Mindset
We go through life reacting to situations around us. Our fast paced world dictates that. WE have so many distractions to not allow us to focus on the “ME” in our lives. WE always focus on everything else around us. Our external world is very overwhelming. How do we focus on ourselves without feeling selfish or guilty? We have to change our mindset. We have to focus on our strengths and eliminate weaknesses; sort out what is causing us a rift between our happiness. All of this is an opinion of mine based on my experience and what I study and observe. You can process my information anyway that makes you comfortable. You can twist it for something that it is not. I have no gain by convincing you to believe either way from left to right. I have only a mission in life is to help you change your perceptions of Happiness.
The mindset I am talking about is a very simple process that takes a lot of hard work. First step is to accept the things you cannot change. How is that done? Well….. If you have no control over the situation or problem then you have no reason to worry about it. All you can do is change your perception towards how you are going to feel about it. Once you decide to accept what cannot be changed in your life, you will need to find out how to quiet your mind. These two steps can be done together.
Sit in a room with no distractions whatsoever and observe what comes to your thoughts. Sort out the thoughts that you cannot change or control at that present moment. Review your thoughts one by one. Eliminate one by one by what you cannot control. If there is a situation that is serious but you cannot handle at the moment your sitting there… don’t think of it. Move on to the next thought or emotion. What you will find out is that everything in life has a priority list. Some situations can be resolved with some work, with the assistance of someone else; some things will be resolved over a long and short period of time.
For the sake of the exercise you are focusing on that specific moment alone in your space, all you can control at the moment in time is quieting your mind. You are there alone in your thoughts and worrying about this or that is not important at the present moment. You will find that sitting and eliminating the thought, for a temporary moment is affordable and possible. The problem will still exist after you are done focusing. All you are doing is removing it from your thought process temporarily. (eventually permanently)
After you have removed 99.9% of what you think is important for your thought processes, you are left with an empty mindset. Fill it up with one thought or memory in your life that made you feel good. In fact think of a moment that made you feel overwhelmingly excited. So excited that you could scream and yell just remembering it. Hold on to that emotion or feeling from that moment and continue to hold it for a couple of minutes. Let it go after a five minutes. Now think of a horrible time or memory, experience in your life where it was so tragic or heartbreaking that thinking about it makes you cry. Hold on to that for five minutes and then let it go.
Now reflect on the two emotions and compare. Which one was easiest to remember? Which one was easier to re-create the emotion or feeling? Most people can remember the negative. For most it takes less time to remember the bad than the good. It takes work to remember a great moment than a negative experience. Once you remember the good moment it is easy to enjoy it. When you capture the negative moment it is hard to maintain the painful emotions you easily remembered.
At the beginning of this post I stated, “The mindset I am talking about is a very simple process that takes a lot of hard work.” This mindset is happiness. It takes work to achieve happiness but once you are there it is effortless. The hard work isn’t at maintaining happiness; the hard work is applied towards how to eliminate the distractions that block our happiness.
I hope my thoughts that I have shared will give you a little help if you are struggling with something. I love all of you and hope you will continue reading. It is all about our mindset.
God Bless.
The Surprising Science of Happiness by Dan Gilbert
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Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness. ~ William E. Gladstone, British Prime Minister, 1892 – 1894
What is real happiness? Is happiness that we make up true happiness?
According to social psychologist, Dan Gilbert, there are 2 kinds of happiness. One is natural happiness which we experience when we get what we want and the other is synthetic happiness which we manufacture when we don’t get what we want.
Here’s a question for you: Is one better than the other?
Let’s find out.
In denial or truly happy?
I am sure you have heard about people who after experiencing a bad event or a disappointing setback tells others and themselves that they are better off despite not getting what they want and that they wouldn’t change that for anything in the world.
Well, it turns out that these people aren’t overt-optimists who are in denial about their misfortune. It turns out that their “synthetic” happiness did make them happy. For real.
In his Ted Talk, social psychologist Dan Gilbert talks about people fabricating happiness after not getting what they want or experiencing a real nasty experience such as being wrongly convicted and served decades worth of a jail sentence for something he has not done.
The sentiment expressed by the man who was wrongly convicted was that it was a “glorious experience”. Really? Surely that is not the right feelings to have after serving time for so long for something you did not do?
Naturally, we think that these people must be lying to themselves, they can’t be truly happy with their experience but we could be wrong….
Using unconscious memory to test happiness
Well, in an experiment Gilbert conducted on patients with anterograde amnesia who cannot form new memories he first asked the patients to rate a lineup of 6 Monet prints from 1 being the least-liked to 6 being the most-liked. Then, he told them that as a gift they would be given either print number 3 or 4 as a gift and most of them picked number 3 over 4 just because of preference. The researchers then left the room and returned (bear in mind that the patients do not remember the research team nor what transpired before) and the patients was asked again to rank the 6 paintings from least-liked to most-liked.
Here’s the interesting bit:
The individuals now rank the number 3 painting at number 2, higher than before and the number 4 painting which was rejected was now ranked even lower than before at number 5. The results indicated that they are happier with the painting they had owned more than before and they liked the rejected painting even less even though they do not have any conscious memory of the paintings.
With this experiment, Gilbert found that individuals make their own synthetic happiness unconsciously. Gilbert also found that this unconscious ability to synthesize happiness happens more often in situations where we do not have control over the situation.
In essence, we are really good at making ourselves feel better about an outcome that occurs from a situation that is out of our hands.
Now, what does this mean for you and why should you pay any attention?
Here are 3 reasons why you should pay attention:
1. Synthetic happiness is not fake. It is not something you make up when you are pissed off about not getting what you want. Synthetic happiness is a natural mechanism we all have in our brains that lets us see a not-so-ideal situation in a different light and learn to like our situation which in turns does let us become happier in time to come.
2. The ability to synthesize happiness is a vital skill to have because we cannot have everything we want all of the time. The truth is we will all face disappointment at some points in our life and we need to be able to manufacture happiness and become adept at seeing the better side of life.
Here’s a point to ponder: clinically-depressed individuals do not have the ability to synthesize happiness in most situations of their lives and that is why they find it harder to see the greener side of life.
3. We often grossly overestimate or underestimate how naturally happy we will feel in any situation. Truth is we will only truly know how happy we will feel and continue to feel when we are actually experiencing thus being able to synthesize happiness helps us cope with the uncertainty of our future outcome.
In Conclusion:
The joyful state that we feel is made up of both synthetic and natural happiness. Neither is better than the other because to lead a balanced life we need both: Natural happiness lets us experience the good stuff and synthetic happiness lets us adapt and appreciate what we do have when the outcome is less than ideal. When you start exercising the ability to synthesize happiness, you may find that some situations are not as terrible as they appear at first.
Can you think of a time when you synthesized happiness? What event caused you to synthesize happiness at the time and did the feeling of happiness continued?
Share your comments below.
What is Happiness????
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Happiness is elusive because there isn’t an exact recipe for it, no matter how much we want one and how many scientific studies are done to help us understand happiness.
Happiness is one of those experiences that we just know when it happens. If you need to think about whether you’re happy, you probably aren’t at that moment.
So what is happiness? Is it possible to define something that sounds so simple, yet, is obviously complex?
Before starting the Society I tried more “get happy” philosophy or how-to programs from the spiritual to the cognitive than I can remember. Although, I’m blessed withhappy genetics, so I naturally see the brighter side of life, I wanted life to be happy all of the time.
What I learned was that, although you can’t be happy all of the time, you can be happy most of the time. You just need to recognize more of the happiness that’s already happening.
After starting the Society I identified 31 Types of Happiness to make recognizing happiness easier. Sometimes happiness is the relief and satisfaction we get when we finish cleaning the kitchen. Sometimes, it’s watching a child or pet do something that amuses us. Or sometimes it’s obvious like going to a party. But, ultimately, happiness is around us and it’s up to us to recognize it.
Often we think happiness is about stuff but science has shown that wantingexpensive things makes us happier than actually buying them. Maybe that’s why making a dream board of stuff we want to buy is so fun.
Unhappiness happens to the happiest of people. People are meant to feel a gamut of emotions including happiness but not exclusive to it. Actually feeling our unhappiness clears the space for us to feel happiness if we’re feeling unhappy.
Try our Happiness Counter and you’ll probably discover more happy moments than you would expect.
I even wrote the Secret Society of Happy People’s 31 Types of Happiness Guide, it’ll fit in your purse, or on your e-reader if you want more tips on recognizing happiness.
Since Happiness Happens, recognize and share it with our Secret Society of Happy People’s Happicons that you can share on your social media sites.
Please visit this great Website…. Join The The Secret Society Of Happy People
What is Abundance?
What is the first thing you think when you hear “abundance?” Money? Love? A large circle of friends and family? While we can apply the concept of abundance to all of those aspects of our lives, the essential meaning of abundance is that you are solidly happy with who you are and no external event or situation—whether good or bad—can add or subtract from that happiness.
No one is happy all the time, but when you are truly in a mindset of abundance, you live with balance, hopefulness, and unlimited possibility.
Our innate nature is one of peace and abundance; it comes from within.
Abundance is a way of thinking and of living, even when you have less money, love, or support than you would like. Life delivers a continually changing set of circumstances. Living in abundance can give you a constant source of stability that isn’t based on external things, but you must change your perspective and believe in all the potential that lies within your reach. Abundance is a state of mind. It can’t be lost, taken, or bestowed on you. It is about what brings you joy and fulfillment, not about what you have.
The pursuit of “more,” which is so common in our culture, is not the road to abundance.
Money can, no doubt, make life easier, but it does not buy happiness, as the saying goes. The obsessive pursuit of money can create an imbalance that stands in the way of the kind of abundance that is genuine. If you focus too narrowly on having more money, deeper love, or a wildly successful career and become convinced that those things will “fix” everything, you’ll lose sight of the bigger picture of abundance.
Abundance that concentrates on one thing is destined to create discontent and disappointment.
You must look at every aspect of your life. Pursuing money without bringing the consciousness of abundance to everything in your life will be a fleeting and empty experience. Everything is connected to everything else, so just making loads of money or finding love won’t bring you abundance in the true sense of the word.
To understand abundance and how it can be yours, you have to grasp how the mindset of lack may be playing a role in your life. Lack is the mentality that there’s a shortage or scarcity of good things in life, and then you create fear around that idea. Operating from a place of lack skews the truth of abundance in life and colors your perspective toward hopelessness and futility. Begin to identify how your own fearful thoughts, actions, and behavior may be driven by a belief that says “there’s not enough for me.” Change that belief system and your actions and behavior will follow.
Authentic abundance comes when you have balanced everything in your life, as best as you can. That includes giving away what you have too much of. If you have a lot of love but not enough money, what should you give away? Love. Do you have more money than other things in life? Give away some money! It takes courage and love to give AND to receive. It is all about balance. The things that you want in your life, you must first give away. If you give more hugs, you will get more kisses! You have to break the fear—that is what is causing the lack. Self-sabotage happens when you have too much of something and you become complacent, disconnected, and, sometimes, even greedy.
When you look at abundance with new meaning and discover it inside yourself, there’s no limitation on the extraordinary life that you can experience.
Written By Derek O’Neill (His Website)- An internationally acclaimed psychotherapist, motivational speaker, author, martial arts sensei, and humanitarian. He is the author of More Truth Will Set You Free, the “Get a Grip” series of pocket-sized books, several children’s books. Inspired by his worldly travels, he formed SQ Foundation, a not-for-profit organization focused on helping solve global issues facing humanity today. With charitable projects in twelve countries, the Foundation brings food, medicine, education, shelter, and other basic needs to children, families, and communities in need. In 2012, he was honored as Humanitarian of the Year and named International Celebrity Ambassador for Variety International the Children’s Charity.