HappinessandWisdom.com
IT'S ALL ABOUT HAPPINESS!
Create your Happiness Schedule
Aug 29th
As the final days of Summer arrive and the children go back to school, it is easy to think of ‘Summer Fun’ as something that has to be abandoned until next year. Not so! That said, it might take some additional discipline to ensure that the obligations and the full calendars of the Fall, don’t push-out any chance for fun and games!
We were recently reminded of the joys of creating a schedule. Just the creation of it, made us happy! The implementation — even happier! Here’s what we suggest.
1. Plan your entire week. Yes, we know that not every week is the same. That excuse kept us from sitting down and doing it ourselves for a long time, which we now regret. As long as your schedule establishes a baseline for planning purposes, variations can be taken in stride.
2. Build-in time for family and fun. Unless this is scheduled as carefully as other obligations, you simply won’t make room for it. Remember — the memories you create and relationships you build in your scheduled ‘fun time,’ will be important far longer than almost anything else you choose to do. That said, quantity doesn’t matter nearly as much as quality of time spent. Focusing for an hour and interacting with a loved-one in a purposeful way, is much more valuable than hours in front of the television.
3. Determine what can be ignored, or done by others. Most successful people agree that the delegation of unimportant tasks is key to freeing-up time for what really matters. If you have the resources to hire-out those things you don;t need to do yourself, then do it! If you don;t have the resources, determine what can be forgotten in the near-term, as you focus on the more important tasks. Remember as you do this, that time with family, fun and exercise are not things that can be delegated.
4. Negotiate. There are probably many people in your life who want to spend time with you. If that’s the case, it is a nice problem to have! In addition, you probably have projects upon which you wish to focus, in order to achieve your goals. Through negotiation, odds are good that there is time for everything. Sitting down and having that discussion with family and friends in advance, avoids hard feelings later. In our case, this part was the most important. Between working full time, starting two companies and caring for a 2 year-old, feelings were constantly being hurt when the work ‘interfered’ with family time. However, when the work time was agreed in advance, no hard feelings. This helps the worker focus and allows others to schedule other events around those obligations — everybody wins!
5. Implement, flexibly. The first days of implementing our new schedule were a mess, with a sick baby and work travel interfering. In the past, we might have easily abandoned the schedule as unworkable. Not this time! Knowing from the start that events would get in the way of some of what we’d planned, gave us the ‘permission’ to deviate and allowed us to return to the schedule with confidence the next day.
We hope that you find it helpful to schedule your time, to fit-in all that you want to accomplish. For us, this schedule has resulted in less stress, greater productivity, improved relationships and increased confidence in our ability to really “have it all!”
Any planning/time management tips that you can share?
How do you see the advice above helping you?
What will be a critical part of your schedule?
Thought About Happiness: Play Like a Child!
Aug 12th
We’re back!
After a brief, unplanned Summer break, we’re back to the blog! Rested-up, refreshed and ready to inspire (or at least try to)!
When talking about happiness, fun and laughter are often part of the conversation. For good reason. Fun and recreation are vitally important to our health and provide ways in which we can bond with with friends and loved-ones. Laughter has many benefits – it’s hard to feel depressed when laughing and many claim that laughter provides health benefits. We also believe that fun pursuits and laughter are key ways in which we can experience life in the present. When fully engaged in a fun activity, time flies and it receives our full attention. When laughing, there isn’t much room for anything else, in our experience. These provide us glimpses of the benefit of living fully in the now. There’s no room for worries about past or future. We are fully engaged in the present and our lives, for that moment, are all about happiness.
Since fun and laughter are very important to our happiness, how often do you make them a priority?
When’s the last time you were so engrossed in an enjoyable activity, that you lost track of time?
When’s the last time you laughed really hard?
A recent trip to a waterpark with friends made us think about today’s topic. As we played and laughed together, the worries of our lives melted away. We laughed harder than we can remember laughing in a while (easy to do watching 4 middle-aged adults slide down waterslides!). We enjoyed each other’s company. Surrounded primarily by people 1/3 to 1/2 our age, we became childlike.
Children are great role models for being in the moment during play. They are on high alert for the fun and the funny. They throw themselves into play in a way that many of us have long forgotten. They become engrossed in the simplest activities. They laugh at silly things.
Now, here’s the good news. We can follow these role models and improve our lives in the process. We recommend dedicating specific time and attention to fun and laughter. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that can entertain us, if we let them. We bet you could sit down right now and generate a list of fun and funny things you could do in the weeks ahead. Please do it now!
Thanks to Joel and Cathy who insisted on going to the waterpark for some fun. Thanks Joel for recommending this topic.
What has made you laugh recently?
What are some of the more interesting things on your ‘fun and funny’ list?
If you need some inspiration, try this handy little e-book, which we recommend. Click on the book to check it out or click here for our review.
If you need somebody to watch the kids or pets while you enjoy yourself, try connecting with these folks – highly recommended!
Thought about Happiness: Slow Down!
Jul 20th
We have arrived at the end of this string of thoughts, about how Stopping, Focusing and Slowing Down can create better balance and give you space to find greater happiness in your life. After following our advice to complete the first two steps, this last piece is critical to present and long-term success.
So ask yourself this…..what’s the rush? Has all the hustle and bustle in your life brought you happiness? Has it sped you more swiftly toward your goals, or slowed you down? We suspect it’s the latter, which is funny, when you think about it — the faster we go, the slower we seem to move toward our true goals and the less happy we are along the way.
So why not try this – slow down. After completing the first two steps (read previous posts), you’ve taken time to know what’s important to you and have focused your energy there. While it’s completely understandable to want to rush to achieve that which you desire, you miss the most important part. The experience itself.
While goals and direction in life are great, they are just a roadmap for the journey. The journey itself is what is actually experienced. If you are not happy in the moment, you can never be happy, because the present moment is all there is. Every present moment you spend worrying about the past or the future is a waste of energy. Every moment spent ignoring the opportunities for joy, now, because you are waiting for some achievement to make you happy, ignores the fact that now is all you will ever have. The only way to be happy is to choose happiness in the moment.
Here’s what we recommend as you seek to slow down for greater balance and happiness:
1. Take a break every hour of your day to focus on something that you find pleasing. Something that will make you smile!
2. Feel more, in addition to thinking. Use your intuition to discover and then focus on those things that will make you happy in the moment. Often, when given a choice between something that makes you feel uneasy and something else that makes you feel happier, the latter is the best option for you. Even when pure logic might dictate otherwise.
3. Find some joy and happiness in everything. Most of the time, no matter what task is at hand, there is some aspect of it that can help us learn and grow or some element we can admire. Focus here, and you are likely to be happier!
We hope these thoughts about happiness and balance help. We’d love to hear what you think.
How Happy Are You, About This Week?
Jul 16th
We’re assuming you’re here because you’re thinking about happiness and we would like to ask your to think about happiness that you experienced this past week.
Was there a lot or a little?
Did it come in glimpses, or was it sustained?
Did it increase, or decrease as the week progressed?
If you did not experience the week you wanted, what are you going to do to change next week? Or the week after? You make the choice to move through life as you already are, or to make changes to enhance your happiness. We hope you’re here because you have chosen to further develop your happiness wisdom!
Consistent with recent posts, we see most people moving through life never focused on these typoes of questions. That leaves them caught-up in the day-to-day buzz of activity, taking no time for reflection and re-invention of their lives. We are often guilty of this ourselves, so we hope this doesn’t sound preachy!
If your life isn’t consistently all about happiness, please take some time to ask yourself why. By all means, use this site as a resource – we hope to provide helpful hints, tips and products. That said, we know that the answers to your happiness questions already lie within you…….perhaps this weekend would be a good time to find some of them! We hope you have a fun weekend and will ‘talk’ about happiness again in a few days!
We’d really love to hear what you think…..
What have you done to make your life more about fun and happiness?
Any tips or advice for our readers, to help them enhance their happiness wisdom?
What are you doing for fun this weekend?
Review: The Habit Guide
Jul 14th
Habit Guide: How to be Happy and Healthy
Author: Mike Kinnard
Recommended
We reviewed this several weeks ago, but we strongly believe that no discussion about happiness can be complete with addressing good health. In order to ensure good health, we must eat healthy foods and exercise. Unfortunately, bad habits hold us back.
So much more than a guide to eating healthy, you get plenty of information to help you improve self-awareness, develop healthy habits and eat healthy. Readers interested a holistic view of healthy living will be pleased, with just enough detail included to effect positive changes. In addition, those seeking a guide to eating healthy will not be disappointed, as there are menus and recipes.
An added bonus — the authors update the book continuously and send you links to the updated book. We think that dedication to their product is great!
You can read our short review here or visit the Healthy Habits website to obtain their FREE REPORT and to see if you think this book can help you.
What healthy habits have you developed?
As you’ve become more healthy and fit, what impact has that had on your happiness?
What resources have helped you?
Thoughts about Happiness: FOCUS!
Jul 12th
Our last post covered the importance of stopping and provided some things for you to consider once you do. Today we’ll write about the importance of FOCUS in ensuring balance and happiness. When thinking about happiness, we need to think about where we’re going, to ensure that we’ll get there. If all we do is buzz about the day, from task to task, without ever asking ourselves why, we might find that our life journey is simply running in circles.
So if you followed our advice in the last post. You’ve now stopped, and thought about several things. Before restarting, here are some important actions to ensure FOCUS.
- Create your Perfect Life List. If you’re like us, you’ve heard advice like this over the years, but might have never really taken the time to do this adequately. NOW IS THE TIME. Put down everything and focus on this exercise for a little while. Take a few sheets of paper and start thinking about happiness and about how your happiest, most fulfilling life would look like. Here is the key – don’t limit yourself in any way (you might be shocked to see how hard that is!). Ask yourself throughout the exercise……what would bring me lasting joy? What are my wildest dreams? Make sure to make the list itself balanced, by including items like health, fitness, work, hobbies, family, love life, spirituality, recreation, where do you want to live, how do you want to spend your days, etc What does perfect look like to you?
- Create Your TOP-line Action Plan. This is where so many people get hung-up. DON’T STOP! Just get a few action steps down that will move you in the direction of your perfect life. For me, it was easier to start with what I no longer wanted to do. I listed things I needed to stop, in order to achieve my goals – among those items, the career I had been building tirelessly over the past 14 years and that had brought me very nice material success. Realizing that, opened the floodgates for actions I needed to take to make that a reality. Focusing on how I wanted to live every day, on the Perfect Life List, also gave me some great insights into what I wanted to create. This plan should be a working document, as long as you have a general idea to start, you can get moving.
- Do More. Find those things in your life that will help you achieve your perfect life and do more of them. Sometimes, this will include things that aren’t the most pleasant, or fun, but that teach you valuable skills and provide meaningful experiences you can leverage. For me, I realized that the career I was in the process of leaving (to achieve my Perfect Life) actually had a lot to teach me. I focused on those valuable activities even more. Not only does this help me grow, but it makes me appreciative for the work I’m doing, knowing that aspects of it are perfect for me right now, even though it isn’t my long-term aspiration.
- Do Less. This is extremely important. In order to make room for the ‘more’ above, you have to free-up time. For most of us, this is the most difficult part, letting go of many things that we always believed to be important. When you compare most of what you spend time doing, to your Perfect Life List and Top-line Action Plan, you’ll be amazed at just how little matters to your pursuit of your Perfect Life. Start clearing away all that is unnecessary. Understand that this is a process that takes time and practice. Don’t get down on yourself when you find yourself caught-up in the ‘buzz’ once again. Just STOP and FOCUS again and you’ll continue on your journey.
Future post – SLOW DOWN! The last of the three main tips we have for you to create more balance in your life, starting today, while helping you move toward long-term joy!
It’s worth mentioning in closing, that even though I called it the Perfect Life List, everything you encounter and everything you do is already perfect! All experiences help us to grow in some way. We’re just suggesting that there is an experience of perfection that will be more fun for you……find that!
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What items on your Perfect Life List surprised you?
How does your Top-line Action Plan compare to how you are currently spending your time?
What can you do more of, to achieve a more fun experience of your perfect life?
What do you have to let go of, to create time to pursue what you truly desire?
Thoughts About Happiness: STOP!
Jul 9th
A few weeks ago, in a post about the importance of ‘balance’ in life, I shared 3 tips that I thought could help you:
1. Stop
2. Focus
3. Slow down.
I said we’d explore these in more detail in future posts. I’ll start with ‘STOP’
If you follow this blog, you might have noticed that I stopped posting this week. I was implementing the STOP recommendation in my own life. Before I tell you why, I’ll discuss the importance of this.
It’s very easy in life to get carried away in the day-to-day demands. Given the multitude of them, it’s no surprise that many of us end up buzzing around through the day, from task to task, without stopping to ask ourselves what matters? The trouble is, most people don’t know what matters, because they haven’t stopped long enough to take even the early steps toward figuring it out. While we’re in a constant state of motion, it’s impossible to reflect seriously on our happiness and on the life we want to experience. Until we stop long enough to take stock of where we are and to figure out how where we are, compares to where we want to be, it’s impossible to do the next step – ‘focus.’
I was experiencing this lately. Buzzing around from task to task, working extreme hours and not enjoying my experience. This had an effect on my happiness and it’s difficult to genuinely write about happiness, when I’m not experiencing it – awfully hard to help others with something, when you choose not to help yourself! So this is what I did this week – I simply stopped working on this site and many other tasks for a few days, while I took stock of where I was.
If you are experiencing the same type of struggle, here are some tips to think about if you choose to STOP.
1. Drop everything – sit, reflect, discuss with a trusted advisor. Just refrain from staying caught-up in the ‘buzz.’
2. Feel – as you review what you are doing, see how you feel. What creates a feeling of worry, anger or frustration? What in your life and on your to-do lists create feelings of enthusiasm, happiness, excitement? Write these down.
3. Identify and challenge assumptions – ask yourself, how much of the ‘buzz’ is truly necessary? By applying that ‘necessary’ filter, in the way the term is defined, you’ll be amazed at how much is not ‘necessary.’
4. Explore your motivations – for all those unnecessary items on the list, what are you getting out of it? Even if it causes worry or anger, you’re doing it because you are getting something out of it. You might be very interested to find out what that is. Once you do, you can choose to continue, find another way to get what you want (that’s easier, less time consuming and more happiness inducing!) or let it go – sometimes what we think we need, we really don’t
Amazing thing – the world didn’t end when I stopped and nobody was harmed! The site is still here. The tasks are right where I left them on the to-do list – except for the ones I deleted after steps 2-4 above! I have a much better picture of what’s truly important to me and I am more relaxed and happier.
I did work on the FOCUS and SLOW DOWN steps too, but that’s for future posts!
When was the last time you simply stopped for a while?
When you stopped, what did you discover?
Did good things happen because you took time out?
What tips do you have to share?
Thoughts About Happiness: Days off make us happy
Jul 5th
Hello Dear Readers
A lot of folks have been visiting and we are very grateful. We encourage you to comment and to let us know how we’re doing. We’re still a work in progress, but it is our goal to make this a highly valued resource, to help with the development of your happiness wisdom! The teaching and sharing we do here, certainly helps us with ours!
When thinking about happiness, in preparation for this blog post, our minds gently drifted to what we’d do with the holiday here in the U.S. That got us thinking — happiness is a day off!
So, in the spirit of this revelation, we’ll think about happiness while bike riding, swimming, reading a good book and enjoying a BBQ with friends. That means, we’ll spare you the deep insights about happiness and will simply urge you to create your own today!
Since many of you have the day off, why not take a moment to introduce a friend or two to www.happinessandwisdom.com? We’re sure they’ll be glad you did! Please also register for our new post emails so you don’t miss a bit of the happiness wisdom here!
What are you going to do for fun and happiness today?
When you came here to read about happiness, what we’re you hoping to find?
Why do you want to read about happiness?
Video about Happiness: Epicurus on Happiness
Jul 1st
Video about Happiness wisdom, referencing the work of the philosopher Epicurus. He felt that we aren’t very good at understanding what makes us happy, which is why we are drawn to material things for happiness. Obviously, materialistic pursuits, when they generate any feelings of happiness at all, only do so temporarily. I liked the remark by somebody who commented on this video on YouTube, stated (and I’ll paraphrase ‘IvanTheHeathen,’ to lose the profanity) that we “work jobs we hate, so we can buy things we don’t need.” It got me thinking, how many hours have I worked in pursuit of greater financial rewards, when I already have everything I need?
This continues the theme of last week – balance. If we can live healthy, happy, balanced lives by doing just enough at work, why do we work so hard to over-achieve? Are the financial gains really worth the extra time invested? If you’re like me, the answer is ‘no!’
My proposal (for you…..and a reminder for myself!), when trading time for money, deliver good value, but don’t over-deliver. Eliminate or reduce activities related to consumption (shopping, eating out, etc). With all the extra time you’ll have left over……follow the ingredients for happiness Epicurus discovered – the video outlines them for you!
This Looks Interesting!
Jun 30th
We haven’t reviewed this, but it looked intriguing. Take a look and see if it interests you. If you do decide to explore further, please let us know what you think!
Ping! Success and Happiness Now!
Introducing a revolution in personal development
Visit their website
