Spirituality and Self Help » positive thinking

Seeking Happiness? Think Small

shimon — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:40:22 +0000

This is a guest post by By Karl Pillemer, Ph.D. Karl is the author of 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans. The book was inspired by The Legacy Project, Facebook, Twitter.

When people seek happiness, they often think about big events: I’d be happy if only I could find a better job, make more money, find a mate, have a child – the list goes on and on.

In the Cornell University Legacy project, we’ve spent the past six years asking over 1200 of the oldest Americans for their advice to younger people on living a happier and more fulfilling life. And they see this prevalent attitude as a mistake.

When it comes to happiness, America’s elders urge us to “think small.” They believe that we must be aware and attentive to small pleasures in daily life, even as we may be waiting for something in our lives to change. They are consciously grateful for what they have, right now, rather than pinning their happiness on future achievements or possessions

On that note, here are five simple pieces of advice for happier living, from the oldest (and wisest) Americans:

Just take life in stride, I guess, do the best you can. Enjoy, if you can afford it, living; going out and treating yourself to a few luxuries, like maybe going out to dinner, going for a ride or something like that. (Abel, 77)

Be grateful for each day that you wake up. (Roman, 84)

Every morning when I wake up, I thank God that at 75 years old I’m able to get up, take my shower, go about my business, by my groceries or go to work or whatever I do, I’m very thankful for that. (Lavonne, 75)

Everybody says that you should make a goal in your life, but I don’t think that’s always necessary because you make a goal and the first thing you know, you switched over to something else. All I wanted to do was be a mother, and I did. I had three boys and three girls and my husband made a living for us, we did fairly well, all of our children are still living and they’re happy, so I’m happy. (Roseanne, 79)

To live a decent life, a comfortable life, and that basically makes me happy. (Luann, 81)

We don’t have to wait until we are old to use this knowledge. In our studies, the elders say that younger people can take this “savoring” approach to daily life now, and reap the benefits of it over the entire course of their lives.

Top Five Self-Help Apps To Improve Your Life

shimon — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:41:43 +0000

This is a guest post by Elaine Hirsch. Elaine is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and video games. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.
In addition to enhancing our job productivity and allowing us to have access to social networks on-the-go,

smartphones and tablets can also help us to improve our mental well-being and become more content and self-actualized.

It’s not really that surprising that self-help applications are becoming more popular than ever as buying apps from iTunes and the Android Market become increasingly available to professionals, academics, and master’s degree students. These applications help balance out the power of electronics today and their ability to distract us from our responsibilities.

MyThoughts+

Getting work done while you’re down in the dumps is a hard task to accomplish. Many people swear by the power of positive thinking. Noted cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, credits his uncanny ability to devise hilarious comic strips with his positive attitude.

MyThoughts+ displays positive affirmations on a customizable background, transitioning from one quote to the next while playing soothing music in the background. If you can’t afford a mountain retreat to the Himalayas, MyThoughts+ just might be the next best thing.

LiveHappy

One of the best ways to accomplish any goal or complete any task is to break it down into manageable, bite-sized pieces. LiveHappy is an application which helps cultivate optimism in your daily activities.

Based on the book, The How of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky, LiveHappy helps you to keep track of your personal progress as you work towards obtaining inner peace. It features a built-in personality test as well as plenty of tips and tricks on conceptualizing a happier you.

iStress

Not only is stress a detriment to your daily well-being, it is a contributing risk factor in illnesses ranging from heart attacks to strokes. iStress is a comprehensive stress management application which features a number of helpful exercises aimed at reducing stress and encouraging positive thinking.

It includes a compendium of motivational sayings and affirmations to help you reduce your stress levels when you feel overwhelmed. It also allows you to keep a journal of positive or negative thoughts and emotions so that you can identify stress triggers and avoid them in the future.

Gratitude Journal

Brought to you by the good people at Happy Tapper, Gratitude Journal is a fun way to give thanks for what you’ve got. Too often in life, we focus on the negative and completely forget about all the positive things that happen to us. Gratitude Journal gives you an easy way to keep a log of what you’re thankful for that you can turn to when you’re down.

The Habit Factor

Most of us are creatures of habit. We tend to perform at our best when we incorporate positive habits into our daily routine. The Habit Factor is a tracking app that allows you to set goals and commit to forming good habits.

You can use the application to monitor your adherence to your resolutions and check them off as you accomplish them. If you’re trying to form good habits in your personal and professional life and stick to them, it helps to have a constant reminder like the one The Habit Factor provides.

In Conclusion

We’ve often been told by self-help authorities that happiness comes from within. Despite being a cliché, the sentiment remains true. Getting your house in order has a lot of direct and indirect benefits. Happy people are more successful, tend to earn more, and have better relationships with those around them in general.

The best way to get to that happy place is to help yourself. After all, nobody in the world understands what makes you happy better than yourself. The applications listed above should help you in taking the first step towards achieving happiness.

Semantics of Enlightenment and Leadership

shimon — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:54:27 +0000

This is a guest post by Jack Lundee of Everything Left and Shades of Green.A leader usually has the ability to influence and change his environment, circumstances and even other people.

By being a leader you’re taking control over your life and you’ve the opportunity to accomplish wonderful things like:

peace between countries as a politician or a fortune 500 company as an entrepreneur.

What constitutes somebody as a leader?

Well according to Google’s definition: “The Person who leads or commands a group, organization or country.” However, I believe a leader to be somebody who practices integrity, or abides by a few simple ethical principles. Likewise, I would consider a leader to be somebody who’s enlightened. Here’s why:

Somebody that constantly follows a set of moral life rules will eventually fall into a leadership position, whether it is for an instance in time or many years. Possessing integrity means that you are prone to entertain things like manners, respect, honesty and commitment.

However all of these traits can’t successfully be achieved without having a rational and well-informed outlook on life, which also works in accordance with your perception of the things around you.

So, if integrity is dependent on enlightenment, or a rational outlook on life, and enlightenment is dependent on your thought process as a human being, then it stems back to beliefs and behavior.

You see, in order to reach a certain level of respect for others and yourself, you must always remember to address your surroundings and relationships in a positive light. In other words, having the clear understanding that morality is important in exercising each and every life situation will lead you on a more righteous path.

Being an enlightened leader

A great example of an enlightened leader (and not to sound cliche) would be the former President, Clinton. Alongside close confident Doug Band, Clinton has achieved some wonderful things and created some groundbreaking organizations like the Clinton Global Initiative.

Founded in 2005, the collaborative unit of world leaders, nonprofits and business professionals tackled some of the world’s most pressing issues including poverty alleviation, educational development, climate change and more.

Clinton and Band were able to see a world in need of desperate help in the areas listed above. Through their strong believes and ideas, they provide commitments to action which continue to earn them respect and integrity.

Nonetheless, they yield traits of enlightened leaders, which is why they’re both great models for helping us appreciate the connection between integrity, leadership and enlightenment. As long as you’re utilizing a bit of common sense, the three will always fall into place, and eventually lead you to an ethical, successful and happy life.

The Key To Manifesting Your Heart’s Desires

shimon — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:25:52 +0000

This is a guest post by Darshan G. Shanti. Darshan “The 24 Hour Champion” is a Business and Life Turnaround Specialist: His particular expertise is working with small to mid-sized businesses that are actively dying and bringing them back to life in 24 hours…or less. Whether he’s on the stage speaking
to 1000s, tightly huddled together in a small group workshop, or working one on one with a CEO, Darshan will transform your most important, valuable assets and the real bottom line; you and your people.

What do you want?

If you’re like most people, you want to be happy, fulfilled, healthy, wealthy and you want to be at peace, free to live your life the way you want to live it.

The question is how?

The answer is your beliefs. Simply put, as you believe, so shall you be! The Law of Attraction states that thoughts become things. What you think about, you bring about. Your thoughts create your reality.

According to Jane Roberts, an American author,

“You are given the gifts of the gods; you create your reality
according to your beliefs. Yours is the creative energy that
makes your world. There are no limitations to the self except
those you believe in.”

Therefore whatever you put energy into strong enough, clear enough and with enough belief will indeed happen. Here is the critical part. Many, many people are living lives that are far less than their heart’s desires because of what’s going on unconsciously.

In other words, their unconscious, negative beliefs about themselves and their world are what they are manifesting. Remember this.

The unconscious wins every time.

Why? Because it’s sending out stronger messages over and over. The Universe gives you what you ask for whether you’re conscious of it or not. So, if consciously you say you want to be wealthy, but unconsciously you don’t believe you deserve it, you won’t have wealth

So, to live the life you really want, you must first uncover your unconscious beliefs and then question your conscious ones. The reason is simple. It’s not what you know about your life that runs it, it’s what you don’t know and you can’t change what you don’t know. But you can change what you do know.

Then, you have to believe you can have that life. You have to believe that you deserve that life. You have to believe that you are good enough. You have to believe that you will succeed. You have to believe in yourself, wholly, completely and beyond a shred of doubt.

Here’s why.

Since your beliefs run your life (whether you know what they are or not), it stands to reason that If you’re not living the life you want, then you need to examine the things you believe and then test their validity against reality. For example, a common misbelief (but a belief nonetheless) that people have is that they are not good enough.

To test that belief (if you have it) ask yourself this question, “Who or what am I not good enough for?” In other words, who or what are you comparing yourself to that you believe you are not good enough? What is your standard of measurement?

Do that with as many of your “negative beliefs” as you can and watch how fast things will start to change for the better in your life.

The reason that its true is that when you discover a false belief, and see it for the lie that it is, it loses all its power. It simply can’t hold up under the light because there’s nothing to it in the first place. It just appears real in your mind.

Take it slow in the beginning. You may get anxious and want to get rid of all of your beliefs that have not served you right away, but that won’t work. In fact, it will have the opposite effect.

For more information about getting rid of the beliefs
that disempower you, please visit www.the24hourchampion.com

Spirituality and Self Help » positive thinking

Seeking Happiness? Think Small

Related Articles

Top Five Self-Help Apps To Improve Your Life

MyThoughts+

LiveHappy

iStress

Gratitude Journal

The Habit Factor

In Conclusion

Related Articles

Semantics of Enlightenment and Leadership

What constitutes somebody as a leader?

Being an enlightened leader

Related Articles

The Key To Manifesting Your Heart’s Desires

What do you want?

The question is how?

The unconscious wins every time.

Here’s why.

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