appreciation

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!

The Fear of Happiness can Cause a Lack of Passion in Your Life!

Passion is usually a pathway to joyful activities. When you engage in joyful activities it is natural to want to continue with those activities. In order to do so you must face certain realities about your life:

You may find yourself coming face to face with obstacles. Those things which are a part of your day-to-day life and work against your ability to follow your passion and preventing your long term happiness.

Resolving those things in your life which block your happiness forces you to confront aspects of your life and yourself which you have been avoiding…or worse, you were not aware of!

You may discover that you have a fear of happiness.

The reason for this is passion often draws your attention to those things in your life which are making you unhappy. Sound like the opposite of what passion is supposed to do? Let me explain:

You may be afraid of facing the reality that your long term happiness is going to require making changes in your life! Here’s the real kicker:

You probably already know exactly what those changes are. You’ve known all along. Because you have known and have chosen not to confront those issues the passion and energy in your life has, over time, drained away.

It’s easier to avoid experiencing passion altogether than to face the truth!

You find yourself avoiding the uncomfortable questions like:

“Will I be able to continue to do what I love and what makes me happy?”

“What in my life works against my being able to do what I love?”

“Am I willing to change those things in my life which prevent my happiness?”

Real happiness may require you to change something in your life.

The thought of making that change or any other changes can seem both overwhelming and terrifying at the same time. This is the underlying cause of the fear of happiness. Denial.

Most people will deny facing the truth about their unhappiness because the thought of having to change is too scary. It is easier to self-medicate with everything from alcohol to drugs and distractions to avoid dealing with change.

Using alcohol and drugs is pretty obvious so I’m not going to dwell on those issues…

What isn’t as obvious is how easy it is to avoid dealing with the truth by using distractions.

Distractions come in many shapes and flavors. Many of them can even come disguised as a fleeting interest we may have for something. It’s a disguise because real passion has a way of always forcing us to eventually deal with the truth of ourselves.

A distraction will never do this that’s why it’s called a distraction. If you have a fear of happiness you will avoid anything which may stimulate real passion.

Few people want to be placed into a situation where they have to honestly assess the quality of their lives.

Following your passion has a way of doing this. It will always make you judge certain aspects of your life. If something brought you joy and fulfillment wouldn’t you want to continue that experience?

Wouldn’t you very quickly find yourself facing any roadblocks in your life which would act to limit that joy and fulfillment? You would be faced with having to consider what the roadblocks were and whether or not the continuation of your joy and happiness was worth confronting those issues.

Being afraid to confront the issues which are the roadblocks to your happiness is often greater than the fear of not being happy.

It is for this very reason most people will choose not to allow themselves to indulge in thoughts or feelings that could possibly lead them to confronting the core issues which are the real barriers to their happiness.

Being afraid to think and feel certain things is often a symptom of the greater fear of facing those things in your life which keep you from your joy and fulfillment. This is why the lack of passion in your life may really be a fear of happiness.

Bob Baran – Fear of Happiness (article)

The day you run out of excuses

is the day your life changes…

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.