Life
Why Striving for Happiness Is a Miserable Mistake
It was Elbert Hubbard, the American artist and philosopher, who said, “Life is just one damn thing after another”. Inevitably, we are always going to have problems to deal with and inevitably going to find ourselves in a variety of situations; some of which will make us happy and some will make us unhappy.
To a greater or lesser extent, life just happens to us all. The sooner we come to a point of acceptance about this, the sooner we are likely to find peace and more importantly contentment. However, you can’t find contentment by just trying to be happy. There are far too many factors outside our circle of immediate control to contend with.
Even the very word itself is derived from the Norse “hap” which means luck or chance. “Happy” is a silly, childish word full of connotations of birthday cakes, parties, days at the beach and laughter. It’s a pleasant but transient state, fleeting and shallow. Sometimes we are happy and sometimes we are sad. It’s surface level and fluctuates day to day.
Happiness is temporary
Trying to be happy is like clutching at straws, throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping some will stick or nibbling just the icing on the cake. Instead, you need to be working on contentment as contentment is the cake itself, the bedrock and the foundation. If you can find contentment then happiness will naturally follow.
Your level of contentment is the context. You can be transiently happy or sad on the outside yet still be firmly content at your very core. You are essentially, and fundamentally still content even though the events of the moment might be making you happy, sad, or hurting you.
“Happiness is nothing but temporary moments here and there – and I love those. But I would be bored out of my mind if I were happy all the time.” – Zoe Saldana
What does it mean to be content?
Luckily, whilst happiness is an emotional state, short term and largely controlled by extrinsic forces, contentment is much more within our grasp as it’s controlled by internal choices. Contentment is to a much greater extent, a way of being and thinking that we can cultivate and develop.
In it’s purest form it boils down to acceptance of the moment and gratitude for what we have got rather than what we haven’t. As the philosopher Diogenes the Wise said: “people have the most when they are most content with the least”. And that really is the key. Taking time to be in the present and to enjoy the current moment rather than constantly craving something “better”.
Contentment gives us an opportunity to enjoy life right now, not on the weekend and it’s the only way to true long term satisfaction. It’s not dependent on consumption, gaining things or life “going our way”. It’s a choice of perspective that allows us to be compassionate towards ourselves, to take time and to find satisfaction in the here and now rather than in the “if only” mentality that our consumerist society has conditioned us to believe in.
Contentment in “flow”
The ultimate expression of contentment in the moment is when you are in a state of what’s called “flow”. “Flow” is one of the most satisfying and contented states that a human being can experience. You might think that this might be when we are passively watching TV or relaxing but it’s actually when we are being creative and actively participating in an activity that we attain this state.
All of us have different activities that can trigger flow. Often, it will be something that we love doing or are maybe good at and it will be something that gives us a sense of self-identity and value. It will be the thing that fires you. The thing that makes you feel alive, the thing that, when you are doing it, makes time stand still.
You forget everything apart from the moment and, rather than fighting and forcing your body or brain to do stuff, it just sort of goes on glorious autopilot as if it was always meant to be doing “the thing.”
“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Find your thing
If you can, find “your thing” and do more of it and start to identify yourself as someone who is a “thinger” (if that makes sense) rather than just all of the multitude of other roles you perform, then you will be well on the way to contentment. You will find that it centers you, gives you much more satisfaction in the moment and you will source contentment from within yourself rather than looking for it from external stimulation.
Finding your flow activity and developing it will give you the energy and the fortitude to battle through the rest of your messy and stressful life. It will become a haven of peace, a well of strength, a way of identifying yourself, giving you self-belief, purpose and self-confidence. If the thing is beautiful, central to your life and a well of strength then you have found contentment.
With “the thing” at the core of your being you will start to have an inner strength and energy that will filter into the other aspects of your life. You will have found long term satisfaction and an abundance of happy days will follow and, when you are unhappy and troubled by the world you will be solid and steadfast in your contentment.
Go and find out what your personal thing is. Love it, grow it and nurture it as the very centre of your quest to accept and be in the moment. Don’t waste your time looking for happiness, take control, alter your perspective and develop a habit of contentment. Only when you do this all the happiness in the world is yours for the taking.
What do you think about being content at your core to find long term satisfaction? Please let us know by leaving a comment below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
If only our clients had the passion of Potterheads. Remember the midnight premiers? Potterheads lined up for hours, dressed in full costume, wands a-blazin’. When the doors finally opened, they couldn’t throw their money at the ticket booth fast enough. How do you create that kind of enthusiasm for your own business?
I’m going to share five mindset shifts straight out of the movie business that you can use to fuel lifelong fanatics. Some of it is going to be tough love, but hey, nobody said getting your own fan club was easy.
1. Stay humble, stay hungry
Working actors audition an average of 67 times before booking a gig. 67 times! And that’s working actors—people who earn their entire livelihood from acting. Most entrepreneurs will hear this stat and say, “I get it. I need to accept failure 66 times.” But this isn’t about that. It’s about showing up 67.
Accepting failure is passive. You can accept failure from your couch. Showing up and trying, however, is active. When you show up, you commit to taking a step forward. And 66 times, you’ll get knocked down. It’s humbling. But on attempt 67, that step forward might finally stick.
Mindset shift: You have an insatiable appetite for success. You know that every failure is one failure down and that, soon, you’ll knock it out of the park.
“Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki
2. Treat your audience as kings
The box office doesn’t care what the director’s intentions were, how cool the writer is, or if the lead actor was featured in some fancy magazine, it cares about people in seats. And when thematic costumes clothe them (ala Potterheads), there are more of them.
In movies and entrepreneurship, your most critical metrics depend on your audience’s choices. So, the sooner you start treating your audience as kings and making everything about them, the sooner your metrics will start climbing.
How does the Harry Potter franchise treat Potterheads as kings? Movie premiers are 100% about the fans. They get to feel cool in costume, show off to friends, be among the first, hang out with other super-fans, and more. No matter what, putting your audience’s desire ahead of your own will always pay off in the long run.
Mindset shifts: Other entrepreneurs pursue immediate recognition. But you know that the more special you make your audience feel, the more success you’ll have down the road.
3. Depict compelling transformations
Humans have a fundamental desire for transformation. We love watching movies about redemption, growing up, settling down, overcoming adversity, underdogs, and more. Harry Potter is full of that stuff. Heck, the series even allowed a generation of readers to transform into adults alongside Harry.
This is why Before and After pictures are so incredibly persuasive. They help us to visualize the change we crave. And every single product or service on the market offers some form of transformation. All you have to do is call it out.
Mindset shift: Bad entrepreneurs sell products. Good entrepreneurs sell solutions. Entrepreneurs who create rabid fans sell transformation.
4. Trust the fundamentals
When I took my first screenwriting class, the number of hyper-specific rules shocked me. Did you know that about 20 minutes into every movie, something dramatic changes in the protagonist’s life and propels them into a new world?
Don’t believe me? Time it. Unsurprisingly, one kid in my class completely ignored the rules. Even more unsurprisingly, his scripts sucked. When my professor called him out, the kid blubbered, “But Tarantino—” To which my professor replied, “Are you Tarantino?” No. No, he was not Tarantino.
The difference between you, me, that kid, and Tarantino is that Tarantino paid his dues. It’s extremely rare to find someone who became successful by completely ignoring the conventions of their craft. And the same is true for entrepreneurship.
Mindset shift: Nobody is “above” learning the fundamentals. You know that by appreciating the current structures and systems, you will be better poised to disrupt them in the future.
“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
5. Kill your darlings
Once upon a time, an animation studio was four years into creating a film about the ocean. They had sunk thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the project. Then, the unthinkable happened… Finding Nemo. You know what the studio did with their ocean movie? They scrapped it.
As entrepreneurs, once we invest a lot of time and energy into something, we’re afraid to abandon it—even if the circumstances that made it worth pursuing in the first place don’t exist anymore. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. It’s important to remember that regardless of if you keep chugging along, the investment you made is unrecoverable. On the flip side, the gains you made are still valuable. The only choice you have is how you move forward—and sometimes, that means changing course.
Mindset shift: No effort goes to waste, even if the resulting work becomes irrelevant. Instead of letting your ego rule your decisions, you choose the best course of action and move on.
Building enthusiasm for your business is a slow but crucial process. What techniques have you pulled from other fields to help connect with your audience?
Naturally, those of us who experience less stress in our lives are more likely to succeed. So, it’s important that you learn how to reduce your daily level of stress, right? Maybe not. Recent research has shown the common wisdom about stress might be dangerously inaccurate. Psychologists tracked the health of 30,000 adults in the United States over an 8-year period. Participants were asked two important questions:
1. “How much stress have you experienced in the last year?”
2. “Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?”
The researchers found that people who experienced high levels of stress were 43% more likely to die in the study’s 8-year period. Doesn’t that prove stress is in fact bad for your health? Not exactly, stress was only harmful to the people who believed stress was harmful.
Those people who experienced high amounts of stress but didn’t believe it was harmful to their health were less likely to die than all other groups in the study. They were even less likely to die than the people who experienced low levels of stress (but believed stress is harmful.)
Put simply, people who believe that stress is not harmful live longer lives than those who believe it is. This study showed that it might not be stress that damages our health, but our beliefs about stress that damages our health.
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard
Breakthroughs In Stress Research
At first, this might be hard to believe. Kelly McGonigal elegantly explains this phenomenon in The Upside of Stress, “Stress mindsets are powerful because they affect not just how you think but also how you act. When you view stress as harmful, it is something to be avoided. Feeling stressed becomes a signal to try to escape or reduce the stress. And indeed, people who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it.”
People who believe stress is negative are more likely to avoid it by smoking, binge-eating, or watching too much TV. Afterwards, their physical health pays the price. Fortunately, research has shown that your beliefs about stress can be changed – and changing them has powerful benefits.
A study by Jeremy Jameson and colleagues had people endure a grueling social stress test. Participants were asked to give a 5-minute impromptu speech about their personal weaknesses to a panel of judges. To make this situation even more stressful, the judges were instructed to give negative feedback to the participant giving the speech. This study wasn’t just about sadistically putting people through social pressure, it was testing whether a mindset intervention could change how people react to stress.
Before giving the impromptu speech, participants were shown one of two videos:
- The first video opened with the message, “Most people think that stress is negative… but research shows that stress is even more debilitating than you expect.”
- The second video opened with, “Most people think that stress is negative… but actually research shows that it is enhancing.”
Participants who were shown the video that gave examples of how stress can be enhancing were less stressed out during the interview, felt more confident while speaking, and gave better interviews (as rated both by themselves and the judges). Even more impressively, although normally a stress response causes a person’s blood vessels to constrict, the blood vessels of participants who saw the pro-stress video remained relaxed.
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” – David Allen
The Power Of Your Stress Mindset
So, a 3-minute video was able to change the way people responded to a stressful situation, not just psychologically, but physiologically. When we think stress is something we must avoid, stress becomes a negative feedback loop. We experience stress, we think it’s a bad thing, and then our stress makes us even more stressed (and on and on).
But, when we think stress is just a natural part of life, or even a good thing, we are able to embrace it instead of being controlled by it. This not only allows us to perform better in stressful situations, it also enables us to make healthier decisions (because we won’t attempt to avoid stress with unhealthy coping behaviors).
How do you handle stress? Comment below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
That’s one simple piece of advice that changed my life.
I learned the importance of this advice the hard way when my life was traveling along just nicely. I had a high paying job, a booming blogging career, a partner who loved me, and enough money to live and enjoy a few simple pleasures.
I got to travel overseas to exotic locations and work even allowed me to have some pretty unique experiences like sleeping on a yacht and going surfing with a crazy bunch of entrepreneurs.
I thought I had it all.
People looked at my life and thought it was spectacular.
Deep inside of me, I knew something was not quite right.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Something about this so-called perfect life felt wrong.
Before I knew it, I broke up with my girlfriend, lost all of my work colleagues to competitors and found myself staring into a glass half full of instant coffee.
When I hit challenges, I found myself getting pissed off. I’d say to myself “Why me?” and “Get out of my way idiot, you’re blocking the path in front of me.”
How could an internet proclaimed self-help blogger have these crazy, messed up thoughts?
What was wrong was I’d forgotten how to stay positive. I thought that I was past the point of having to deal with challenges and I’d reached a level that I could never go back from.
“Personal development and inspirational content can make you feel invincible — especially when you’re the one creating it”
Sometimes the very thing you preach can be the one thing that is your own downfall.
As I analyzed the situation, I saw that I’d forgotten how to practice positivity.
How does one practice positivity?
By deciding to. Positivity is a choice.
Positivity is like going on an adventure and forcing yourself to see at least one good thing about the journey.
One little hack I used was writing down three things each day I was grateful for. I forced myself to do it at work and locked it into my diary for 9 am every morning.
During the career challenges I mentioned earlier, the lady that sits a few desks away from me described my situation as like being on the Titanic. She called my business unit the “Sinking Ship.”
Outside forces are going to have an effect on you if you let them. I chose to see positivity in what she was saying. I wrote down notes of how this could be positive.
It took a while, but eventually, I got the answer: The Titanic she described was a forced career change into something I liked even more. I’d become comfortable and that was the issue.
At that moment, I realized that I had the power within me to always see positivity if I wanted to.
It’s not about getting rid of negative thoughts necessarily.
It takes a lot of energy to remove or block negative thoughts. Choosing positivity is a much easier process to go through and it takes less energy.
Committing to yourself that there is at least one good outcome from every situation, forces your mind into positivity. It can be done.
You’re supposed to have negative thoughts. They keep you alive. Having zero negative thoughts is impossible. What helped me was balancing my thoughts to be more of the positive variety.
Gossiping and complaining breeds the opposite outcome.
Trying to stay positive no matter what is extremely difficult when you’re in conversations with people who are egging you on to complain, or gossip about someone or something.
The temptation is huge because whether we like it or not, it feels good.
The trouble with complaining or gossiping is that it only breeds more negativity.
You’re asking your brain to dish up negative possibilities and recall negative situations. The other person’s reaction to your negativity only rewards your brain for its hard work.
You can’t focus on being positive if you deliberately hijack your brain every time with gossip talk and picking faults with your co-workers.
People stuff up; they have different beliefs to you; they have other priorities.
Gossiping and complaining doesn’t make anyone else wrong. It does make you practice negativity though and that’s not going to change your life.
Take a long hard look at yourself.
Are you being positive most of the time? When I asked myself this question, I could see clearly that I was not.
I’d fallen into bad habits and allowed outside forces to manipulate my thoughts and turn them toxic.
My life started to change when I acknowledged what was going on and took ownership for it.
“It’s damn hard to admit as a self-help blogger that you’re being extremely negative and ruining your own success. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive. Either way, this reality was my truth and I owned it!”
Ignoring the problem is not going to make it magically disappear.
So, what did I do?
- Stayed clear of the people who were fuelling my negativity
- Focused on the positivity that already existed in my life like blogging, love and family
- Chose a new career path that was closer to what I loved
- Spent more time with other bloggers to learn how they dealt with negativity
- Took accountability and stopped focusing on outside interference
- Doubled down on my blogging so I could spread more positivity
- Spent lots of time watching videos on a Facebook page called Human Kindness
Above all else, one thing that helped was being more kind.
When you’re kind to everyone you encounter, positivity comes at you a hundred miles an hour.
People will make you feel positive when you are kind towards them. You don’t have to hand out millions of dollars in donations or build an orphanage either.
Simple acts of kindness like holding the door open, complimenting someone, or letting a driver into your lane is all it takes.
Tragedy will strike everyone.
That’s not something to be sad about it’s just a fact of life. When you can go through any event and always find a way to be positive, you’re able to recover much quicker. This allows you to support others during these tough times.
Positivity can make you see another way.
By seeing positivity, you’ll discover other options that those around you can’t see.
“Positivity is closely linked to creativity”
Seeing hidden opportunities doesn’t happen when you’re pissed off and want to kill your neighbor because of their dog that always barks when you’re sleeping.
Positivity sparks possibility and that’s where your next opportunity will come from.
Final thought.
Positivity really is the simple advice that will change your life. We can all use more of it and it’s missing in so many souls around the world. Find another way to move forward and don’t be afraid to take a step back once in a while.
Choose positivity in every situation and your life will change. You’ll see a brighter future, and better yet, you’ll create that future for yourself.
You deserve to be fulfilled and do what you love. Let positivity get you there faster.
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If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
Change lies in our ability to create better decisions for ourselves, and we can only do this by establishing a healthy mindset. Learn how to create a better life for yourself by improving your state of mind. I am going to help you get a little closer to the satisfying life you deserve by giving you some simple tips that hav completely changed the way I think of life.
Here are 4 simple things you can do to change your life right now:
1. What is making you unhappy?
Go to a quiet place to sit and think about your life. Take as much time as you need to think about why your life is the way it is. What in your life is going wrong? Why are you feeling this way? If something could fix the way you are feeling, what would it be? Write down all the things that are hindering your quest to life satisfaction and be specific. Then, write down solutions to each problem. This part is critical because it shows that your pain can be solved and therefore is temporary. It also shows that it is up to you to start your journey to a better you.
“Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going.” – Jim Rohn
2. Improve Your Self-Awareness
Intellectual dishonesty is the worst thing we can do to our psyche. It is important to move beyond that barrier to improve self-awareness, which will then improve our lives. Your self-awareness is the ability to evaluate your own actions, feeling, desires and the negative and positive impact they have had on you and your environment. Be honest with yourself and create a list of things you should improve on and work towards those goals. Your list can include things such as, less aggressiveness; more patience or being more open to other people.
3. Put Away Your Phone
It is so easy to check out because of our phones. That little device can do pretty much anything, and we are under its spell. When was the last time you were with your loved ones without your phone being present? Even when you put it away, you keep it on the table and the urge to check it continues to grow.
That is called an addiction. Addiction is not limited to drugs, they can extend to objects or people as well. This unhealthy behavior prevents you from experiencing the present. Learn how to step away from your phone and cultivate your life.
Learn a new language, read a book or indulge in some arts and crafts. Brainstorm some awesome ideas that could lead to great cash flow. You have a ton of other things that you could be doing that will help you in the long run. When you go out with friends and family, turn off your phone and put it away. If someone calls, and it is important, they can leave a voicemail. Texts are not urgent…. because it’s a text. That person could easily call and if they care, they’ll leave a voicemail too.
The bottom line is to not let your phone be you crutch. Let your mind wonder and embrace boredom. You’ll be surprised at how creative your mind can get. You can create whole worlds and destroy them all in your mind! That is fascinating on its own without the help of a device.
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. Give
Give something to someone at least once a day. This shifts the mindset from, “what I don’t have” to “what do I have to give?” Offer to buy your co-worker’s lunch; help someone with their computer; hold the door open for someone. Trust me, you will feel better about yourself and help others feel lighter on their feet. You could also volunteer or donate some of your belongings that are in good condition. Trust me, someone out there needs them, and they don’t care if it is out of fashion.
To live a better life, we must create a healthier way of thinking. Once our mind is healed, only then we will be able to live our best life. The goal is to create a healthy mindset, so we can make high-quality decisions that will lead to a more satisfying life.
How are you improving your life today? Comment below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
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Quotes
5 Viktor Frankl Quotes to Reshape Your Perspective Today
Highly regarded as one of Viktor Frankl’s greatest works, “A Man’s Search For Meaning” highlights Dr. Frankl’s perseverance and survival through the Auschwitz concentration camp. His insights, both harrowing and enchanting, can be readily applied as a sort of spiritual compass for the modern-day man or woman. (more…)
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i agree with you. part of our happiness is to embrace the sad parts of life. i’m glad there are articles like this on the web that goes in a different direction than: have only positive thoughts and you’ll be happy.
all things have a place in our lives. <3
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If only our clients had the passion of Potterheads. Remember the midnight premiers? Potterheads lined up for hours, dressed in full costume, wands a-blazin’. When the doors finally opened, they couldn’t throw their money at the ticket booth fast enough. How do you create that kind of enthusiasm for your own business?
I’m going to share five mindset shifts straight out of the movie business that you can use to fuel lifelong fanatics. Some of it is going to be tough love, but hey, nobody said getting your own fan club was easy.
1. Stay humble, stay hungry
Working actors audition an average of 67 times before booking a gig. 67 times! And that’s working actors—people who earn their entire livelihood from acting. Most entrepreneurs will hear this stat and say, “I get it. I need to accept failure 66 times.” But this isn’t about that. It’s about showing up 67.
Accepting failure is passive. You can accept failure from your couch. Showing up and trying, however, is active. When you show up, you commit to taking a step forward. And 66 times, you’ll get knocked down. It’s humbling. But on attempt 67, that step forward might finally stick.
Mindset shift: You have an insatiable appetite for success. You know that every failure is one failure down and that, soon, you’ll knock it out of the park.
“Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki
2. Treat your audience as kings
The box office doesn’t care what the director’s intentions were, how cool the writer is, or if the lead actor was featured in some fancy magazine, it cares about people in seats. And when thematic costumes clothe them (ala Potterheads), there are more of them.
In movies and entrepreneurship, your most critical metrics depend on your audience’s choices. So, the sooner you start treating your audience as kings and making everything about them, the sooner your metrics will start climbing.
How does the Harry Potter franchise treat Potterheads as kings? Movie premiers are 100% about the fans. They get to feel cool in costume, show off to friends, be among the first, hang out with other super-fans, and more. No matter what, putting your audience’s desire ahead of your own will always pay off in the long run.
Mindset shifts: Other entrepreneurs pursue immediate recognition. But you know that the more special you make your audience feel, the more success you’ll have down the road.
3. Depict compelling transformations
Humans have a fundamental desire for transformation. We love watching movies about redemption, growing up, settling down, overcoming adversity, underdogs, and more. Harry Potter is full of that stuff. Heck, the series even allowed a generation of readers to transform into adults alongside Harry.
This is why Before and After pictures are so incredibly persuasive. They help us to visualize the change we crave. And every single product or service on the market offers some form of transformation. All you have to do is call it out.
Mindset shift: Bad entrepreneurs sell products. Good entrepreneurs sell solutions. Entrepreneurs who create rabid fans sell transformation.
4. Trust the fundamentals
When I took my first screenwriting class, the number of hyper-specific rules shocked me. Did you know that about 20 minutes into every movie, something dramatic changes in the protagonist’s life and propels them into a new world?
Don’t believe me? Time it. Unsurprisingly, one kid in my class completely ignored the rules. Even more unsurprisingly, his scripts sucked. When my professor called him out, the kid blubbered, “But Tarantino—” To which my professor replied, “Are you Tarantino?” No. No, he was not Tarantino.
The difference between you, me, that kid, and Tarantino is that Tarantino paid his dues. It’s extremely rare to find someone who became successful by completely ignoring the conventions of their craft. And the same is true for entrepreneurship.
Mindset shift: Nobody is “above” learning the fundamentals. You know that by appreciating the current structures and systems, you will be better poised to disrupt them in the future.
“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
5. Kill your darlings
Once upon a time, an animation studio was four years into creating a film about the ocean. They had sunk thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the project. Then, the unthinkable happened… Finding Nemo. You know what the studio did with their ocean movie? They scrapped it.
As entrepreneurs, once we invest a lot of time and energy into something, we’re afraid to abandon it—even if the circumstances that made it worth pursuing in the first place don’t exist anymore. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. It’s important to remember that regardless of if you keep chugging along, the investment you made is unrecoverable. On the flip side, the gains you made are still valuable. The only choice you have is how you move forward—and sometimes, that means changing course.
Mindset shift: No effort goes to waste, even if the resulting work becomes irrelevant. Instead of letting your ego rule your decisions, you choose the best course of action and move on.
Building enthusiasm for your business is a slow but crucial process. What techniques have you pulled from other fields to help connect with your audience?
Naturally, those of us who experience less stress in our lives are more likely to succeed. So, it’s important that you learn how to reduce your daily level of stress, right? Maybe not. Recent research has shown the common wisdom about stress might be dangerously inaccurate. Psychologists tracked the health of 30,000 adults in the United States over an 8-year period. Participants were asked two important questions:
1. “How much stress have you experienced in the last year?”
2. “Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?”
The researchers found that people who experienced high levels of stress were 43% more likely to die in the study’s 8-year period. Doesn’t that prove stress is in fact bad for your health? Not exactly, stress was only harmful to the people who believed stress was harmful.
Those people who experienced high amounts of stress but didn’t believe it was harmful to their health were less likely to die than all other groups in the study. They were even less likely to die than the people who experienced low levels of stress (but believed stress is harmful.)
Put simply, people who believe that stress is not harmful live longer lives than those who believe it is. This study showed that it might not be stress that damages our health, but our beliefs about stress that damages our health.
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard
Breakthroughs In Stress Research
At first, this might be hard to believe. Kelly McGonigal elegantly explains this phenomenon in The Upside of Stress, “Stress mindsets are powerful because they affect not just how you think but also how you act. When you view stress as harmful, it is something to be avoided. Feeling stressed becomes a signal to try to escape or reduce the stress. And indeed, people who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it.”
People who believe stress is negative are more likely to avoid it by smoking, binge-eating, or watching too much TV. Afterwards, their physical health pays the price. Fortunately, research has shown that your beliefs about stress can be changed – and changing them has powerful benefits.
A study by Jeremy Jameson and colleagues had people endure a grueling social stress test. Participants were asked to give a 5-minute impromptu speech about their personal weaknesses to a panel of judges. To make this situation even more stressful, the judges were instructed to give negative feedback to the participant giving the speech. This study wasn’t just about sadistically putting people through social pressure, it was testing whether a mindset intervention could change how people react to stress.
Before giving the impromptu speech, participants were shown one of two videos:
- The first video opened with the message, “Most people think that stress is negative… but research shows that stress is even more debilitating than you expect.”
- The second video opened with, “Most people think that stress is negative… but actually research shows that it is enhancing.”
Participants who were shown the video that gave examples of how stress can be enhancing were less stressed out during the interview, felt more confident while speaking, and gave better interviews (as rated both by themselves and the judges). Even more impressively, although normally a stress response causes a person’s blood vessels to constrict, the blood vessels of participants who saw the pro-stress video remained relaxed.
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they’ve started.” – David Allen
The Power Of Your Stress Mindset
So, a 3-minute video was able to change the way people responded to a stressful situation, not just psychologically, but physiologically. When we think stress is something we must avoid, stress becomes a negative feedback loop. We experience stress, we think it’s a bad thing, and then our stress makes us even more stressed (and on and on).
But, when we think stress is just a natural part of life, or even a good thing, we are able to embrace it instead of being controlled by it. This not only allows us to perform better in stressful situations, it also enables us to make healthier decisions (because we won’t attempt to avoid stress with unhealthy coping behaviors).
How do you handle stress? Comment below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
That’s one simple piece of advice that changed my life.
I learned the importance of this advice the hard way when my life was traveling along just nicely. I had a high paying job, a booming blogging career, a partner who loved me, and enough money to live and enjoy a few simple pleasures.
I got to travel overseas to exotic locations and work even allowed me to have some pretty unique experiences like sleeping on a yacht and going surfing with a crazy bunch of entrepreneurs.
I thought I had it all.
People looked at my life and thought it was spectacular.
Deep inside of me, I knew something was not quite right.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Something about this so-called perfect life felt wrong.
Before I knew it, I broke up with my girlfriend, lost all of my work colleagues to competitors and found myself staring into a glass half full of instant coffee.
When I hit challenges, I found myself getting pissed off. I’d say to myself “Why me?” and “Get out of my way idiot, you’re blocking the path in front of me.”
How could an internet proclaimed self-help blogger have these crazy, messed up thoughts?
What was wrong was I’d forgotten how to stay positive. I thought that I was past the point of having to deal with challenges and I’d reached a level that I could never go back from.
“Personal development and inspirational content can make you feel invincible — especially when you’re the one creating it”
Sometimes the very thing you preach can be the one thing that is your own downfall.
As I analyzed the situation, I saw that I’d forgotten how to practice positivity.
How does one practice positivity?
By deciding to. Positivity is a choice.
Positivity is like going on an adventure and forcing yourself to see at least one good thing about the journey.
One little hack I used was writing down three things each day I was grateful for. I forced myself to do it at work and locked it into my diary for 9 am every morning.
During the career challenges I mentioned earlier, the lady that sits a few desks away from me described my situation as like being on the Titanic. She called my business unit the “Sinking Ship.”
Outside forces are going to have an effect on you if you let them. I chose to see positivity in what she was saying. I wrote down notes of how this could be positive.
It took a while, but eventually, I got the answer: The Titanic she described was a forced career change into something I liked even more. I’d become comfortable and that was the issue.
At that moment, I realized that I had the power within me to always see positivity if I wanted to.
It’s not about getting rid of negative thoughts necessarily.
It takes a lot of energy to remove or block negative thoughts. Choosing positivity is a much easier process to go through and it takes less energy.
Committing to yourself that there is at least one good outcome from every situation, forces your mind into positivity. It can be done.
You’re supposed to have negative thoughts. They keep you alive. Having zero negative thoughts is impossible. What helped me was balancing my thoughts to be more of the positive variety.
Gossiping and complaining breeds the opposite outcome.
Trying to stay positive no matter what is extremely difficult when you’re in conversations with people who are egging you on to complain, or gossip about someone or something.
The temptation is huge because whether we like it or not, it feels good.
The trouble with complaining or gossiping is that it only breeds more negativity.
You’re asking your brain to dish up negative possibilities and recall negative situations. The other person’s reaction to your negativity only rewards your brain for its hard work.
You can’t focus on being positive if you deliberately hijack your brain every time with gossip talk and picking faults with your co-workers.
People stuff up; they have different beliefs to you; they have other priorities.
Gossiping and complaining doesn’t make anyone else wrong. It does make you practice negativity though and that’s not going to change your life.
Take a long hard look at yourself.
Are you being positive most of the time? When I asked myself this question, I could see clearly that I was not.
I’d fallen into bad habits and allowed outside forces to manipulate my thoughts and turn them toxic.
My life started to change when I acknowledged what was going on and took ownership for it.
“It’s damn hard to admit as a self-help blogger that you’re being extremely negative and ruining your own success. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive. Either way, this reality was my truth and I owned it!”
Ignoring the problem is not going to make it magically disappear.
So, what did I do?
- Stayed clear of the people who were fuelling my negativity
- Focused on the positivity that already existed in my life like blogging, love and family
- Chose a new career path that was closer to what I loved
- Spent more time with other bloggers to learn how they dealt with negativity
- Took accountability and stopped focusing on outside interference
- Doubled down on my blogging so I could spread more positivity
- Spent lots of time watching videos on a Facebook page called Human Kindness
Above all else, one thing that helped was being more kind.
When you’re kind to everyone you encounter, positivity comes at you a hundred miles an hour.
People will make you feel positive when you are kind towards them. You don’t have to hand out millions of dollars in donations or build an orphanage either.
Simple acts of kindness like holding the door open, complimenting someone, or letting a driver into your lane is all it takes.
Tragedy will strike everyone.
That’s not something to be sad about it’s just a fact of life. When you can go through any event and always find a way to be positive, you’re able to recover much quicker. This allows you to support others during these tough times.
Positivity can make you see another way.
By seeing positivity, you’ll discover other options that those around you can’t see.
“Positivity is closely linked to creativity”
Seeing hidden opportunities doesn’t happen when you’re pissed off and want to kill your neighbor because of their dog that always barks when you’re sleeping.
Positivity sparks possibility and that’s where your next opportunity will come from.
Final thought.
Positivity really is the simple advice that will change your life. We can all use more of it and it’s missing in so many souls around the world. Find another way to move forward and don’t be afraid to take a step back once in a while.
Choose positivity in every situation and your life will change. You’ll see a brighter future, and better yet, you’ll create that future for yourself.
You deserve to be fulfilled and do what you love. Let positivity get you there faster.
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If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net
Change lies in our ability to create better decisions for ourselves, and we can only do this by establishing a healthy mindset. Learn how to create a better life for yourself by improving your state of mind. I am going to help you get a little closer to the satisfying life you deserve by giving you some simple tips that hav completely changed the way I think of life.
Here are 4 simple things you can do to change your life right now:
1. What is making you unhappy?
Go to a quiet place to sit and think about your life. Take as much time as you need to think about why your life is the way it is. What in your life is going wrong? Why are you feeling this way? If something could fix the way you are feeling, what would it be? Write down all the things that are hindering your quest to life satisfaction and be specific. Then, write down solutions to each problem. This part is critical because it shows that your pain can be solved and therefore is temporary. It also shows that it is up to you to start your journey to a better you.
“Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going.” – Jim Rohn
2. Improve Your Self-Awareness
Intellectual dishonesty is the worst thing we can do to our psyche. It is important to move beyond that barrier to improve self-awareness, which will then improve our lives. Your self-awareness is the ability to evaluate your own actions, feeling, desires and the negative and positive impact they have had on you and your environment. Be honest with yourself and create a list of things you should improve on and work towards those goals. Your list can include things such as, less aggressiveness; more patience or being more open to other people.
3. Put Away Your Phone
It is so easy to check out because of our phones. That little device can do pretty much anything, and we are under its spell. When was the last time you were with your loved ones without your phone being present? Even when you put it away, you keep it on the table and the urge to check it continues to grow.
That is called an addiction. Addiction is not limited to drugs, they can extend to objects or people as well. This unhealthy behavior prevents you from experiencing the present. Learn how to step away from your phone and cultivate your life.
Learn a new language, read a book or indulge in some arts and crafts. Brainstorm some awesome ideas that could lead to great cash flow. You have a ton of other things that you could be doing that will help you in the long run. When you go out with friends and family, turn off your phone and put it away. If someone calls, and it is important, they can leave a voicemail. Texts are not urgent…. because it’s a text. That person could easily call and if they care, they’ll leave a voicemail too.
The bottom line is to not let your phone be you crutch. Let your mind wonder and embrace boredom. You’ll be surprised at how creative your mind can get. You can create whole worlds and destroy them all in your mind! That is fascinating on its own without the help of a device.
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. Give
Give something to someone at least once a day. This shifts the mindset from, “what I don’t have” to “what do I have to give?” Offer to buy your co-worker’s lunch; help someone with their computer; hold the door open for someone. Trust me, you will feel better about yourself and help others feel lighter on their feet. You could also volunteer or donate some of your belongings that are in good condition. Trust me, someone out there needs them, and they don’t care if it is out of fashion.
To live a better life, we must create a healthier way of thinking. Once our mind is healed, only then we will be able to live our best life. The goal is to create a healthy mindset, so we can make high-quality decisions that will lead to a more satisfying life.
How are you improving your life today? Comment below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
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Nícia Cruz
Aug 1, 2017 at 6:19 pm
i agree with you. part of our happiness is to embrace the sad parts of life. i’m glad there are articles like this on the web that goes in a different direction than: have only positive thoughts and you’ll be happy.
all things have a place in our lives. <3
Tanrose
Jul 5, 2017 at 10:01 am
Thanks Andrew for this one. Really learn a lot about finding true happiness and growing it.