to make permanent changes requiring effort and commitment every day of your life. And it’s the same with happiness, Lyubomirsky says.
But don’t expect constant bliss. “Happiness is about living a full, rich and meaningful life _ã_ being truly human, warts and all. It’s not about being happy all the time. Mood fluctuations are part of normal life,” Grant says.
To read more CLICK HERE
And finally, article number 3 comes from the Huffington Post in which they ponder whether adulthood is a problem for happiness! Here’s a short sample…
It’s a vision problem that no laser surgery can cure, a hyperopia that keeps us from seeing the central source of happiness right next to us. That problem is called adulthood. Those who are afflicted with this condition have trouble focusing on nearby objects of amusement and the realm that delivers the most enjoyment per square inch: play. Adults are oblivious to what they knew as kids — that play is where you live.
Grownups aren’t supposed to play. We have problems. We’re too busy. We have important things to do. It turns out, though, that there are few things more important to your happiness than frequent doses of play. As a study led by Princeton researcher Alan Krueger found, of all the things on the planet, we’re at our happiest when we’re involved in engaging leisure activities. Why not do more of that?
Well, there’s the entrenched masochism that we seem to prefer, stemming from the built-in bias against anything that’s not full-blast production mode. “Talking about adult play is kind of taboo in our culture,” says Lynn Barnett-Morris, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an expert on the effects of play on personality. “We think it’s a waste of time or that we could be more productive doing other things — all sorts of dumb stuff.”
Keep reading HERE
So, there you have it; 3 different articles on different aspects of happiness. I hope you’ve enjoyed these and as always, invite you to post any thoughts or comments on our Facebook page (see below).