Your Happiness Factor

Are you one of those rare (and very lucky ) people who enjoys networking?   Or are you like many others?   Do you arrive at a networking event, look around at the sea of faces, then find yourself barraged by a stream of doubts and uncertainties. Negative self talk tells you that you’re a fraud, everyone else in the room is just great.  There they are experienced business professionals at home in this environment.  While you are just pretending, you don’t really know what you are doing! And on top of you’re going to forget your speech, you won’t remember anyone else’s name and there is a very good chance you will forget your own! The “sensible” part of you tells you not to be so silly.  But there you are with these negative thoughts and anxieties in your head.  Relax and take a deep breath, then tell your brain it has more important things to think about!  No, you are not going to have a heart attack ...

" Don’t change – stay right where you are"! Nobody said change was easy.  Change is hard It is uncomfortable and risky.  That is why most of us don’t change until change is forced on us.  We don’t change; even when making a change could make a huge and positive difference for us and those about us.  Most of us have a mindset that favours staying put right where we are – a “fixed” mindset. And fixed mindsets lack resilience.  Standing still and staying where we are, can present far more danger and risk in the long term than making a change. Changing that mindset So how do you develop a resilient mindset? You need to learn to challenge your own thinking.  Your fixed mindset will chatter away in your head, if you let it.   It will fill your head with negativity and erode your confidence.  That nasty fixed mindset will tell you that even if you wanted to change, you can’t do it!   You’re not bright enough! You'r...

  Most of the time we don’t think about how we think!  We just do it. Thoughts seem to drift in and drift out again without much intervention from us. And most of the time we are happy that way! But sometimes our thoughts do not make us happy.  Negative thoughts can make us feel miserable and very unhappy.  Our thoughts may keep us awake at night and they can intrude into our days.  They can make us feel angry and sad.  Sometimes the thoughts in our head leave us with unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings about ourselves, the people about us and the world in general.      Our thoughts can mean we focus on the negative even when there is very strong evidence that we are, and everything about us is, basically OK. Over the next few posts here, we are going to explore some ways that we think negatively and how you might be able to make some changes. Here are my first three ways of thinking negative...

   Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to change that focuses on the positive!  It works on the principle that what is good now that can be built on to achieve a vision for the future. When thinking about change people often focus on what is wrong now – what is deficient. This has been the traditional approach to change management Appreciative Inquiry, which has its roots in Positive Psychology , starts the other way round.  It looks at what is good and valuable now and then uses that as a foundation for moving forward. Once the basis is established you can then explore the future possibilities with much greater confidence. In all change, something will be lost, but with Appreciative Inquiry you work to make sure that much of what is good remains.  It allows people to honour the past and have confidence in the future! Appreciative Inquiry was developed as a tool for changing organizations but, as an approach, it works very well with people and teams....

   Image via Wikipedia In  Mark Rashid 's book  Life Lessons from a Ranch Horse , he, the teacher, becomes the student when a nondescript, seven-year-old horse steps into his life. Mark is a famous horse trainer,  who is known for listening to them and working with them in a non-confrontational manner. So this "different" horse arrives and Mark  has to re-evaluate everything he think he knows about horses and himself, as a trainer and as a person. Beginning with an untimely balk from Buck, who never falters, Mark tries to find out why it happened.  He draws on the full range of his experience from Native American teaching to Japanese martial arts, Gradually he begins to understand the horse and how he thinks.  What he learns makes up the story of the book! He comes to believe that Buck, an everyday horse, has the ability to plan ahead and make choices in a consistent manner! This book will change how y...

Image via Wikipedia Coping with life’s problems successfully needs you to have realistic expectations. Psychologists call these expectations, and the judgements you make based on them, ‘appraisals’.  Things that happen to us aren’t a problem unless we judge them to be. Life is never perfect and problems, are a part of normal, everyday life. If our judgements (appraisals) are realistic, we’re much better able to deal with them and not let them throw us off-balance. The appraisals we make come from our belief system. If we hold unrealistic beliefs, then our judgements may not be the best for the situation. Sometimes we have unrealistic beliefs about what we must or should do.  We want to be “perfect”.  “Everyone must like me “or “I’ve got to be good at everything” for example. If you think about these for a minute, they are irrational beliefs. Who do you know who could really achieve them? Another approach! ...