The Happiness Habit

You can’t always determine what happens to you, but you can always decide how you respond. If someone says something to you or someone does something that you don’t approve of, you can choose how you react.

‘a non-ordinary state of consciousness’

If you woke up this morning and are having nothing more than an ordinary day, you are more fortunate than the one million people who will not survive to the end of this week. If you have never experienced the horrors of war, the agony of torture or the loneliness of imprisonment, you are better off than 500 million people on this planet. If you can put food on your table, clothes on your back and have a place to sleep safely, you are richer than 75 per cent of people in this world. If you have a few quid put away or even just a little money left over at the end of the week, you are among the wealthiest 8 per cent of the world’s population. If this is the case, why is it that many of us are not as happy as we ought to be?

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. JUST SHUT IT DOWN!
If you decide right here, right now, that that’s it, you’ve had enough, it’s time to move on, then the mantra is for you. Look at it this way, you tried giving out to yourself but did it help? No. You complained at yourself but did that help? No. You criticised yourself, did that help? No. You moaned at yourself, did that help? No. None of those things ever really helped you, so what would be the point in continuing on that path. There’s no benefit or use in it at all. Instead say to yourself, ‘In future if I as much as say a bad word to myself then I’ll say shut the f**k up.’ Then you can prevent those negative, disempowering feelings.

The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.
Victor Frankl

If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got

Think of it like a red light on a machine, when the light goes on you are supposed to do something and if you don’t it will have a knock-on effect. Before you know it all sorts of things fail to work properly and ultimately become dysfunctional. So the red light is a good thing, not necessarily a welcome thing but overall a good thing. Emotions are just like that.

Tell your inner critic to STFU. And rather than worrying about it think what you can do about it.

We human beings like to feel that we’re right. This is what I call our God Complex. Psychologists call this a ‘self-serving bias’. Not only are we right but we believe that we can do no wrong either. We like this sense of certainty. It gives us a feeling of control over our world. However, your God Complex doesn’t work in your favour all of the time.

he reality is, if you focus on where it is you want to go, you will get there. The problem for most people is that they give up too easily.