Everything you do effects everything you do!

In this rather confusing mind map I hope to convey the integrated way we improve happiness and wellbeing. Improving only one of the boxes has the potential to impact on all of your life. Action and focus in any area of your life can positively affect your overall wellbeing, resilience and happiness

The Indians have a saying- that we are a house with four rooms, emotional, physical, mental and spiritual and we need to visit each room every day if only to open the window.

http://happier-living.blogspot.com/2011/06/small-and-complex.html

Become happier by becoming kinder

You can increase your positive emotion and well-being by
increasing your kindness.
The child psychologist Bernard Rimland, director of the Institute for
Child Behavior Research, found that ‘the happiest people are those
who help others’. In his study, people were asked to list ten people
they knew and then to mark each according to how happy they
thought they were. They were then asked to rate the same people
for how selfish they were. Those who were less selfish were also
more likely to be the happiest.
Why not try this experiment for yourself? Rimland’s criterion for
selfish behaviour was ‘a stable tendency to devote one’s time and
resources to one’s own interests and welfare – an unwillingness to
inconvenience one’s self for others’.

Random acts of kindness can be anything: something
as simple as thanking someone, or stopping to allow a car
to pull out in front of you or letting someone onto a train before
you. All random acts of kindness are a real boost to happiness.

Get inventive with your kindness. It is very important to remember how
much variety matters. We love surprise, so keep your kindness fresh.
In a ten-week experiment Sonja Lyubomirsky asked people to practise
random acts of kindness. What was interesting about this research was that
the effect on happiness depended on the variety and not the frequency.

Don’t let this stop you – the more kindness you show the happier you will feel!
In another study in Japan people were asked to count their kindnesses. The
results showed that happy people became more kind and grateful, and all
participants became happier.

B. Rimland (1982). The altruism paradox. Psychological Reports, 51, 521.
Julia K. Boehm and Sonja Lyubomirsky (2008). The Promise of Sustainable Happiness. University of California, Riverside.
K. Otake, S. Shimai, J. Tanaka-Matsumi, K. Otsui and B. Fredrickson, (2006). Happy people become kinder through kindness: A counting kindness intervention. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7(3), 361–75.

On Education and Passion

This weekend I attended the Sunday Times Education Festival at Wellington College. A fantastic event that combined all that is good and forward thinking in education today with speakers and presentations on a vast number of subjects and perspectives. Michael Gove was great, however he stuck blindly to research that says the A levels most desired by business are english, maths, a language, the sciences, geography and history. This rather contradicted many of the presentations, workshops and discussions on what motivates and engages the young, which appeared to be much more the creative arts and as Bob Geldof highlighted, the creative industries have kept this country on the road significantly over the last 30 years as manufacturing has declined. The gold standard A’s also do not teach the other vital skills required by business, the importance of emotional, moral and social skills, a topic that permeated virtually everything.

The idea of a career appears to be dead yet we are in a world dominated by narrow expertise, we have a shortage of engineers and no idea what industries and skills we will need twenty years from now- or even ten. How can the business community of today define the ‘gold standard’ subjects that we should be teaching? Of course core knowledge is essential but how narrow or how broad is certainly up for debate.  Antony Seldon has taken this issue head on and was campaigning strongly for the broader potential of the International Baccalaureate and the relevance of teaching all eight aptitudes from Howard Gardner’s model of multiple intelligences, as well as the ability to be silent and mindful. Teaching how to use knowledge, as much as what knowledge children receive, seemed to be the thread.

I am struck by a big discussion in the ted group on LinkedIn that is asking ‘Our educational system is failing to help students understand their passions and prepare for the right career. How many years did it take for you to find the right career and feel engaged at work? Is there a way to avoid the sometimes 20 year detour to career happiness??

I am surprised this is not in a coaching or positive psychology group and it is quite a pet subject for me for many reasons- my own school experience and the number of midlife clients I get who realise they followed what they thought they should do rather than their heart and passions. There is no wrong and right here, we change as we mature and experience all that life throws at us, good and bad. It is often not the career path per se that is wrong but the way people are interpreting and valuing what they do. I am not sure if this is an education or a general social issue?

The best way to say it!

How to live more happily
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXI80TqAMQQ

Health and a positive attitude to food

Food is one of life’s best pleasures- are you appreciating and savouring what and how you eat?

 

 

A young man on his gap year teaching in India was struggling to connect to the children on his first day. As he groped for a subject, he asked ‘who likes food?’ The class erupted with excitement and he thought he’d cracked it. His next question, ‘what is your favourite food?’, completely baffled them.

 

 

 We have so much food, and choices of types of food, in the West that we have lost the concept of food as something that keeps us alive. What we do have are  unending amounts of research and information on what foods are best for health, happiness and energy. We devote hours of television time watching chefs cooking ever more exotic and exciting recipes and buying an unlimited number of books and magazines on the subject of food. Research shows that we are living longer and healthier but we are also getting fatter and suffering from more diabetes, coronary disease and cancer in the developed world than ever before. We know the effects of an unhealthy diet and yet we continue to eat and drink unhealthily. So much unhappiness is connected to our bodies and what we put into them that there is obviously much more to it.

 

 

 All food is good for us in moderation. What is not good for us is too much worry about what we are or are not eating. We can get all the information and spend hours buying the right things but the process of doing this can be stressful and all the benefit of eating the right stuff is lost to the anxiety. If food is something that controls us it becomes a cause of unhappiness. The same is true when food becomes a substitute for other pleasures and needs, an addiction that we can retreat into.  

 

 

Love your body as much as the food that feeds it.

When did you last stand naked in front of a mirror and really look at yourself? I am old enough for this to be much harder than it was 20 years ago. We live in a youth-obsessed culture and as we get older we can be made to feel that the natural changes to our bodies should somehow be overcome, hidden and even denied. The sexiest people are all shapes, sizes and ages – what they share is confidence and delight in themselves and their bodies.

Really sexy people are at ease with their bodies.

Everybody has flaws and imperfections. If you focus on your physical flaws rather than seeing what is beautiful about yourself, you will stop enjoying your full physical potential. Eating and body image can become so distorted that pleasure in a body that can run, jump and dance is lost along with the pleasure of eating. If you are young, be grateful for your body now. In 20 or 30 years you will long to have it again.

 Food is a pleasure and preparing food is a wonderful way to be mindful and present. Eating with other people is the best way to savour both food and company. The beginning of friendship normally starts with sharing a meal, in fact it is very unlikely that you have any significant relationships with someone you haven’t eaten with.

Here are some ways to eat well for a healthy mind AND body

• Eat fruit and vegetables daily.
• Make time to cook; cooking your own food is healthier not just because the ingredients are better but the time you spend preparing it can be mindful or social.
• Eat more slowly and relish your food. Take time to really enjoy and savour your food. Deny yourself nothing but take longer eating and relishing what you are eating. Notice what the food tastes of and how it feels in your mouth.
• Eat what you enjoy; keep portions moderate but don’t deny yourself the pleasure of eating.     Eat with someone else.
• Eat better snacks; nuts, dried fruit or home-made pop corn.
• Have regular meal times.
• Bring colour to your plate.
• Take a minute to be grateful for your food and the body it feeds.
• Don’t see food as a problem, see it as the source of life that it is.
• Try finding five physical aspects of yourself that you like, and really take note of what people compliment you for.

 

 

  

Why not give your body a good clean out now and then? Fasting every once in a while is very good for clearing your system both physically and mentally and is still used as a spiritual practice.

 

 

Alternatively give yourself a mindful eating exercise:

Take a piece of chocolate and eat it as slowly as you can, let it melt on your tongue and stay in your mouth as long as you can. Enjoy this exercise with a friend!

Brilliant RSA talks

I love all the RSA illustrated talks, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc this is great.
you can also find Dan Pink at www.ted.com/talks

What does it mean to be good?

What does it mean to be good?

Why do we all agree that the current exposure of the behaviour of the MPs is that they have not behaved ethically? It appears that many were encouraged to see expenses in lieu of the salaries they forfeited, but too many individuals had pushed the collective collusion past a blurred unwritten line. What was acceptable at one level became unequivocal fraud at some unspecified point. The same issue applies to the human rights privacy law becoming a means for a footballer to hide his adultery. It is clear the law was never drafted for such use but a collective collusion has encouraged a general abuse. After the financial collapse in 2008 it is possible to see how far people had pushed the collective collusion behind behaviour that was clearly wrong but technically legal.