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Posts tagged with “happy”

How to Want Less and Be Happy About It

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“Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.” ~Channing Pollock

The vast majority of my life has been a giant race to get things I’ve assumed would make me happy.

More money so I could do what I want when I want. A more meaningful career so I could feel both fulfilled and proud of myself. More connections so I could feel loved and worthy. And mostly, more distractions so I could avoid acknowledging why I was unhappy with myself.

“I’m making progress,” I’d delude myself. “I’m pushing myself to accomplish big things that will help people …

20 Ways to Let Go of Regrets

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“Every new day is another chance to change your life.” ~Unknown

You know the moment. It happens right after you realize you did something you wish you didn’t do. Maybe you broke someone’s trust and now the guilt is overwhelming you. Maybe you compromised your job in some way and now you’re terrified your world will come crashing down.

Regardless of what you did, you can feel your anxiety like a stack of red hot bowling balls surgically implanted in your stomach. (Dramatic? Yes. Regret is rarely reasonable!)

It’s that dreaded “Good God! Oh no! What was I thinking? Why …

4 Self-Defeating Attitudes That Stand in the Way of Happiness

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“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ~Unknown

I grew up believing that nothing I did was ever good enough, and this is something that I still carry with me.

It affects every aspect of my life: my hobbies, skills, my relationships, and even the understanding I have of my body, physical appearance, and my mental health. I often think that I must have done something quite terrible in a past life to go through any of this, to not be good enough.

As certain as I’ve been of this, I’ve been sure I wasn’t responsible for these attitudes …

The Book of Awesome: Review & Giveaway (Autographed Copies!)

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Update: The winners have already been chosen for this giveaway:

We all know the old adage “enjoy the little things,” but how many times throughout the day do you stop to actively enjoy them? Not just notice them, but absorb yourself in them, without letting your thoughts wander to something else you need or want to do?

When a baby unclenches his chubby fist and gives you high-five. When you see someone barbecuing and really selling it, like his skewers are his paintbrush and your burger the Mona Lisa. When you catch someone singing in the car …

10 Ways to Let Go and Overcome a Bad Mood

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“Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.”  ~Unknown

We all get in bad moods, no matter how positive we try to be.

Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep last night. Or you feel overworked and overwhelmed. Or perhaps something happened and you keep dwelling on it, going over and over in your head how you froze up in a meeting or spoke too aggressively to someone you love.

Whatever the case may be, you feel something you don’t want to feel and you’re not sure how to change it. You just know you need …

40 Ways to Live Life Without Regrets

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“The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” ~ Unknown

We all have something stored in our memory banks of the past that we wish we could have done differently, or something we wish we didn’t do.

As we get older we learn and grow, but that doesn’t mean we have to regret what we did before we learned how to do things differently. If we didn’t go through those experiences, we might not have grown into the strong and knowledgeable people we are today.

What I’m proposing is that we get rid …

Challenge Week: Kill Your Stress, Befriend Yourself & Dominate Positivity

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“Challenges are what make life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” ~Joshua J. Marine

Hey, I know you’re busy. Aren’t we all? But it’s time you did yourself a favor. Investing in yourself is a surefire way to give your mind a growth spurt without any stretch marks.

Take a week to reinvent your mindset. Each of these steps requires minimal effort but yield maximum reward. What are you waiting for? Let’s do this.

This “cleanse” is laid out over the course of a week, but you don’t have to follow each day in any particular order. Tailor …

How to Release the Fear of Failing: 20 Inspiring Definitions for Failure

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“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” ~Buddha

You didn’t get the job. You couldn’t raise the money. You missed the deadline. You hired the wrong person.

You didn’t ask for help. You let someone you love down. You failed to plan in advance. You bit off more than you could chew. You forgot something important.

Worst of all, whatever the case, you set the stage for a million questions about what it means and what you should have done.

When you don’t do something …

How to Enjoy the Journey More by Eliminating the Word “Should”

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“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” ~Proverb

A friend of mine once said, “If there’s a word in the English language I detest, it’s ’should.’ What a pointless, useless, waste-of-space (euphemism for other choice adjective) word.”

I think he’s right on the money. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, you should consider the definition of should, as defined by dictionary.com:

Should: must; ought (used to indicate duty, propriety, or expediency): You should not do that.

There is always something we feel we cannot and should not do for fear of humiliation, regret, having …

50 Things You Can Control Right Now

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

CNN reports that psychic businesses are thriving in this challenging economy, and the clientele has expanded to include more business professionals who are worried about their financial future.

According to Columbia Business School’s Professor Gita Johar, who studies consumer behavior, the greatest motivation for visiting a psychic is to feel a sense of control.

Sure, there are lots of things we can’t control: businesses may fold, stocks may plummet, relationships may end—the list is infinite, really. But wouldn’t we …

Embarrass Yourself

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“To get something you never had, you  have to do something you never did.” ~Unknown

You’d like to start presenting to clients, but you’re afraid of looking like a deer in the headlights if they ask questions you can’t answer. So you keep thinking about it, waiting for a time when you feel more prepared. More ready. More in control.

You’ve considered telling your friends you want to publish your novel, but you can’t stand them knowing you failed if things don’t pan out. So you keep it inside, protecting your ego but reinforcing to yourself that you likely can’t …

Undecide

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“Open minds lead to open doors.” ~Unknown

We start forming opinions at an early age and continue all through life.

We decide what we think is right and wrong, what’s good and what’s bad—not just on a larger scale (religion, politics, ethics) but also in every-day interactions.

How people should act. What people should think in certain situations. What it’s okay to feel and express, and when it’s smart or polite to do so.

We develop ideas about how the world should be to support our beliefs and views—things we learned from our environment and experiences—and inevitably feel a sense …

50 Ways to Be More Peaceful and Mindful Throughout Your Day

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“Peace is not something you wish for. It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” ~Robert Fulghum

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting 1000 Awesome Things, a blog devoted to the many simple pleasures in life. Some of them remind me of being a kid, like this one about celebrities on Sesame Street. Others remind of me I’m stronger than I think, like this one about getting through difficult situations.

With that in mind, you can imagine how excited I am to receive a copy of Neil’s …

Get Luckier

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“Care and diligence bring luck.” ~Proverb

When things aren’t going well for you, it’s easy to blame it on bad luck—to assume other people who are doing better had more help and advantages.

Nothing could be less empowering. This line of thinking just confirms that the world is unfair and you have limited control.

While both those things are true on some level—life isn’t fair, and in many ways, we’re not in control—happy people take responsibility and create their own luck, while their unhappy counterparts sit around blaming misfortune, feeling bitter that other people appear to get all the breaks.…

8 Ways to Increase Your Joy Factor

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“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

When I lived in Santa Monica a few years back, I developed a friendship with a woman I learned a lot from. She was a yogini, writer, and actress.

One day she asked if I wanted to take a ride to her dentist’s office with her.  She said it was fifteen minutes away but would take forty-five minutes to get there. Noticing the difference in the times, I asked the obvious question.

“Oh,” she said, “I always …

50+ Ways to Beat the Holiday Blues

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“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama

It’s a well-known fact that the holidays bring on the blues. According to the National Mental Health Association, reasons for feeling blue around the holidays range from fatigue to financial limitations to tensions in personal relationships.

As for me, I’m generally a happy person. I don’t dwell on things I can’t control, I have realistic expectations, I’ve learned overtime that trying to change people is futile, and I’ve even come to appreciate some of my flaws.

But sometimes, melancholy finds me. Like a thick fog …

Connecting with Friends: Faster Isn’t Always Better

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“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another and ourselves.” ~Jack Kornfield

In today’s virtual world, considering regular mail can feel rather absurd. Why would you send a postcard when you can instantly send an email or an e-card conveying your thoughts and good wishes, right?

But what happened to the charms of opening your mailbox and wondering what lies within? Hasn’t the walk back from the postbox become rather boring with only bills and flyers to expect?

Though the digital age has done a marvelous job at getting the …

5 Rules for Life

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When I first sat down to write this piece for 5 Rules for Life, I wrote “Live without rules” five times, each followed by a reason to keep your approach to life flexible.

The way you live is largely a reflection of where you’ve been, who you’ve been, and the beliefs you’ve formed. Who am I to create a cookie-cutter hard-and-fast code that makes sense for everyone?

That’s when I realized I’d need to make a sixth rule to introduce these ideas: judge my words, and anyone else’s, against your own reason and moral code.

Buddha said, “Believe …

Assume the Best

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“We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.” ~Unknown

You can never truly know someone else’s intentions.

If a coworker offers to cover your shift, she may be trying to ease your stress—or she could be vying for your job. If your sister-in-law offers to pay for your meal, she may want to help you out during tough times—of she could be trying to remind you that you’re inferior.

You can always find a negative assumption that allows you to believe the worst in people. Or you can give that person the benefit of the doubt and believe …

A Scientific Perspective on Happiness: Rules in Your Head

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“Happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors.” -Dalai Lama

I’m now convinced that the above quote is true. Let me explain why.

When I was studying for my psychology degree, I came across an interesting module called positive psychology.

It’s a section of the field that looks at the positive side of life, including a scientific study of what makes people happy. So potentially, it would put concerns I already had about pop-psychology, self-help, and spirituality to the test. I immediately signed up.

The idea that happiness comes from our attitude is a popular one. …