Your Happiness Factor

Your Emotions – When You Feel Hurt! When you feel hurt you are usually responding to what you see as an injustice. Usually you feel hurt when you feel something isn’t fair - someone has let you down or treated you in a way you feel is not right. Often, when you feel hurt you will withdraw from the person who has hurt you and stop all communication with them. Others might see this as resentment or aloofness and some see you as sulking. Please don't Sulk! Sulking can be silent sulking or it might be angry, noisy sulking with the slamming of doors and much huffing and puffing. Sometimes you just snipe at someone close to you without saying why.  "Surely, if he loved me enough He would know why!" Often behavior like this is about getting even or punishing – at the very least you want an apology. But sulking rarely achieves the outcome that you want. It can make you more miserable than the person you believe has transgressed. Overcom...

Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Developing Empathy – Playing Emotional Charades I truly believe the greatest gift we can give ourselves and our children is the gift of empathy. That is the ability to see and feel life from someone else's perspective. Empathy is at the root of compassion and positive relationships as well as all good communication. Empathy is behind our ability to listen well and really understand what someone else is trying to tell us. It helps us to to frame and convey our messages to others. But, sadly, not all of us seem blessed with empathy by birth and up bringing. So, what can we do to develop our empathy skills? The following is a little exercise for children taken from a book that now sadly is out of print “Adventures in Guidance: How to Integrate Fun into Your Guidance Program ”. I believe it can easily be adapted for adults who would like to polish up their empathy skills. Emotional...