This is almost trivially simple, but it got me thinking. Honestly, how hard can we possibly make it for ourselves to be happy or find happiness these days? We stress out over the biggest and smallest things, and it seems like it’s getting harder and harder to find solace or peace in these modern, go-go-go times. 

Last night I was part of a Holiday Bazaar / Ladies Night at a local country club – representing Applied Happiness and the Hypnosis I do. It was fantastic. I met wonderful people, and made some really great connections with people that wanted nothing more than to just connect and be happy with it. I even ran into an old friend and got the chance to catch up a little.  It made me really happy to be connect and doing what I love. I also learned that a fair amount of the guests were stressed out and looking for things that elevate their happiness. 

So the “short n’ sweet” of it is to follow the credo in the image above. For the next seven days, give it your best shot to appreciate more, accept more, love more, feel more, smile more, listen more, and do more.  In fact, doing more is paramount to the evolution of us as a species. With that, I’m adding one more quick exercise to this.

Learn something new over the next seven days. Learn something completely different.  Then teach it to someone else. You’ll be blown away by how good it makes you feel to learn something new and teach it to another. I promise.

Learn it (watch it) –> Do it –> Teach it

Follow that pattern and let me know how it goes for you!

Share your comments below.  What simple thing makes you happy?

Technorati Tags: appreciation, awareness, being bold, gratitude, happiness, inspiration, lessons, motivation, personal power, positive thinking, positivity, reflection, wisdom

I was reading an article in Psychology Today last night regarding Self-Sabotage (I’d include the link, but the issue just arrived and there’s no mention of it on the PT site yet), and I coincidentally notice a lot of it in my life recently.  Like the ebb and flow of life itself, doubt and self-sabotage come and go in waves. One week we’re operating on pure power – like the fire inside broke through our cracks and we’re burning to reach our goals.  The next week we’re discouraged, so we find something that “comforts” us – 90% of the time that comfort ends up derailing our progress.  The derailment makes giving up look that much more appealing.

In this light, I went searching for what people use, read, watch, and do to stay motivated in the face of challenges. I stumbled onto some amazing images, and I’d like to share them here for you all to enjoy.  I think I’ll make this a regular column here. “Get Inspired” is a great piece to make recurring, right

What images or quotes do you find keep you motivated? Do you have a favorite? Share yours in the comments below!

Technorati Tags: affirmations, attitude, awareness, being bold, clearing doubt, dream, faith, goals, happiness, inspiration, motivation, perception, personal power, positive thinking, reflection, resistance, success, wisdom

Benny Gold: Stay Gold from hypebeast.tv on Vimeo.

Today’s inspiration comes from Vimeo (I know there have been a lot of videos lately) and focuses on Benny Gold.  He’s a NYC designer that started his own brand because it was something he loved. He felt the passion for his own creative expression, so he followed it – through the boredom of working life, and the struggles of being so meticulous. The message here: If you find something you’re passionate about, and love doing, don’t stop driving toward it. You’ll make it. Guaranteed.

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all.

Blake

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, attraction, being bold, business, clearing doubt, dream, faith, goals, inspiration, lesson, motivation, personal power, success, wisdom

Three Days Left

The “Declare & Conquer” workshop is only three days away!  This Thursday night we’ll be at the Palatine Community Center revealing the secrets to overcoming obstacles and reaching what you truly desire in your life. This two-hour class is designed to help you define what you really want, discover what’s stopping you from getting it, and equip you with the tools and resources to make it happen.  Have you ever felt a little “stuck” and wondered how you were going to get moving again?  Has what you wanted been just out of reach? This is exactly what the workshop is designed to help change.  We’re going to introduce the tools of the extraordinary – the secrets of the movers and shakers in the world.  This is such a powerful class that we can’t believe we’re practically giving it away at $30 a person! Oh, and speaking of giving things away, we have gifts for every attendee, and a chance to win more stuff the day of the class!  Head over to our EVENTS page, and REGISTER!

Not in Palatine?

Fear not, friends.  We’re going to turn this into a downloadable course, and offer many of our subsequent classes as webinars in the future.  However, this is the last workshop for this year! In order to get the hands-on learning, interactive atmosphere, and the free gifts, you have to register and get to Palatine.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email Blake directly. We hope to see you all there!

Declare & Conquer Workshop – Thursday, October 28th 7-9pm
Palatine Community Center
250 E Wood Street
Palatine, IL 60067

With Excitement,
The Applied Happiness Team

P.S. If you add a friend when you register, we’ll take $5 off each registration!!  So tell your friends, spread the word, Like us on Facebook – get the message out there!

Technorati Tags: awareness, clearing doubt, coaching, facebook, goals, inspiration, lessons, motivation, personal power, reflection, success, teaching, workshop

Daniel Pink is one of the greatest speakers on motivation on Earth. It’s not so much about getting people motivated, as it is about the science of human potential and what motivates us to tap into that. We’ve all worked a job we didn’t like in some form or another, and I’m willing to bet one of the attributes we didn’t like was the incentive structure. This is a phenomenal talk on motivation in the corporate environment – why traditional incentive structures don’t work. It’s animated so enjoy, learn, and get motivated!

Technorati Tags: Autonomy, awareness, being bold, Daniel Pink, inspiration, motivation, personal power, Purpose, teaching, video, wisdom

It’s official: We’re taking this show on the road! Starting October 28th, we’ll begin holding two-hour workshops in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. This two-hour evening workshop is about defining what you truly want in life, discovering what it’s going to take to get there – including how to tear down that wall so many of us encounter along the way.

Head over to our EVENTS page to get all the details, and to register! The thumbnails on the bottom of the events page will also provide more details about the class, and my personal bio (so you know what you’re in for) – just kidding! This autumn is going to be very exciting, and it’s only the beginning of a whole new phase for Applied Happiness Coaching.

Hope to see you there!

Blake

Technorati Tags: autumn, awareness, clearing doubt, coaching, goals, lesson, motivation, overcoming obstacles, personal power, teaching, workshop

Brian Mattocks over at Rent-A-Smart-Guy has a great post on setting real, achievable goals. There are several variations of the S-M-A-R-T acronym, but this is the original. Read on!

“Many people use goals to drive to a more ideal future. Some goals can’t easily be achieved because they don’t seem to convert well into the SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achieveable, Realistic, Time-Bound) goals criteria. Desires like new skills, future beliefs, or perspectives are often very difficult to get to a level of specificity or measurability. Don’t fret. There is a simple question based process to get you to some very specific objective goals.

“Objective Goals typically fall into the category of SMART goals. Most objective goals can be specific, measurable, achieveable, reasonable, and time bound. Such goals often relate to objective properties in the real world that you can appreciate with your senses. In many ways, setting these goals are easy – because they make sense. It is also easy to get help with objective goals.

“Subjective desires on the other hand are much more difficult to work with. Subjective desires often relate to feelings or perspectives on a situation or problem. Desires like “I want to get better at handling stress” become much more difficult to work with in SMART terms. Others such as  ”I want to have more self confidence” are just as challenging.

“Fortunately, there is a simple series of questions we can use to turn Subjective desire statements into Objective goal statements and make them easier to work with. Here they are:

1. What would different if you achieved your goal? This is a good question because it helps you get to specific behaviors and circumstances you can work on or create. Each of these statements of difference help to describe a potential objective goal or action step.
2. What am I doing now that I should start/stop/continue doing to help achieve my desire?
   In the same way, this question can help you get to specific actions or behaviors that you can change to achieve your desire. Each of these start/stop/continue items may be made an objective goal very easily. For example if you want to stop thinking judgmental thoughts, simply start counting them. Such a goal might be worded “I want to think 15 less negative thoughts a week by the end of the quarter.”
3. What is the emotion/need behind the visible desire?
   Often times, what we think we want is a “desire symptom” of a deeper emotional need, or desire. For example, many people want to lose weight in order to feel more attractive and be more confident with themselves. Others want to lose weight for the more “objective” reasons of health.

“Asking these three questions should get you from a squishy desire into a much harder objective goal. If not, keep asking them. Eventually such questions will drive into an objective statement that you can work with.  This is the key to taking a desire out of the realm of inaction and fantasy and bringing it into a place where you can work to make it happen.”

Rent-A-Smart-Guy is a great resource for getting all your questions answered. They cover topics on business, motivation, sales, networking, IT, engineering, and more. Check Brian and the team out! www.RentaSmartGuy.com

Technorati Tags: desire, goals, lesson, motivation, smart, success, wisdom

Psychology Today has a brilliant article on America’s culture of envy, and wanting be, do, and have more. Moreover, it’s about our own judgements that we haven’t accomplished enough – regardless of what incredible feats we have completed. It rings so true with me because I can hear the parts of my mind screaming at me about what I haven’t done, and how I fail to measure up to people around me; but I also hear the voice that’s amazed with the things I have done when I measure them against my ability as a human being to do them. It’s about measuring your life against your internal dream – not against the celebutantes on TV.

“The Contender Syndrome is subtly different from envy. It’s more a sense of not living up to the best you, rather than not living up to the best Albert Einstein. Some scientists say the feeling of not reaching your potential comes from a discrepancy between the ‘actual self’ (who you are), the ‘ideal self’ (who you’d like to be), and the ‘ought self’ (who you think others want you to be). Troubles arise when your actual self doesn’t align with your other visions.”

Anything from parents or teachers telling you things like, “You can do it. You’re better/stronger/smarter than this.” can start the process of either pushing you to achieve, or create the gap between where you are and where you’d like to be. This gap is the big pickle. Some people never learned how to build a bridge from here (actual) to there (ideal). Often this gap can seem too big to bridge, or simply impossible because the talent needed to live that dream aren’t available. Hazel Markus, a Psychologist at Stanford University, disagrees with this.

“A lot of people think you need the talent. People who end up suffering, feeling like they could have been a contender, are those with the idea that talents are pretty much fixed, so they don’t figure out how to get from where they are to where they want to be,” says Markus. “They don’t even really think it’s possible, so they don’t put the work into it.”

How will you know you’ve achieved it? How do you know you haven’t yet? How do you know you’re not in denial about your achievement? A lot of people see the ideal self and hear the ought self, but can’t get a clear view of the actual self. They may actually be very close to their ideal state, but they can’t see the steps they’ve taken, and the successes they’ve had along the way. Their gap is still too big. One great way to bring your progress into light is to name the greatest pleasures in what you have or do, or the person you are. You’ll see that your values are in some of your greatest pleasures. There’s more to life than ‘keeping up with the Jones family’ and it involves celebrating your successes just as much as you celebrate other peoples’.

Take time to reflect on where you are now, and what you’ve done to get here. You may find that your actual self isn’t far from your ideal self at all. Celebrate that! Follow what makes you happy, and do the work to get there and beyond. Often real, focused work is what separates the contenders from the victors. Success is subjective, my friends. One man’s failure is another man’s success. It’s all about what makes you happy.

“If you’re doing something positive in the world, if you’re productive, if you’re a player; then you’re a success.”

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all,

Blake

Reference: “I Coulda Been a Contender” by Abby Ellin. Psychology Today. August, 2010

Technorati Tags: envy, future self, gap, goals, ideal self, inspiration, motivation, self, struggle

I just wanted to post this for everyone to enjoy. Such true words. See man as he has the potential to become because it promotes him from where he may currently be! Brilliant! It makes me smile when I watch these powerful four minutes. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: inspiration, motivation, positivity, truth, video, viktor frankl

Sometimes the most growth comes from someone asking a powerful question. Suddenly, everything seems to make a little more sense, and we know what we must do from this point forward. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. They are just meant to get your wheels turning, and maybe help you see the decisions you’ve been making, and the ones you’d like to make from now on.

1. We learn from our mistakes, yet we’re always so afraid to make one. Why?

2. What risk would you take if you knew you could not fail?

3. What is your greatest strength? Have any of your recent actions demonstrated this strength?

4. What are the top five things you cherish in your life?

5. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

6. When do you stop calculating risk and rewards, and just do it?

7. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?

8. What do you most connect with? Why?

9. What one piece of advice would you offer a newborn child?

10. Which is worse – failing or never trying?

11. Why do we do things we dislike, and like the things we never seem to do?

12. What are you avoiding?

13. What is the one job/cause/activity that could get you out of bed happily for the rest of your life? Are you doing it now?

14. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?

15. What are you most grateful for?

16. What would you say is one thing you’d like to change in the world?

17. Do you find yourself influencing your world, or it influencing you?

18. Are you doing what you believe in, or settling for what you’re doing?

19. What are you committed to?

20. Which worries you more – doing things right, or doing the right things?

21. If joy became the national currency, what kind of work would make you wealthy?

22. Have you been the kind of friend you’d want as one?

23. Do any of the things that used to upset you a few years ago matter at all today? What’s changed?

24. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you enjoy doing?

25. What you sacrifice the most to be, do, or possess?

26. Really, what do you have to lose if you go for it?

27. How different would your life be if there wasn’t any criticism in the world?

28. We’re always making choices. Are you choosing for your story, or for someone else’s?

Powerful questions can change the very fiber of our construction. They give us a chance to challenge our own ideals, and perhaps shed some light on what we are and are not committed to. It’s important to understand that we’re always committed to something. If it’s not success on out on our own, it’s staying safe in the comfortable success of someone else. If we’re not committed to creating our opportunities, we’re committed to floating around, hoping, waiting, and wishing for circumstance. What are you committed to?

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you, my friends!

Blake

Technorati Tags: inquiry, inspiration, motivation, personal power, powerful questions