anxiety

1. Choose to Be Happy at Work

Happiness is largely a choice. I can hear many of you arguing with me, but it’s true. You can choose to be happy at work. Sound simple? Yes. But, simplicity is often profoundly difficult to put into action. I wish all of you had the best employer in the world, but, face it, you may not.

So, think positively about your work. Dwell on the aspects of your work you like. Avoid negative people and gossip. Find coworkers you like and enjoy and spend your time with them. Your choices at work largely define your experience. You can choose to be happy at work.

2. Do Something You Love Every Single Day

You may or may not love your current job and you may or may not believe that you can find something in your current job to love, but you can. Trust me.

Take a look at yourself, your skills and interests, and find something that you can enjoy doing every day. If you do something you love every single day, your current job won’t seem so bad. Of course, you can always make your current job work or decide that it is time to quit your job.

3. Take Charge of Your Own Professional and Personal Development

A young employee complained to me recently that she wanted to change jobs because her boss was not doing enough to help her develop professionally. I asked her whom she thought was the person most interested in her development. The answer, of course, was that she was.

You are the person with the most to gain from continuing to develop professionally. Take charge of your own growth; ask for specific and meaningful help from your boss, but march to the music of your personally developed plan and goals. You have the most to gain from growing – and the most to lose, if you stand still.

4. Take Responsibility for Knowing What Is Happening at Work

People complain to me daily that they don’t receive enough communication and information about what is happening with their company, their department’s projects, or their coworkers. Passive vessels, they wait for the boss to fill them up with knowledge. And, the knowledge rarely comes.

Why? Because the boss is busy doing her job and she doesn’t know what you don’t know. Seek out the information you need to work effectively. Develop an information network and use it. Assertively request a weekly meeting with your boss and ask questions to learn. You are in charge of the information you receive.

5. Ask for Feedback Frequently

Have you made statements such as, “My boss never gives me any feedback, so I never know how I’m doing.” Face it, you really know exactly how you’re doing. Especially if you feel positively about your performance, you just want to hear him acknowledge you. If you’re not positive about your work, think about improving and making a sincere contribution.

Then, ask your boss for feedback. Tell him you’d really like to hear his assessment of your work. Talk to your customers, too; if you’re serving them well, their feedback is affirming. You are responsible for your own development. Everything else you get is gravy

6. Make Only Commitments You Can Keep

One of the most serious causes of work stress and unhappiness is failing to keep commitments. Many employees spend more time making excuses for failing to keep a commitment, and worrying about the consequences of not keeping a commitment, than they do performing the tasks promised.

Create a system of organization and planning that enables you to assess your ability to complete a requested commitment. Don’t volunteer if you don’t have time. If your workload is exceeding your available time and energy, make a comprehensive plan to ask the boss for help and resources. Don’t wallow in the swamp of unkept promises.

7. Avoid Negativity

Choosing to be happy at work means avoiding negative conversations, gossip, and unhappy people as much as possible. No matter how positively you feel, negative people have a profound impact on your psyche. Don’t let the negative Needs and Nellies bring you down. Take a look at:

• How to Deal With a Negative Coworker: Negativity Matters.
• Dealing With Difficult People at Work.

And, keep on singing in the car on your way to work – or start.

8. Practice Professional Courage

If you are like most people, you don’t like conflict. And the reason why is simple. You’ve never been trained to participate in meaningful conflict, so you likely think of conflict as scary, harmful, and hurtful. Conflict can be all three; done well, conflict can also help you accomplish your work mission and your personal vision.

Conflict can help you serve customers and create successful products. Happy people accomplish their purpose for working. Why let a little professional courage keep you from achieving your goals and dreams? Make conflict your friend.

9. Make Friends

In their landmark book, First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (), Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman list twelve important questions. When employees answered these questions positively, their responses were true indicators of whether people were happy and motivated at work.

One of these key questions was, “Do you have a best friend at work?” Liking and enjoying your coworkers are hallmarks of a positive, happy work experience. Take time to get to know them. You might actually like and enjoy them. Your network provides support, resources, sharing, and caring.

10. If All Else Fails, Job Searching Will Make You Smile

If all of these ideas aren’t making you happy at work, it’s time to reevaluate your employer, your job, or your entire career. You don’t want to spend your life doing work you hate in an unfriendly work environment.

Most work environments don’t change all that much. But unhappy employees tend to grow even more disgruntled. You can secretly smile while you spend all of your non-work time job searching. It will only be a matter of time until you can quit your job – with a big smile

I have made lot of mistakes in my life not realizing who is watching me. When I was younger I did not care who was watching. As I grew older and supposedly wiser I made mistakes and made choices for my life that at the time I thought was no one’s business. I realized soon that the decisions I made affected quite a few people. When you are connected to so many people who count on you, this affects all those people. In a nutshell your decisions aren’t just yours.

I can articulate myself a certain way and assume I am portraying myself a certain way and the perception could be different then what I THINK I am portraying.  Yes that is a redundant statement. I could look be perceived as a hypocrite and not know it. How would someone resolve this? I don’t know. All I can say is following what you feel in your heart is right and correct. I am sure if it does not feel right it should not be in the first place.

Look, I am not here as the moral police. I am giving advice on how to be happy. Let’s be clear here, if you are doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable and creates a negative environment and unwanted stress, figure it out for yourself. Don’t go that route. Happiness is defined in the Webster Dictionary: A state of being Happy, An experience that makes you happy. A state of well-being and contentment, a pleasurable and satisfying experience.

We all have the tools to be happy. We have the free will to choose so. If we do not facilitate that choice then we are at the mercy of our own demise. I will always give the best advice I am capable of giving. I have a limited vocabulary, limited articulation of thought. But I love all of you and would not want anyone reading this to be unhappy. I love my “enemies”. I have some, but I have upset people in my life that I am not on their santa shopping list any longer. So honestly I still love them, but they do not like me so much. I cannot control the way they feel at this point but I am sure I was responsible for their change in their perception of me. For that I cannot control. We can go in circles with this topic and upside down, but the fact of the matter is we should choose the happiness state and well-being over worry and stress. Everything will work out for the better. Everything. No matter how you look at life there is a purposeful design in everything we experience. There is an eventual positive outcome for every situation. Even in death there is blessing. That is the ultimate outcome. That is another post.

Happiness is the purpose of this website.  The posts will be driven to speak of happiness. Everyone reading has a say in the content I post, email me, comment and so on….

I love you all and have a great 4^th!

Here are six ways you can control your very own happiness:

1. Let happiness be the first thing you emotionally choose when you wake up

People who are always happy, are happy for one main reason: they make it their daily goal. Happiness can be poorly understood- happiness is not an object that sits on your nightstand. It does not wait for you to wake up, to have you put it on after you brush your teeth and put on your watch. Happiness is not an object- it is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions. Happiness needs you to come to it. It needs to be your goal, each and everyday. Choose it. Own it. At the end of the day, fall asleep knowing that you have accomplished at least one important thing at the day: you chose happiness out of all emotions and you will continue to choose happiness to be one of your life’s top goals.

2. Appreciate those small moments

Happiness doesn’t always stem from grand things. Yes, that overtime that had hit your bank account at midnight last night will be spent on past due bills and extra cash to spend on yourself – that always feels good. However, that moment of happiness is only temporary. When you wake up and see the notification on your phone that your direct deposit had made it to your bank account at 12:00 am, that feeling of happiness will leave you as fast as it came, because as we know, materialistic belongings tend to fade, wear out and our happiness wears and fades too. Cherish small moments. We often take for granted the two minutes here, or the six minutes there. But, if you pay close enough of attention, you will experience a longer linger of happiness when you take a hike and stop to see the rush of the water run down the waterfall. The smell of the water hitting the rocks, and the splashing of the water hitting your face- only happiness you will feel. Show gratitude for small moments. They are experiences that will never wear and tear on us.

3. Practice Self-Love

Loving yourself is so very important because it is remembering where our power is. First we take in the love of the Universe. Secondly, we give ourselves more of that love. When we begin to be filled with this abundance of love, we then pour it into the hearts of others. Self-Love takes practice and patience. It is hard to grasp the concept of loving yourself when there has been one too many times where the Universe has convinced us that we were not worthy of love. However, you are. Find love in yourself and you will soon begin to prove the Universe wrong- you are deserving of your own love. Once you have that, then you will be ready to love others, unconditionally. Remember, it starts with “me” so that we can one day build a strong “we”.

4. Find new interests that bring you happiness

The other day I sat at a bookstore, I ordered an espresso and I read a book. I was at peace with my inner-being. My mind was clear. I was not thinking about the laundry I needed to start, or the dishwasher I needed to empty. My mind was captivated by the peace that filled my inner-being. I sat in that bookstore for three hours- it was the best three hours spent. When I was driving home, I had thought to myself, “I was content, comfortable and happy.” And, I was. Before I went to bed, I wrote down another day in my planner to plan trip to the bookstore. It is my new interest. Find yours!

5. Practice mindfulness I was guilty lacking this specific practice myself. Just until a few months ago, I had realized the absolute importance of mindfulness. Being mindful is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you are mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a far. This consists of no judging them good nor bad. This takes practice. Meditation is one technique that I highly recommend. It has helped me therapeutically- having past issues with understanding my emotions, how to handle them all at once, and over thinking where they were coming from and why I was feeling them- meditating has taught me that you do not have to sit close to them. But observe them. Be awake. Listen to them. Lean into them. Be mindful.
6. Always keep reaching

Success is not handed to us. On our eighteenth birthday, we do not open a gift of success. Success is driven by dedication, hard work, perseverance and the ability to always keep reaching. I believe that there comes a point in our lives where we tend to stop reaching for the endless possibilities. Maybe because we have been rejected before, not been “good enough” or “qualified enough” for the job we desperately wanted. Or maybe we have personal beliefs that if we reach for something that we think is out of our reach, we will be end up feeling not good enough or competent enough, like all of the other times you have been rejected or told so. If I can give you any advice: please, never let your letdowns, rejections or failures, determine your future successes. Keep reaching, always. Never put your hand down because someone once made you feel you were not qualified enough to have it out and raised in the first place. Success is in your control- so let it be.

I am so afraid of closing my eyes tonight and not knowing. Will I wake from a comfortable sleep? I close my eyes trusting that I will wake rested. Since I do not dream I would not feel myself slipping away. I fall into an imaginary realm of fantasy and memories. Where is that place we fall into? Sometimes I fall asleep and wake and the most recent memory was closing my eyes and yet I am rested and ready to go. Once I was knocked unconscious and did not remember anything of how I was knocked out. Will I leave this consciousness and slip into nothingness one day? Close my eyes and nothing? I am so terrified of this reality. Is this a reality? Will it happen that way? I have read so many books regarding this transformation from life to death. I have attended church to hear the speaker (priest, pastor, minister, etc…) telling us how afterlife will be. What is after? What is the guarantee? I have observed many different variations of the story of death and afterlife and what to expect. What is the truth? Whose story is right? One thought is more right than the other. Does one have a more compelling argument?

Do the people that grow up in the violence and war-torn countries think about death the way we do? Or is it an accepted idea that they will suffer a horrible death one way or another and they have accepted their fate? I imagine they have no control over it so therefore they do not enjoy their days. Their days are spent worried and preparing for their anticipated death. Instead of celebrating the life they currently have. Sometimes it is a catch 22 because we think of how we should be thankful for the life we have and yet the quality of our lives might not be as one would describe quality life. Everyone has an opinion. We all have experienced different levels of living. I can name so many points in our human history where children are exposed to so many different variations of life. Enslavement, work farms, concentrations camps, sweat shops, human trafficking….I can go on but it is mortifying to think that I can sit here and tell you appreciate your life you have and it is a perception of how you see things. A cow and a chicken know their fate. They are to be eaten in most societies. A snail crossing a busy path knows they will be stepped on by a human. How do we perceive death? A daily routine with the knowledge of a set expectation of certain death? Certain death….This is such a sure thing that we can almost assure ourselves a seat on the ride out of our consciousness.

Imprisoned in fear? Can we be happy regardless? Can we make a decision to be happy and appreciate the small things in a certain vulnerable state of mind of fear? Can we decide to be happy headed a million miles an hour towards a wall? Time is not stopping and we are headed towards our fate every moment we have life and breathe. If it as certain and sure why are we worried? Is it morals? Have we been convinced that we are certainly going to a bad place or good place? Are we second guessing and not being fed the correct information? Are we doing the right things to meet our 12 virgins in paradise? Are we going the the yellow brick road one day to meet the OZ on the other side of the curtain?

What are we headed towards? If we have been told we are headed towards something and nothing is there how will we know there is nothing there?> If we close our eyes for good and there is not anything how do we warn the rest of us? Is it fair? Does it matter? IF we are headed towards nothingness and we cannot control it would it drive you crazy knowing that we are just a created from something that is unknown and we have no sure resource to prove either way…… Would we go crazy knowing all of this information? Does it really MATTER?! No. I say no. I will be very happy if and when my faith is validated. If I close my eyes today…I will not lie I will be happy if my soul or essence transforms into another something. This time I hope I remain in that knowledge that I have transformed and it is not a secret again.

What IS a sure thing is, we are here. We will stop breathing and deteriorate and die. We will be something else. We will wither away and become the dirt we were created from. Where will the energy in our system re-appear or float off too? Energy is what holds our atoms together to form our matter. Matter is not solid but atoms clumped together by energy.

Again does it matter in the bigger scope of things as it pertains to our current perceptions of our life right now? No. I say no!

We can change the perceptions. We can change our fear and make it love. Love one another and the situation we are in and thrive. Love and be happy. We always have the choice to be happy and remain in that state of mind. If we cannot control the outcome we can certainly control the way we perceive it. If it is inevitable and we cannot explain it we can be happy and decide it is the right thing to be. A happy feeling is much healthier than a negative fearful feeling which scientifically causes premature death by many ways. Stress causes deterioration of our living cells. There is so many ways to go with this conversation and it is only assumptions and learned ideas. We can disprove and validate so much just by going over all the myths. If we start to talk about the science of death and life we just might make you a God believer.

My last Comment. Science increasingly believes in intelligent design. Look into it. I can only articulate what feels right and make sense. If I do not make sense then our perceptions are going in different directions…or are they? It is your perception that they are or aren’t they……

I Love all of you in any perception!