Leadership Lookout

This post regards consultant and author, Stever Robbins, (www.steverrobbins.com) who first caught my eye with his e-book on leadership, A Lot More Than Attitude (grab it from http://www.alotmorethanattitude.com because it won’t be there much longer.)

In his most recent newsletter, How to Stay Up When the Economy is Down: 5 Tips to Get You Started, Stever tells us about, “Happy for no Reason,” a best-seller written by his friend and author Marci Shimoff, now being released by New York Times in paperback.

She gives five tips–and I *love* tips. You can read her article here and find her new book at www.happyfornoreason.com/mybook. Researchers in the field of positive psychology have found that we each have a “happiness set-point,” that determines our level of happiness. No matter what happens, whether it’s something as exhilarating as winning the lottery or as challenging as a horrible accident, most people eventually return to their original happiness level. Like your weight set-point, which keeps the scale hovering around the same number, your happiness set-point will remain the same unless you make a concerted effort to change it. In the same way you’d crank up the thermostat to get comfortable on a chilly day, you actually have the power to reprogram your happiness set-point to a higher level of peace and well-being. The secret lies in practicing the habits of happiness.

Here are the 5 tips:

1. Incline Your Mind Toward Joy… get into the daily habit of consciously registering the positive around you: the sun on your skin, the taste of a favorite food, a smile or kind word from a co-worker or friend. Once you notice something positive, take a moment to savor it deeply and feel it; make it more than just a mental observation. Spend 20 seconds soaking up the happiness you feel.

2. Let Love Lead. One way to power up your heart’s flow is by sending loving kindness to your friends and family, as well as strangers you pass on the street.

3. Lighten Your Load. To make a habit of letting go of worries and negative thoughts, start by letting go on the physical level. (Give or throw away several items a day.)

4. Make Your Cells Happy. Your brain contains a veritable pharmacopeia of natural happiness-enhancing neurochemicals–endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine–just waiting to be released to every organ and cell in your body. To dispense some extra Joy Juice–smile.

5. Hang with the Happy. We catch the emotions of those around us just like we catch their colds–it’s called emotional contagion. So it’s important to make wise choices about the company you keep.

“Happily ever after” isn’t just for fairytales or for only the lucky few. Imagine experiencing inner peace and well being as the backdrop for everything else in your life. When you’re Happy for No Reason, it’s not that your life always looks perfect–it’s that however it looks, you’ll still be happy!

For the entire article go to:www.happyfornoreason.com/mybook

Filed under: Article, Passed On, Uncategorized