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Imagine that you are reading a book. It is a a great read, a murder mystery. You are near the end of the book and it is nearly evening. You know that the murderer will be revealed somewhere towards the last page.  A friend walks by:

“The butler did it,” he casually remarks.

You throw the book down in disgust and shout angrily at your friend.

“You’ve spoilt the book for me by revealing the murderer.” You storm off.

Later, I ask you if you are happy and you reply no.

Here’s another version of the story:You are on holiday, lying on a sun lounger in the sun and reading a book. Beside you is a glass of cold white wine. After a particularly hectic time at work it is great to relax and read the book. It’s a good book and you are engrossed in its intricate plot. You feel contentment.

I walk by and ask how you are.

“Great, life’s perfect, I’m so happy to be able to just chill out and let all the stress of the last few months just fall away.”

I spot your friend walking towards you.

This story illustrates the two selves that reside in us all. One is the memory self or the rememberer. It was that self that was replying when I asked how you are after your friend revealed the murderer.

The other self is the experiencer, the one that I talked to when you were reading the book.

The experiencer self experienced several hours of absorption in a book. This felt great. It then had a short time of anger when the end of the book was revealed.

The rememberer reflects and decides that the angry feeling was the most important factor in the day, even though it was experienced for a lot less time than the experience of reading. It then makes a judgement on the day based on feeling angry, not the much longer feeling of happiness or pleasure.

Positive psychologists research and write about happiness. They ask the question, what makes you happy?

If I ask you the question are you happy, then the reply can depend on which self is talking. The rememberer may reflect on your life, remember a difficult childhood and difficult relationships and conclude that you are not happy. The experiencer may give a different answer if you are enjoying yourself in the present moment.

Because the rememberer is using subjectiveness and judgement, can you rely on it for a reliable answer to the question are you happy?

One of the reasons why Ekhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now is so successful, is that it appeals to the experiencer. He urges us to stop dwelling on the past  which is the rememberer self. Neither should you dwell on the future, which is an aspect of the rememberer that anticipates the future based on past memories. By being aware of the now, you firmly place yourself in the experiencer self. Unburdened by the rememberer, you see the present, and begin to see what is here.

You see the smile of a child, white clouds drifting in the sky, smell roses, listen to the birds singing. You experience happiness.

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There are a lot of miserable people in this world and there is a vast industry to help them:

• An army of therapists
• Libraries of self-help books
• Self development and motivational speakers
• Psychics
• Agony aunts
• Prozac and other drugs

Anyone can set themselves up as an expert on curing human misery. Most of these people are papering emotional cracks, putting plasters on mental wounds. Few really go into the very nature of the mind and how we get miserable in the first place. They may claim to do this by going back into childhood stuff, your relationship to your parents and your siblings. Of course, if you were regularly beaten by your parents, then you are probably fairly miserable now, so there is some merit in re-visiting childhood trauma.

How far do you want to go back? What caused your father to beat you up? Did his father beat him up? What about his grandparents and his great grand parents. When did this cycle of abuse begin?

Is there any way to discover the cause of misery and then cure your self of this misery?

To go on this mental journey is difficult and sometimes painful. If you have anorexia then go to an NLP practitioner or Cognitive Therapist. They can cure your eating disorder and return you to a normal unhappy person, but without the extreme habit of starving yourself to death.

To get to the root of unhappiness is to get to the root nature of your own mind. How does your mind operate? Thoughts arise and you react to these thoughts. Your reaction could be attraction. You are thinking about someone you love, so are attracted to these thoughts. You then think of something you don’t like, rats perhaps, and you are repelled by these thoughts.

Some things attract you and you call them pleasure and some things repel you and you call them pain. You go towards pleasure and away from pain. Or is it that simple? If misery is pain, then why can’t you seem to go from it. Is there something contained in the misery that attracts you?

If you are a miserable person then this becomes an integral part of your identity. It is an aspect of who you are. You are programmed for survival. Your identity, your sense of self, is the mechanism that tries to ensure your survival. Anything that threatens that identity, appears as if it were threatening your survival. Getting rid of misery is getting rid of part of your self.

You  may seek relief from misery through sex, holidays, eating, alcohol – but all these do is provide temporary relief from your misery.

Can you psychologically kill off your self? Can you demolish your identity and then be re-born as a new happy you?

This is possible, but there is no quick fix, no magic sword to do this with.

The first step is to have faith that it is possible to end the suffering in your life. The second step is to find the method, the strategies and skills that you need to become happy. The third step is to have the courage to start this journey.

What’s wrong with having positive thoughts?  Well, obviously most of the time it’s OK to think positively but taken to a fundamental level, as has often been the case, then positive thinking is not always realistic thinking. Barbara makes a case for positive thinking being a large factor in the  recent collapse of the banking system. Many people were making money from the sub prime mortgage market in which money to buy housing was given to the less well off. These mortgage debts were then sold on in the form of financial securities to people who saw vast amounts of profits to be made from them .

A few individuals saw that there was a basic flaw in the prime mortgage market. The system  relied on house prices always going up. If a low paid worker could not keep up with the payments, they could always release some funds by re-mortgaging to finance the payments. But what happens if house prices start falling?

People who voiced these concerns were not listened to. They were accused of being too negative, and in a banking culture where positive thinking was the order of the day, negative thought was not to be listened to.

Of course the ‘negative’ people were right, and when house prices started to fall, the whole banking house of cards began to collapse, resulting in the failure of the banking system.

If positive thinking and positive psychology can have such devastating effect, then how are we to proceed? What is needed is realistic rather than positive thinking alone. What is realistic thinking?

Here are some examples:

• If your boss fires you then get angry with him.
• If your partner leaves you for another then get mad and throw a plate or two.
• If a careless driver crashes into your brand new car then scream at him or her.
• If your washing machine springs a leak and floods the kitchen then swear out loud.
• If an earthquake ruins your house then shout at God for allowing such a thing.

All the above responses are realistic and appropriate responses to the situation. You are not repressing how you feel by coating it in some positive thinking stuff. The zealots of positive thinking and positive psychology say:

• If your boss fires you see it as an opportunity. One door closes another one opens.
• If your partner leaves you then realise that you can attract an even better partner
• Never mind,  insurance will cover the damage on the car.
• Maybe your washing machine was not energy efficient. Now is the time to go out and buy a super Eco friendly rated washing machine
• You wanted to renovate your house anyway so now is the right time to do it.

None of the psychobabble helps. Something awful has happened and you have very right to feel mad and negative.

The problem here is not your first response, which may be negative, but how long you hold onto that response. Once you have vented your anger, sworn or cursed God, then it is time to move on from focusing on the problem to focusing on the solution, and once your focus is solution orientated then positive thinking arises.

Barbara also points out the flaw in the law of attraction. If you are a fan of the law of attraction then you say that  you have attracted to yourself all the situations in the above scenarios. In some cases that could be the case. Your boss may have fired you because you were incompetent, your partner left you because your were cruel to him, your washing machine was old, so no wonder it broke.  If you always take this view then you are neglecting the chaos that is in the world. Sometimes shit just happens. Randomness and chaos appear frequently to disrupt your life. Not everything is your fault. There maybe no one to blame. There has just been a terrible earthquake in Haiti. There is no one to blame for this. Nobody attracted the earthquake. It just happened.

When things don’t go your way, get mad, then stand up and do something about it. True negativity is when you hang onto the negative thoughts to the point where depression overwhelms you. When life knocks you down, stay on the ground for a moment or two and curse the gods. then get up, brush yourself off and walk on.

I used to do some work for a business that taught massage therapists a new approach to bodywork. Using new techniques they became better therapists and this benefitted their clients who received deeper and more healing bodywork. The office of this company had a large board that was filled with glowing testimonials to how great the training courses were.

Everyone associated with the company was encouraged to think positively, always aware of the great things that the company stood for. The more massages people received using their approach, the more the world would improve. We were on a mission to help the world!

Occasionally a letter or email of complaint would arrive in the office. Most businesses at one time or another receive criticism no matter how successful they are. Whenever a complaint came in, the head of the company would call the senders ‘negative’ people who were only there to moan and complain. The policy was that no complaint was to be taken seriously. The company did not need to deal with these ‘negative’ people who would not join in the positive thinking that the company required..

So these complainers would find that no matter how constructive their criticism was, their issues would not be addressed, and they would be in effect told to go away and stop being negative. They would then tell at least 10 of their friends about how badly they had been treated and what a shoddy company it was. This process harmed the company by putting a lot of potential customers off.

Shortly before the banking collapse one or two people told the banks that there was a big flaw in the sub-prime mortgage market which could lead to serious financial problems. These people were told to stop being so negative. The bankers were so busy making lots of money that they did not want to hear that the financial bubble could burst.

There is a big cult of positive thinking in many companies. Positive thinking can be very useful. If you have a goal in life it does help to think positively that you are going to achieve the goal, but there are times when positive thinking can be the wrong thing to do and can actually be harmful. There are times when it is appropriate to:

• Get mad when your boss fires you
• Realise when a project is not going to work out and needs abandoning
• Not throw good money after bad
• Feel disappointed when your sports team loses badly
• Feel sad when your relationship breaks up

To want to always be positive and upbeat is to ignore the basic nature of human beings. Life has many shades, many moods, many aspects. Yes, be positive lots of the time, stick with things when obstacles appear, feel love for your fellow human  beings and so on.

Negative emotions are not bad as long as you don’t hang onto them. Occasionally open your mouth wide and let out a great scream of frustration. It will make you feel better. Then get on with the rest of your life.

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Are you happy? If not, what can you do about it. Positive psychology  believes that it has the answer to happiness. Research has shown that 40% of happiness is under your conscious control. The other 60% is due to our circumstances, where you live, the family that you are bought up in and so on.

Happiness has two main components. You can asses yours by asking yourself the following questions:

• How satisfied are you overall with your life and are you progressing in your life goals?
• How often do you feel positive emotions and how often do you feel negative emotions?

If you are unsatisfied with your life then you are not happy. If you experience more positive than negative emtions, then you are generally a happy person. Authentic happiness is not about being happy all the time – this is an unreal goal. It’s more about feeling that life is good and that you feel a sense of well-being.

If you are not happy then how do you go about increasing your levels of happiness?

Positive Psychology says that thee are several activities that you can do to increase happiness. These include:

• Be grateful for some of the small things in your life such as a cup of coffee in the morning, your morning shower, taking your dog out for a walk .  Pay attention to these experiences, savour them, be thankful that you can enjoy them.
• Practise kindness and compassion for other people. Do someone a favour or a kind turn.
• Learn how to forgive those who have harmed you.
• Create goals for your life  and commit to achieving them.
• Maintain a fit and healthy body.
• Stop comparing yourself to others and being jealous of what they have.
• Learn how to manage stress

For  in depth information read the  The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want

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Do you worry too much?

I was bought up in a house called ‘Wywurri”. I’m not sure where the name came from – it could have been named after a group of granite rocks in the Maryamma distriuct of Australia also know as Wywurri.

If I ever get around to writing my autobiography it will be called Wywurri, as this is a principle by which I lead my life. Why worry?

I used to worry about a lot of things:

• My bank account which was never full enough.
• My relationships which always on the brink of ending
• My job which was never quite right for me
• My body which was never light enough

Do you dwell on your problems. There is productive worry and unproductive worry.

Productive worry is when you create a to do list or action plan to deal with your problems.  Unproductive worry is when you just worry but without taking any actions to deal with your issues. What you need to do is accept your difficulties and then move forward to solve the challenges that you face.

One of the biggest problems facing you today is financial. In recent months many people have lost their jobs. Others have seen their savings wiped out through the stock market collapsing.

Robert Leahy, of the American Institute of Cognitive Therapy in New York said, after he suffered a financial loss due to  the collapse of the bank Lehman brothers:

“If you lost 30 percent (of your money), you still have 70 percent,” he said. “Ask yourself, ‘What can I do even if I lost money? Will this really affect what I do today and tomorrow?’ ”

Recalling that he slept on a mattress on a floor when he was a graduate student, he challenges you  to ask yourself  if life was so  terrible when you had less. Consider what you did before you had money.

“Use positive psychology to put money in its place,” he said. “How can financial loss put materialism in its place? How can you use this to clarify values?”

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

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There are plenty of wonderful movies produced with thought-provoking, compassionate stories — but they almost never make it to your local theater.

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Can You Predict Positive Personality Traits?

One positive personality trait that we all want is happiness. You think that it would be easy to predict what makes you happy and what you need in your life in order to feel more positive.

One of the problems is one of expectation. I once was invited to attend a birthday meal at a a new restaurant. The woman whose birthday it was was incredibly excited about the prospect of going for a Thai meal with her friends.

We got there and it was a very good restaurant. The birthday woman ordered a meal which had a Thai name. Her smile faded when she took the first mouth full. The dish was heavily flavoured with hot chili, and she hated chili (most Thai food features chili!)

For her the evening was spoilt. I, on the the other hand who loves chili, had a great time eating good food and being with friends.

The problem with my friend was that she had huge expectations about the meal and how happy it would make her – and these expectations were not met.

Can you predict how happy you would be?

Here are some questions for you that ask you to predict happiness levels.

• If you became paralysed, would your happiness level be far worse than lottery winners?
• How happy would you be if you got married?
• How happy would you be if you had an incurable illness?
• Would you be happier to have a physical or a mental disability?
• Would moving out of your small town house to a big one in the country make you happy?

As long ago as 1978 the psychologists Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, studied the happiness levels of paralysed people compared to lottery winners.  Suprisingly they found that the lottery winners were only marginally more happy than the paralysed people. After a while paralysed people come to terms with their condition and learn to live life as best as they can.

Whilst getting married boosts your happiness, generally this is temporary. If the marriage is not strong and difficulties arise then you can be worse off.

Many people make living wills that state that they would like their life to be terminated if they had an incurable illness. Research has found that healthy people cannot predict what it would be like. Some people in this situation find that they can lead a reasonably OK life.

In court cases where damages are paid, physical disabilities are generally awarded more money than mental conditions.  Research done by Peter Ubel, a professor of medicine has shown that mental illness is generally undervalued, yet has more a devastating effect on the personality than physical ailments.

People who move out to the country often find themselves commuting long distances to work, and this can lower their overall happiness.

If it is so difficult to predict your happiness, is there any reliable way to achieve happiness?

The first thing to understand is that outside events such as winning the lottery, getting a new job or meeting a new partner, only raise your happiness levels by a small percent. The secret to long term happiness is to realise that happiness must come from within. Positive Psychology says that you need to develop positive character traits to achieve authentic happiness.

Start her to  develop positive personality traits

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As more and more firms are closing down in this recession, many find themselves out of a job. This is when a positive attitude makes all the difference.

I used to work in a hotel and also lived there in the staff quarters, so when I was made redundant I was both out of work and homeless which was quite traumatic. This happened on the day before I was due to go on holiday to India.

What I found is that a positive attitude really helped me. I looked at my situation in a positive way.  The first thing I did was extend my holiday from a month to three months. This resulted in my being able to go on a trip to meet the Dalai Lama which is one of my most treasured memories. This certainly would not have happened if I had stuck to my original plan to stay for 4 weeks.

My stay also allowed me to reflect on my life and look at the future as a fresh start, a new beginning.

If you have lost your job recently, you may not have the opportunity to go away for 3 months like me but there are several advantages to having a positive attitude which can help you get a new job.

These are some of the advantages that people with a positive attitude have when looking for a job:

• They tend to network more and may hear of job opportunities as a result.
• They spend more time searching through job listings
• A positive attitude can make all the difference in a job interview
• They don’t give up easily and this perseverance helps achieve their goals

So how do you get to be more positive. Here are some tips:

• Surround yourself with positive people. Positivity is contagious.
• Identify things in your life that you are grateful for. This will help your overall positivity.
• Try to catch yourself becoming negative, then distract yourself. Call a friend for a positive chat, watch some mindless TV. Resume your job searching when you feel in a better mood.
• Laugh a lot. Watch a comedy film or play with a child.

Although losing your job can be traumatic, there are ways to have a positive attitude that will help you in your search for a new job.

If you are suffereing from stress as a result of losing your job then download my free book “How to Manage Stress.”

More Details

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I once saw a documentary about the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In the course of the one hour documentary things I noticed about  the Ayatollah were:

• He did not smile once
• He did not laugh once.
• He was unmarried

He landed in Iran where a large crowd greeted their new religious and political leader. He looked at them and still looked miserable. I do not trust a political or religious leader who never smiles.

Now, contrast this with Barack Obama who:

• smiles a lot
• laughs
• has a happy marriage
• looks happy

It is not possible to find happiness unless you have a sense of humor.

Is there a link between humor and a successful relationship? If you want a long-lasting and loving relationship, do you look for someone with a sense of humor?

Recent research says that  women link a sense of humor in a man with intelligence.

“Over the course of history, women actively look for signs that their man is intelligent, and I believe the ability to actively judge the situation and pull off a joke and make you laugh is an intelligent feat,” said Kristofor McCarty, a researcher at Northumbria University in Newcastle, England and author of the study.

She added: “A quick browse of lonely-hearts ads will confirm that women look for a good sense of humour in a potential partner – our research may explain why this is the case.

The findings provide evidence that women use humour as an indication of a guy’s intelligence. Intelligence is a very attractive quality as a clever man should be more able to provide resources for his offspring. But guys be warned: not just any gag will do. We discovered that the humour must be genuinely funny for the man to be judged as more intelligent.”

The anthropologist Helen Fisher says: “People who have a good sense of humor may be likely to lighten up very bad situations and therefore reduce the stress response and simply enable you to get over the hump in bad parts of the relationship,”

If you are a man looking for a long term relationship then make sure that you have a sense of humor.

Some of other benefits of laughter are:

• reduce stress
• lower blood pressure
• elevate mood
• boost immune system
• improve brain functioning
• protect the heart
• connect you to others
• foster instant relaxation
• make you feel good.

As part of your self development strategy make sure that you do not take yourself too seriously. Lighten up, laugh at yourself, tell yourself a good joke.

A doctor says to his patient, “I have bad news and worse news”.

“Oh dear, what’s the bad news?” asks the patient.

The doctor replies, “You only have 24 hours to live.”

“That’s terrible”, said the patient. “How can the news possibly be worse?”

The doctor replies, “I’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday.”

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Is the pursuit of perfect how to find happiness?

In a new book, The Pursuit Of Perfect, Ben-Shahar  identifies two ways of living, whose distinct patterns of behavior provide an important key to our understanding of success and self-fulfillment. They are the Perfectionist and the Optimalist, and there’s a little bit of both in you and me . . .

I once worked for a company whoose CEO was a perfectionist. He regarded excellence as not good enough. Perfection was what was expected. This resulted in many projects taking ten times as long as they needed to be as we became bogged down in the minute details in order to create this state of perfection.  I came to the view that the insistence on perfection was holding back the growth of the company.

Employees lived in fear that their work, though excellent, was judged not good enough because it failed the test of perfection.

So what is the difference between an optimalist and a perfectionist and do any of them give a clue on how to find happiness?

The differences between the two types of people are:

• The Perfectionist views life’s journey as a straight line. The Optitmalist sees it as an irregular spiral.
• The Perfectionist is afraid of failure. The Optimalist uses failure as feedback.
• The Perfectionist is rigid, critical, and defensive. The Optimalist is adaptable, forgiving, and open to suggestion.
• The Perfectionist focuses on the “destination,” setting goals that are overly ambitious or unobtainable. The Optimalist focuses on the joumey and the destination.

According to Ben-Shahar, we can learn a lot from these types. By rejecting the all-or-nothing thinking of the Perfectionist and embracing the more nuanced, complex mind-set of the Optimalist, we can learn to accept our failures along with our successes — and lead much happier lives.

Which type are you, the perfectionist or the optimalist? The quest for perfection is not the way to find happiness,

For more information on how to be happy download the free book How to Manage Stress and you wil receive a bonus book on how to be happy.

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Positive Relaxation

Would you like some practical tips for practising Positive Psychology?

I once had a friend whose view on life was very negative. I telephoned her and asked how she was. She replied that she was off sick for a week due to the trauma she felt on discovering that her car had been vandalised.

She was unable to see the positive side to situations because her reactions to events were ruled by negative emotions – and often these emotions literally made her feel ill and take to her bed. I wish at that time I had known about Positive Psychology and how its findings could have been used to help her.

A new report from Harvard Medical School. Positive Psychology: Harnessing the Power of Happiness, Personal Strength, and Mindfulness describes many of the concepts of Positive Psychology and teaches how to put positive emotions to work in your life.

Here is a summary of the report:

“Positive emotions have been linked with better health, longer life, and greater well being in numerous scientific studies. On the other hand, chronic anger, worry, and hostility increase the risk of developing heart disease, as people react to these feelings with raised blood pressure and stiffening blood vessels. A Harvard School of Public Health study found that people who are generally hopeful were less likely to develop hypertension, diabetes, or respiratory tract infection than those who were less hopeful.

• Using the positive in your life
• Finding and using your inner character strengths
• Achieving the “flow” experience
• Putting mindfulness to use toward well being
• Developing gratitude
• Savoring pleasure
• Achieving flow experience
• Finding the meaningful live”

How do you start to practice Positive Psychology?

Here are my top tips to help you start implementing Positive Psychology into your life.

• Single Task. Multitasking is the enemy of savouring. If you are walking in the country savour the experience, the sites, the sounds, the smells. Do not make calls or check your emails on your mobile
• phone at the same time.
• Celebrate. If you achieve something or complete a project, celebrate the event with your friends or work colleagues.
• Slow down. Take time to enjoy things. there is no need to rush around. Eat dinner slowly. Have a long hot bath. Learn to relax and meditate.
• Simplify. Is your life too complicated? De-clutter your home. Reduce your options.
• Share the moment. Share precious moments with a loved one – a sunset, a concert, a special candle lit meal.
• Music. Listen to relaxing music

All these strategies help you have a positive and more relaxed attitude to life. If a vandal scratches the side of your shiny new car, sure, be angry for a few seconds then let the emotion go. Do the practical things: call the insurance company, get the car fixed and look forward to driving a refreshed car. Be grateful that your life is positive and you feel no need to scratch other people’s cars.

Read What is Positive Psychology?

There may be a selfish gene in all of us which compels us to act out of self interest. Is this incompatible with self development?

When I was a teenager I was very selfish like most of my peers at that time. As I grew older and became interested in spiritual matters and self development. Then the ideas of compassion, cooperation, selflessness and self sacrificing attracted me.

In Buddhism this is expressed by the  Boddhisatva  ideal – a person who has delayed his own liberation in order to help others. In Christinaity Jesus represents the supreme sacrifice of dying on the crosss to save us from our sins.

Then I came across the theories of Richard Dawkins who introduced me to the idea of the selfish gene. In evolutionary terms, creatures evolve because they are stronger or more adapted to survive.  The mechanics of this involve the so-called selfish gene.

Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, says:

“I shall argue that the fundamental unit of selection, and therefore of self-interest, is not the species, nor the group, nor even, strictly, the individual. It is the gene, the unit of heredity.”

What is implied here is that I my basic nature is to be ruled by selfishness and self interest. Is this incompatible with compassion and unselfishness?

Often the first step away from purely self interest is the practice of cooperation. Usually the arguments about the power of self-interest vs. cooperation are based on moral grounds. However, if you look at this from an evolutionary stand point, could cooperation have advantages for the human species as a whole? As the world is seen to be more and more connected then self interest could best served through cooperation and compassion.

Here are some reasons why cooperation can be seen to be in my self interest:

• If I am reliant on a country  to manufacture the goods that I need, then  it makes no sense to go to war with them.
• If I do not help people, then I will find that people do not help me.
• If my company has a green environmental policy it will  attract more customers.
• If I provide perks to my staff, then they will be less likely to leave my company, and thus save me lots of money on training new staff

As humanity evolves, our very survival could depend on being compassionate, cooperative and unselfish.

The Evolution Manifesto by John Stewart states:

“Cooperation enables living processes to do better in evolutionary terms. Whatever evolutionary challenges they face, organisms will do better by cooperating. And the wider the scale of the cooperation, the more effective it is—the greater the power the cooperators will have over their environment, living and non-living. When evolution discovers ways to increase the scale of cooperation, life progresses in evolutionary terms.”

Your own self interest may be best served by cooperation and altruism. Whether you have a selfish gene or not, then cooperation and altruism are the best way to go. You can start today to include cooperation and compassion as part of your self development strategy.

Happy people have many advantages in life. But can you choose to find happiness or should you be content with where you are?

Gerald is someone I know who is not happy. If you ask him why he is not happy he then replies:

“Life is not a happy place to be.”

If I ask him if he believes that he can be happy he says:

“What’s the point of being happy. I’ll remain sad and learn to like it.

So are there any real advantages of being happy, or is angst the place to be?

The has been lots of research into happiness, mainly amongst Positive Psychologists. This research has shown that:

• Happy people have more friends and social support
• The marriages of happy people tend to last longer
• At work happy people find that their colleagues are more willing to help and assist them
• Happy waiters get better tips
• Happy people watch less TV!

Gerald watches a lot of TV and fits into the profile found by sociologists at the University of Maryland who concluded that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing.

“TV doesn’t really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,” says University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson, the study co-author and a pioneer in time-use studies. “It’s more passive and may provide escape – especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.”

There is a myth that you cannot choose to be happy, but again research has shown that happiness is a personal choice. Gerald chooses to be sad. You can choose to be happy.

If you choose to be happy then a good place to start is by reading the free book: “Designing a Happy Life”. This is a bonus available when you get the “How to Manage Stress”. There is no charge for this.

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Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier

In a recent book “Thanks” by Robert Emmons, editor of The Journal of Positive Psychology, he says that being grateful can help you sleep better – and he has evidence to support this.

On the surface Simon’s life seemed to be going well. He had a beautiful wife, two children, a well paid job, a nice car, a large house and had a network of friends. Despite this, he found it difficult to sleep at night and did not have a positive attitude to his life.

He rarely expressed thanks for the things in his life. For example he:

• Did not tell his wife that he loved her
• Did not thank his work colleagues for their support on the projects they worked on together
• Did not tell his friends how great they were
• Did not give his children a hug to express how much he cared for them

Simon was given Robert Emmons’ book by a friend and began to put into practice what he read.

Soon his life changed for the better.

Robbert Enmons research showed that:

• People who regularly practice grateful thinking can increase their “set-point” for happiness by as much as 25 percent.

• Such increases can be sustained over a period of months — challenging the previously held notion that our set-points for happiness are frozen at birth.

• Keeping a gratitude journal for as little as three weeks results in better sleep and more energy.

Simon’s favourite quote form the book is:

“Our groundbreaking research has shown that grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism, and that the practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness.

We have discovered that a person who experiences gratitude is able to cope more effectively with everyday stress, may show increased resilience in the face of trauma-induced stress and may recover more quickly from illness and benefit from greater physical health.

Our research has led us to conclude that experiencing gratitude leads to increased feelings of connectedness, improved relationships, and even altruism. We have also found that when people experience gratitude, they feel more loving, more forgiving, and closer to God.”

After reading the book, Simon slept well at night and generally felt happy about his situation in life. He not only apreciated the big things in his life such as family and his home, but became grateful for the little things also such as:

• The postman’s smile as he handed him a packet
• The daffodils growing by the side of the road
• The drawing of a flower that his young son made at school

Starting a grateful journal is easy. You just right down between 5  and 10 things each day that you are grateful for. It doen’t matter if you repeat some things. As you continue with the journal you will find more and more things to be grateful for, and soon you will notice that you life appears to be happier.

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