10 Keys to Happiness

This is an article from www.actionforhappiness.org and I found it so incredibly valuable that I wanted to pass it on.

Action for Happiness has developed the 10 Keys to Happier Living based on a review of the latest scientific research relating to happiness.

Everyone’s path to happiness is different, but the research suggests these Ten Keys consistently tend to have a positive impact on people’s overall happiness and well-being. The first five (GREAT) relate to how we interact with the outside world in our daily activities*. (* The first five keys are based on the Five Ways to Wellbeing developed by nef as part of the UK Government's Foresight Project on Mental Capital.)

The second five (DREAM) come more from inside us and depend on our attitude to life.

GIVING - Do things for others

RELATING - Connect with people

EXERCISING - Take care of your body

APPRECIATING - Notice the world around

TRYING OUT - Keep learning new things

DIRECTION - Have goals to look forward to

RESILIENCE - Find ways to bounce back

EMOTION - Take a positive approach

ACCEPTANCE - Be comfortable with who you are

MEANING - Be part of something bigger

Ten keys to happier living

The Ten Keys are explained in more detail below. Each has a related question to help us think about how our activities and attitudes affect our well-being and the well-being of the others around us.

GIVING

Do things for others

Caring about others is fundamental to our happiness. Helping other people is not only good for them and a great thing to do; it also makes us happier and healthier too. Giving also creates stronger connections between people and helps to build a happier society for everyone. And it's not all about money - we can also give our time, ideas and energy. So if you want to feel good, do good!

Q: What do you do to help others?

RELATING

Connect with people

Relationships are the most important overall contributor to happiness. People with strong and broad social relationships are happier, healthier and live longer. Close relationships with family and friends provide love, meaning, support and increase our feelings of self-worth. Broader networks bring a sense of belonging. So taking action to strengthen our relationships and create new connections is essential for happiness.

Q: Who matters most to you?

EXERCISING

Take care of your body

Our body and our mind are connected. Being active makes us happier as well as being good for our physical health. It instantly improves our mood and can even lift us out of a depression. We don't all need to run marathons - there are simple things we can all do to be more active each day. We can also boost our well-being by unplugging from technology, getting outside and making sure we get enough sleep!

Q: How do you stay active and healthy?

APPRECIATING

Notice the world around

Ever felt there must be more to life? Well good news, there is! And it's right here in front of us. We just need to stop and take notice. Learning to be more mindful and aware can do wonders for our well-being in all areas of life - like our walk to work, the way we eat or our relationships. It helps us get in tune with our feelings and stops us dwelling on the past or worrying about the future - so we get more out of the day-to-day.

Q: When do you stop and take notice?

TRYING OUT

Keep learning new things

Learning affects our well-being in lots of positive ways. It exposes us to new ideas and helps us stay curious and engaged. It also gives us a sense of accomplishment and helps boost our self-confidence and resilience. There are many ways to learn new things – not just through formal qualifications. We can share a skill with friends, join a club, learn to sing, play a new sport and so much more.

Q: What new things have you tried recently?

DIRECTION

Have goals to look forward to

Feeling good about the future is important for our happiness. We all need goals to motivate us and these need to be challenging enough to excite us but also achievable. If we try to attempt the impossible this brings unnecessary stress. Choosing ambitious but realistic goals gives our lives direction and brings a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when we achieve them.

Q: What are your most important goals?

RESILIENCE

Find ways to bounce back

All of us have times of stress, loss, failure or trauma in our lives. But how we respond to these has a big impact on our well-being. We often cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose our own attitude to what happens. In practice, it’s not always easy, but one of the most exciting findings from recent research is that resilience, like many other life skills, can be learned.

Q: How do you bounce back in tough times?

EMOTION

Take a positive approach

Positive emotions – like joy, gratitude, contentment, inspiration, and pride – are not just great at the time. Recent research shows that regularly experiencing them creates an 'upward spiral', helping to build our resources. So although we need to be realistic about life's ups and downs, it helps to focus on the good aspects of any situation – the glass half full rather than the glass half empty.

Q: What are you feeling good about?

ACCEPTANCE

Be comfortable with who you are

No one's perfect. But so often we compare our insides to other people's outsides. Dwelling on our flaws - what we're not rather than what we've got - makes it much harder to be happy. Learning to accept ourselves, warts and all, and being kinder to ourselves when things go wrong, increases our enjoyment of life, our resilience and our well being. It also helps us accept others as they are.

Q: What is the real you like?

MEANING

Be part of something bigger

People who have meaning and purpose in their lives are happier, feel more in control and get more out of what they do. They also experience less stress, anxiety and depression. But where do we find 'meaning and purpose'? It might be our religious faith, being a parent or doing a job that makes a difference. The answers vary for each of us but they all involve being connected to something bigger than ourselves.

Join the movement www.actionforhappiness.org

“Be an inspiration to yourself and

you will be an inspiration to others.”

Happiness and Its Causes

Did you know as a society overall, we are getting richer but not happier? If anything, we have actually been getting richer but unhappier. Is this because our consumer society is failing to deliver lives that give our passion and purpose?

Tim Jackson said “we are being persuaded to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about.”  What do you think of that? Is Tim accurate for you or not? If not for you, think about people you know. Could this perhaps apply to them? Is our environment failing to deliver fulfilling lives?

How can we take back control? I am assuming that you would like a happier life? So what can you do to be happier? Because ultimately it is up to you, isn’t it? You are the director of your life. You are the person that should take responsibility and control over your destiny.

So how do we do this? What are some things we can do to create a happier life for ourselves? On the Action for Happiness website they say “people and organisations need to behave in a way that improves well being (for their own and others).”

Each of us can help in small ways. It is the small things that make big things happen. David Cameron said before he was the Prime Minister of the UK, “It’s time we admitted that there is more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on the GDP but on GWB - general well-being.

Well-being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It’s about the quality of our culture, the beauty of our surroundings and, above all, the strength of our relationships.”

So perhaps if you can answer these questions:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life?

• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?

• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

• Overall, to what extent are the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

What can we do as people, organisations not just to create happiness in ourselves but spread happiness?

We can focus on being happy. As Groucho Marx said “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.”

So perhaps the cause of happiness is our view of the world, our view of our environment, our view of what is happening. So maybe, just maybe, the trick is not to wait to be happy, not to wait for someone to make you happy, not to wait for something to happen to be happy, just be happy. Perhaps it could be that easy. So close your eyes now, keep them closed for about 30 seconds, no peeking, and when you open your eyes, you have a new view, a new outlook and a new attitude. That is you have now chosen to be happy just because you can.

Smile!

“Be an inspiration to yourself and

you will be an inspiration to others.”

I Am Responsible

To release my potential
from past restrictive programming
of my subconscious,
it is extremely important
that I give myself the right to be me
and to function as I choose.
It is not possible to have sound self-esteem
if I am not true to myself
or give up responsibility and accountability
for my own life
as I seek to achieve fulfilment
of my needs and goals.

I want to allow myself the freedom to choose
without building a prison for myself with
“have to’s”, “cannot’s” and “they won’t let me’s.”

I recognise I am functioning
from my own free choice and I can either:
recognise myself as important,
valuable and interesting as a person,
or see myself as an absolute incompetent,
who is unworthy and unneeded.
I can choose to be kind, loving,
helpful, loyal and compassionate,
or to be lazy, cowardly, mean and disloyal.
I can choose to be happy,
free and succeed in each undertaking
or to fail and feel unimportant and less than others.

If I allow myself this freedom,
I must recognise
I am responsible for my decisions and actions
and be willing to accept
the consequences they bring.

I know I am the one
who will answer for my every action,
and will profit or suffer accordingly.

Therefore, before every important decision,
I ask myself:
What ought to be done for me?
Will it injure myself or others?
Is this in accord with my beliefs and goals?
Is it in alignment with reality as I see it?
Am I willing to fully accept the consequences?

To be truly free and to grow in self-esteem,
I must not give up my growth,
pursuit of fulfilment or happiness to anyone.

I choose to treat myself with dignity
and proceed to move toward full love,
 wisdom, freedom and joy,
knowing I am the authority over me.

Author Unknown

Action:

• Be true to you
• Be 100% responsible for your life
• Recognise me as important
• Be free
• Move forward

Thank you and I look forward to sharing more tips, strategies and skills to support you to be more organised so that you too can create a better life.

“Be an inspiration to yourself and

you will be an inspiration to others.”

Taking Responsibility

Every day events occur in our household, in our neighbourhood, in our state, in our country, in the world that may affect our outlook for the day. They may affect our mood, and they may affect how we react to other people. It can be as trivial as someone in the family racing out the door and not saying goodbye; it could be a world event like a tsunami that makes us grieve for the loss that other people are going through.

We need to understand that we can’t control what occurs in the world, we can’t control political events, and we can’t control interest rates; what we can control is how we react to these situations. It’s about the decisions you make and accepting responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.

Perhaps we aren’t achieving what we would like to achieve in our life because of who controls or influences our life. It may be others, such as:

• Your parents
• Your partner
• Your children
• Your boss
• Your work colleagues
• The government
• World events
• The driver who cut you off in traffic today
• The queue at the supermarket

By allowing circumstances, events and words to affect us in a negative way, we’re passing control of our thoughts, mood, and experiences onto other people who are out of our control. When this occurs, we’re living a reactive life. The benefit of letting others control us is that we have someone else to blame – that lets us off the hook.

The alternative action is that we could take responsibility for our self.

Empower yourself in three steps:

Making the choice to be in control can be empowering you only need to control yourself. So here are the steps:

1. Recognise that you have the power to choose how you react to a situation
2. Recognise when you are not taking responsibility for your life
3. Practise stopping yourself when you are letting others control you and take responsibility

This is a new behaviour so practise is really important.

If you don’t run your own life, someone else will

John Atkinson

You can choose to take responsibility for your life.

Thank you and I look forward to sharing more tips, strategies and skills to support you to be more organised so that you too can create a better life.

“Be an inspiration to yourself and

you will be an inspiration to others.”

The Key to Being Your Best

Have you ever thought about how you structure your day vs. how you should structure your day? A leading question, I know, asked to generate some thoughts. We actually all have a “prime” time or “golden” time during the day when we feel great. It is during this time that we should schedule our most important tasks. This is referred to as our energy cycle.

An energy cycle is how your body functions throughout the day. You need to take note of when you feel good, when you feel tired, when you are just chugging along.

Ask questions such as are you an early bird or a night owl? Listen to what your body is telling you.

It is not always possible to have control over all your tasks or when they need to be completed. However, any tasks that you have control over when you can schedule it then stop and think when is the most appropriate time to place it into your schedule.

When your energy is feeling good you should focus on:

• Important tasks
• Critical decisions
• Problems
• Complex issues
• Or any areas you have been procrastinating

Rather than arrive at work, organise your day, say hello to work colleagues, get a hot drink then check emails as a warm up exercise. Try and put your two most important projects for the day into the first two hours of your work day.

You will find that you get a lot more done.

Action

Let's chart your energy levels:

1. Grab a piece of paper and draw a big "L" for a graph with a vertical and horizontal axis [or download from www.lifestylerefocus.com.au/free-resources
2. Mark the vertical axis "0" to "5" to represent your energy level;  0 – representing low  5 – representing feeling terrific
3. Mark the horizontal axis with your work hours, in one hour increments. You can actually begin this from the time you wake up of a morning.
4. When you arrive at work in the morning, draw a dot where energy intersects with time to indicate how you feel in terms of your energy level.
5. As the day progresses, draw a series of dots horizontally to show how your energy highs and lows.
6. Then connect the dots and analyse your line chart.
7. It’s recommended you do this for a week to get an average as we can vary daily depending on our sleep, wellness and other factors.

Examples

• Great night’s sleep, energy level high, ready to get working, happy = 5
• Poor night’s sleep, feeling flat, yawning, bored = 1

You can download a copy of the energy cycle template from our website www.lifestylerefocus.com.au/free-resources

Thank you and I look forward to sharing more tips, strategies and skills to support you to be more organised so that you too can create a better life.

“Be an inspiration to yourself and

you will be an inspiration to others.”