Tag Archives: happiness

Walking the Tightrope of Caring While Having No Attachments

Many spiritual teachings tell us to have no attachments in order to find happiness; while success guru’s teach us to have strong dreams, build vision boards, and think about our goals regularly. How do you navigate these seemingly conflicting instructions?

You don’t have to choose one or the other–happiness or success. In fact, following both the instruction to build a strong vision of where you are going AND remaining detached will help you achieve both.

How?

The key is to have a goal, but not be so attached to it in the form you have in mind that you are closed to other possibilities. You want to build a picture in your mind that becomes so real you can actually feel the emotions you would feel if it were real right now. And at the same time you hold a relaxed view that if this did not happen it would be to make way for something even better.

Without a dream or vision you have no direction; but with attachment you are trying to force things and are not in the state of allowing–where the real magic happens.

You have to care–but not that much.

To do this you have to cultivate a few beliefs:

  1. You must believe in your ability to achieve what you are after and be able to stay focused on your desired outcome, even when events and circumstances have not yet lined up.
  2. You need resilience; knowing if it does not work out you will recover and find something else.
  3. You want faith in the goodness of the universe that when things sometimes don’t go as you plan that something even better is on its way and this was not the best thing for you.

The live by these beliefs, not merely state them, is hard work but the strength and confidence required to do so can be cultivated. It requires more than anything else self-control–control of your thoughts. Each time doubt arises you have to actively say “No” to that thought and return to ones that reflect the three beliefs you want.

When you hear, “This isn’t meant to be; nothing is going right and it’s not happening fast enough,” you must quickly replace those thoughts with, “I don’t know how this is going to come together but I know it is.” Then ask yourself what is the one thing you can do or learn to help you achieve your goal–right now, today. By moving back into action, you not only prevent those negative thoughts from gaining momentum; you also move closer towards your goal.

Each time you find yourself anxious you have to toss it aside with unabashed confidence knowing this goal is not the only thing you can go after. Remind yourself how capable you are–no matter what happens–to create something you love.

Then when occasionally something happens that makes you decide to let go of a particular dream it is critical you keep your thoughts on the idea that somehow that vision wasn’t the right one to bring you your highest happiness. It is hard in the moment to believe that; but if you think back on other losses and times things did not work out, you almost always can see that you are better off now because of it. Use those memories to keep yourself positive when it is happening in the current moment.

Walking the tightrope of strong dreams and detachment takes practice. The results are the ability to create the life you desire easily and effortlessly!

When is the Last Time You Celebrated You?

Are you waiting for that big win–a big promotion, engagement, or baby to celebrate? Maybe it is time to start celebrating the little wins, the things that make each moment special that are soon forgotten instead.

In fact, it is not “maybe” a good idea but an idea that is critical to your happiness. The more you notice the things that are going well and especially the things you are doing well and have made happen, the more likely you are to create more, better and bigger events to celebrate.

Don’t wait to break out the champagne to celebrate yourself. Start to honor all the ways you are amazing and your life is good, today!

The more often you start to notice how fantastic you are and the things you are doing well you will notice:

  • Your confidence will grow,
  • More good will come your way,
  • People around you will be inspired and attracted to you,
  • Challenges will become easier, and
  • You will be able to dance in your strengths!

Take time today to notice, “What you have succeeded at today?” Find the small wins and you will be so amazed at how they grow into bigger and bigger successes!

Einstein’s Goal Setting Advice!

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

Albert Einstein – 1879-1955, Theoretical Physicist

It is the time of year where most of us set goals, make promises to ourselves and others, and often feel guilty over unmet past resolutions.

This year I hope to encourage you to set BIG goals and help you achieve them! Einstein’s wisdom might hold the clue to move from idle wishing to your success.

One of the reasons we often feel unfulfilled is because we tie our happiness to our external world–people and things, rather than the achievement of worthy goals. Even a goal to loose weight, although seemingly about you, is often tied to how others will perceive you or treat you rather than how you will feel.

When our happiness is driven by our inner desires life becomes magical, work is rewarding and relationships are fulfilling.

Do you remember how great you felt when you accomplished something that felt really worthwhile?  How did it make you feel? When I achieve things that were a stretch, I feel strong, fulfilled and ready for more. That feeling is the real objective of setting goals; not the typical guilt ridden feeling New Years resolutions often create.

It isn’t that the people in our lives or things we want are not important; it’s that only when we are living our life from the inside-out can outside events and things actually be satisfying. Setting goals must start from your inner metric of happiness, not an outer objective. To set these types of objectives you’ll need to know what you really care about.

Answering the question, “What do I really want?” is one of the hardest things you may ever do.

You have probably not been conditioned to look inside and discover the answer to that question. More likely you were subtly, and not so subtly, taught that thinking of yourself is selfish and something to be avoided. Finding your answer may be the single most important thing you do this year. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you find your own answer to “What do I really want?”:

  • What brings joy to your heart?
  • What will get you up in the morning excited for the coming day?
  • Why do you want to do (fill in the blank)?
  • How do you want to contribute to the world?
  • What would you be willing to risk everything for?
  • What would be so important that the why for doing it is more important than all the obstacles and reasons to quit that you might encounter?
  • How will doing this make you feel? What will be the consequences of achieving this goal that are your deep “Why do I want this?” Sometimes your why is buried, don’t settle for your first answer. What will be different? Who will it help?

Knowing what you really want will be your grounding rod, your compass, your rudder. Answers to all other questions revolve around the answer to your inner most desire. If you leave this unknown to you, how will you craft your days, weeks, and years into a meaningful and fulfilled life?

Rather than rush into resolutions and goal setting, take some time early in the year to investigate what would really make you happy. I have some great techniques to creating goals that revolve around your inner passions in a FREE chapter from my upcoming book, Be A Female Millionaire.  Download it to help you delve into setting goals that make your life sing. Or if you really want to create a life of thriving, invest in yourself at the beginning of the year with my Wealth Development Program where I will help you identify great ideas and ways to make money doing what you love.

 

Words of Wisdom For Instant Happiness

Today, I received an email from a friend and colleague who I admire, Natalie Ledwell, quoting one of the women I admire most, Marianne Williamson. The quotes are pointers to how I choose to live. I think you will enjoy them so I have reprinted Natalie’s email below.

If you don’t know about Natalie’s work with Mind Movies, you will want to look into them. Mind Movies allow you to program your mind to the things you want, overriding all the programming you take in unintentionally–and you actually get to create your personalized version!

One of the reasons I love Natalie’s work is that she and I both are passionate to help people learn how to succeed, without the struggle and heartache most people stay stuck in. Both Natalie and I have been in the trenches and are teaching what worked for us, not some theory about what we heard works, but real life-tested ideas.

My success in various businesses would be fleeting and meaningless if it were not for teachers along the way that helped me create fulfillment not just bank balances, and purpose not report cards and titles. Marianne Williamson was one of those teachers.  I first stumbled on to her work over 20 years ago and have been enjoying her wisdom and turning to her guidance ever  since.

In Natalie’s words:

If you haven’t come into contact with this woman’s extraordinary work, you’re really missing out!

I’m talking about Marianne Williamson who, besides being a NY Times best-selling author and lecturer, has been a spiritual friend and counselor to Oprah! YES – Oprah!

If you’d like to be enlightened by her wisdom, read below for seven of her best lessons for instant happiness:

1- Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.

2- Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

3- We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

4- Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.

5- The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person.

6- The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.

7- Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

Enjoy!
Natalie ~ Mind Movies

Three Steps to Greater Happiness

Recently, I heard a brain specialist talk about they have learned how readily our brains can morph and learn new things–even long into adulthood!  That is good news, because years ago they thought once we passed a golden age we no longer could create new neuro-pathways or widen our pathways to carry more information. But today, brain plasticity is considered proven by science.

So how does this relate to your happiness? Well, if you are like many people your life has a certain rhythm to it. Things happen the same way today that they did yesterday.  You eat the same things this month that you ate last month and spend time with the same people. There may be nothing wrong with all this; but there is also not much stimulating about it either.

They are called habits; we all have them and we actually are controlled by them.

What if I told you that by changing some of your habits you would actually be increasing the plasticity of your brain AND would become happier? It’s true!

Here are three steps that help with brain plasticity that you can do anywhere, anytime; so start today!

  1. Select on thing you do every day and change it.

    Don’t start with the most ingrained habit that will be hard to change like smoking, coffee, or such. If you always wake up at 7am, start waking up at 6:45 and find something pleasurable to do with the extra 15 minutes BEFORE you start you regular morning routine.

  2. Focus on one thing at a time for at least 30 minutes each day and increase the amount of time as you can.

    This can be meditation, but it can also be that you are committing 30 minutes each day to a specific project when you turn off your phone, close your door, tell others you are unavailble and resist the urge to check your emails or social media as a distraction. Training your brain to focus is like exercising; it starts hard and often you don’t initially see results and can become discouraged. But, just like physical exercise your mental exercise will pay off in big ways. You will not only get the accomplishment of finishing more things as you learn to focus, but you will also find your ability to solve problems and think will expand, too.

  3. Expose yourself to new experiences.

    This will take some effort and planning in order to be doing new things regularly.  This is why adventurous vacations make us feel more alive; while staying at the same old hotel chain in a new city feels dry. What things have you wanted to do and never have? Take that photography class. Go to the MeetUp group. You don’t have to do things you would not enjoy to go outside your comfort zone; you have probably a plethora of things you have never done that you wish you had!

Happiness 101

Do you long to be happier?  Maybe you are content with your life; yet, feel your day to day mood rarely swings into full gear on the happiness throttle.  What can you do?

I recently saw a social media post about neuroscience research on happiness that intrigued me so much I followed it all the way to the various source articles that it referenced to learn more. The Business Insider article by Eric Barker that summed it all up offered four keys to becoming more happy.

Although you may have heard it all before, it is important to understand that neuroscientists are studying human brains and finding confirmation that these steps truly change the chemical make up in your body and the activity in your brain.  If you are not actively doing all four regularly, you might want to ask yourself, “Why not?”

The four things you can start doing today and feel real results do not take a lot of time, are fairly simple to do, and are in your control.

  1. Find what you are grateful for.

    There are lots of reasons to look on the bright side of life; and we often feel shame when we don’t. But now the research shows that even looking for something to be grateful for on the days when it feels like your whole world is upside down can increase your levels of dopamine and seratonin–both of which help you feel better. Researchers even found that gratitude and searching for things to be grateful for increased you neuron density creating greater emotional intelligence, which makes finding things to be grateful for easier. So the more often you do it the easier gratitude becomes. I use a gratitude journal as one of the key antidotes for feeling stressed and unhappy. 

  2. Give your negative feelings a label.

    This is an interesting tactic you might remember from parenting classes. Parenting classes always include the advice to help your child identify their feelings and put a name to them. The mere act of labeling your feelings disipates their power over you. This is not going into the story and justifying how terrible things are; it is simply a word or phrase that describes how you feel. Researchers have now studied people’s brains using MRI technology while they are upset and find that labeling how you feel reduces the activity in your amygdala–you know the place in your brain that makes you overreact and go into fight or flight. How simple, yet powerful!

  3. Make decisions.

    Decision making is often stressful and you might think putting this on a list of ways to become happier is non-sense. But don’t rule this gem out so quickly because making decisions reestablishes your feeling of being in control, and we all know that is a whole lot less stressful than feeling out-of-control. Apparently our friends in neuroscience have found that making decisions engages the pre-frontal cortex and reduces anxiety and worry. But not all choices are easy and you can read more about ways to help you make even the toughest choices in my blog.

  4. Hug someone.

    Scientists have confirmed that human touch is good for us.  Whether you hug everyone you see today, shake people’s hands, or go get a massage, you will be releasing oxytocin–the feel good hormone. Here is a challenge.  Apparently, research shows that 5 hugs a day for four weeks increases your happiness quotient big time. Want to try it with me?

I love the idea that things we intrinsicly know about life are starting to be proven with science. Hopefully, knowing the science behind the advice will encourage you to take action and live happier, starting today!

For more ideas about increasing your feeling happiness each day read 5 Easy Steps to Increase Your Happiness.

Do you love yourself?

“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

~Marilyn Monroe

One of the hardest and best books I ever read was Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection. I had spent my whole life trying to be perfect for other people so they:

  • Wouldn’t leave me.
  • Would accept me into their circle.
  • Would admire me.
  • But most importantly would love me!

Brene’s book rocked my very soul.  It then took years for me to embrace it’s wisdom–and really I am still learning.

Do you love yourself just the way you are?  Are you ready to be as bold as Marilyn and tell someone if they cannot handle you at your worst they don’t deserve you at your best?

I am!

Are You Addicted to Accomplishments?

Are you driven by checking off your accomplishments? Or do you find pleasure on the road to completion as well?

I recently learned that Dopamine, one of the key hormones we produce, gets triggered each time we have a sense of accomplishment, which can actually make us addicted to checking things off our lists because it makes us feel good physiologically!

I am a little releived to know my weird habit of adding things to my list that weren’t originally on it just so I can check it off is actually not that uncommon. The sense of accomplishment you get when you check something off your list gives your body a little zap of dopamine.

But the benefits from oxytocin–the hormone released at childbirth, nursing and every time we hug someone– actually last longer and has the ability to reduce addictive behaviors like overworking, shopping, or any other pattern used to get a shot of dopamine.

Isn’t that interesting?  If on your path to check off your next big accomplishment you spend more time connecting with co-workers, shaking hands, hugging, and being in relationship you will actually get the benefit of the dopamine at the end of the journey AND a wonderful happy feeling along the way from oxytocin.

“Don’t worry your life away waiting for the elusive prize at journey’s end. The journey is the prize.”

– Marsha Mercant – Actor, Singer, and Writer

Are you stressed and unhappy?

Why are so many women under stress and unhappy?  And what can we do about it?

The American Psychological Association reports that 49% of women say their stress has increased in the past 5 years.  Has yours?  I know you have heard the detrimental effect of stress on your health, but you may have pushed on feeling you need to in order to achieve a certain goal.  If you are like most people, you attribute your future happiness to the achievement of that goal; and so you ignore your stress levels for this future reward.

However, your success and happiness are more directly tied to your enjoyment of your current life than the achievement of some future goal.  In fact, your ability to succeed is dependent on your ability to think clearly, solve problems, be creative and visualize yourself happy–all of which are hindered, if not completely halted, by stress.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor at the University of California, has shown that fully 40% of your happiness is available for you to control.  You and I often consider our outer circumstances as holding the keys to our happiness.  Because of this you probably focus much of your efforts on trying to change people and circumstances to increase your happiness. Sonja’s brain studies show that by influencing the 40% that is an internal job, we can greatly change our happiness quotient!  This is great news for me because it’s frustrating to have important aspects of my life out of my own control. How about you?

Have you noticed you cannot be happy and stressed at the same time?  They do not go hand in hand.  So the effort you place on increasing your happiness will also reduce your stress levels–a double win!

There are actually happiness exercises you can do to increase your happiness, today!  Nancy Clark writes about these in her article in Forbes.  Two of my favorites are paying attention to things you do well and congratulating yourself on your successes rather than rushing past them; and exercising gratitude.

I often coach women to make a list of their accomplishments.  Try it.  You can activate your confidence and improve your ongoing success by noticing and celebrating everything you do well and have achieved.  It is a list you should add to regularly; reading it daily if necessary during times of great uncertainty.  Another list that helps immensely is listing what you are grateful for about yourself.  See my challenge on this here.

The other tool I use is a gratitude log.  I learned this exercise from Christie Marie Sheldon and then later read about it in Wallace Wattles work, The Science of Getting Rich.  Christie calls it “Great Fuel.”  Don’t you love that?

Wallace says the key to attracting what you want can be summed up in one word, gratitude. That is a powerful statement and I think he is right.  Each night I write in my gratitude journal, kept by my bedside, all the things I am grateful for that day.  Some days things haven’t gone well and it is hard to find something to be grateful for so I resort to being grateful for my children and my health and my home and find I still have a lot to be grateful for.  Somedays the list is long and on others I am so profoundly moved by one thing I write about it in detail. Regardless of how my gratitude list looks, it always puts me in an improved state of mind before I go to sleep.

These are both powerful tools you can add to your life today and increase your happiness and decrease your stress, now!