"Be Happy: A solid sense of self will help a person to lead a full and happy life!!!!."

Happiness is “the chief good toward which all other things aim.”

Happiness is ......

a journey without a distance,

a journey that takes no time,

a journey that has already

been made.

Scientific studies show that when people are happier, they are more productive, more collaborative, and more creative…The happier people are, the more likely they will be successful in the first place,” says Dr. Killingsworth who created www.trackyourhappiness.org, a scientific project that uses smartphones to study happiness in real-time during everyday life. “While we can’t necessarily be happy all the time, the broad range of benefits that happiness offers gives us a new reason to pursue happiness at work and in life.”

The important role of positive emotions and happiness in responding to stress.

Although stress is an emotional response that can kill us, our emotions can also help us cope with and protect ourselves from it. The stress of the Monday through Friday grind can be offset by the fun that we can have on the weekend, and the concerns that we have about our upcoming chemistry exam can be offset by a positive attitude toward school, life, and other people. Put simply, the best antidote for stress is a happy one: Think positively, have fun, and enjoy the company of others.

You have probably heard about the “power of positive thinking”—the idea that thinking positively helps people meet their goals and keeps them healthy, happy, and able to effectively cope with the negative events that occur to them. It turns out that positive thinking really works. People who think positively about their future, who believe that they can control their outcomes, and who are willing to open up and share with others are healthier people (Seligman, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

The power of positive thinking comes in different forms, but they are all helpful. Some researchers have focused on optimism, a general tendency to expect positive outcomes, finding that optimists are happier and have less stress (Carver & Scheier, 2009). Others have focused self-efficacy, the belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes. People with high self-efficacy respond to environmental and other threats in an active, constructive way—by getting information, talking to friends, and attempting to face and reduce the difficulties they are experiencing. These people too are better able to ward off their stresses in comparison to people with less self-efficacy (Thompson, 2009).

Self-efficacy helps in part because it leads us to perceive that we can control the potential stressors that may affect us. Workers who have control over their work environment (e.g., by being able to move furniture and control distractions) experience less stress, as do patients in nursing homes who are able to choose their everyday activities (Rodin, 1986). Glass, Reim, and Singer (1971) found that participants who believed that they could stop a loud noise experienced less stress than those who did not think that they could, even though the people who had the option never actually used it. The ability to control our outcomes may help explain why animals and people who have higher status live longer (Sapolsky, 2005).

Suzanne Kobasa and her colleagues (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982) have argued that the tendency to be less affected by life’s stressors can be characterized as an individual difference measure that has a relationship to both optimism and self-efficacy known as hardiness. Hardy individuals are those who are more positive overall about potentially stressful life events, who take more direct action to understand the causes of negative events, and who attempt to learn from them what may be of value for the future. Hardy individuals use effective coping strategies, and they take better care of themselves.

Taken together, these various coping skills, including optimism, self-efficacy, and hardiness, have been shown to have a wide variety of positive effects on our health. Optimists make faster recoveries from illnesses and surgeries (Carver et al., 2005). People with high self-efficacy have been found to be better able to quit smoking and lose weight and are more likely to exercise regularly (Cohen & Pressman, 2006). And hardy individuals seem to cope better with stress and other negative life events (Dolbier, Smith, & Steinhardt, 2007). The positive effects of positive thinking are particularly important when stress is high. Baker (2007) found that in periods of low stress, positive thinking made little difference in responses to stress, but that during stressful periods optimists were less likely to smoke on a day-to-day basis and to respond to stress in more productive ways, such as by exercising.

It is possible to learn to think more positively, and doing so can be beneficial. Antoni et al. (2001) found that pessimistic cancer patients who were given training in optimism reported more optimistic outlooks after the training and were less fatigued after their treatments. And Maddi, Kahn, and Maddi (1998) found that a “hardiness training” program that included focusing on ways to effectively cope with stress was effective in increasing satisfaction and decreasing self-reported stress.

The benefits of taking positive approaches to stress can last a lifetime. Christopher Peterson and his colleagues (Peterson, Seligman, Yurko, Martin, & Friedman, 1998) found that the level of optimism reported by people who had first been interviewed when they were in college during the years between 1936 and 1940 predicted their health over the next 50 years. Students who had a more positive outlook on life in college were less likely to have died up to 50 years later of all causes, and they were particularly likely to have experienced fewer accidental and violent deaths, in comparison to students who were less optimistic. Similar findings were found for older adults. After controlling for loneliness, marital status, economic status, and other correlates of health, Levy and Myers found that older adults with positive attitudes and higher self-efficacy had better health and lived on average almost 8 years longer than their more negative peers (Levy & Myers, 2005; Levy, Slade, & Kasl, 2002). And Diener, Nickerson, Lucas, and Sandvik (2002) found that people who had cheerier dispositions earlier in life had higher income levels and less unemployment when they were assessed 19 years later.

CHOOSE HAPPINESS

"I believe I can choose my thoughts 100 percent, but I am only able to do it 70 percent of the time," said Claire, one of my students. I can identify with that. Can you? I encourage everyone who takes the course to practice some form of meditation or self-reflection so as to be more conscious and aware of thinking. The goal is to become the observer of your thoughts. This is so helpful because the more you watch your thoughts, the less reactive you become, and the more easily you can discern between the daily nonsense of the ego and the real thoughts of your Unconditioned Self.

Happiness is always possible—the only thing that really holds you back is your mind. You have probably already noticed that the happiest times in your life are when you are not thinking. It's a wonderful thing to stand outside your ego, to surrender to the flow, and to participate fully in a hobby, in nature, in meditation, in prayer, in art, in dance, in sport, and in the moment. For the rest of the time, your mind is a madding crowd of judgments, fears, guilt, and anxiety. I know of no one who would feel entirely comfortable at the prospect of having a transcript of his or her daily thoughts made public. And yet happiness is only ever one thought away at most.

You choose your thoughts, and you choose your future. Right now, in this moment, you can choose to think differently, and you can choose to create a different future. The choices you make here and now are what shape your fate and destiny. One new perception, one new belief, one new affirmation is all it takes to begin to experience your world differently.

You can choose again, and it is never too

late to choose to enjoy this moment

and to choose a better future.

The most important thing to remember about true happiness is that happiness exists regardless of your life circumstances and regardless of your state of mind. Some states of mind, like gratitude, forgiveness, and humor, make it easy for you to experience the happiness of your original nature. Other states of mind, like resentment, jealousy, and cynicism, make it more difficult—but they cannot wipe out your true nature. And that is why when you change your mind, you can rediscover the joy that has been with you all the while.

The intention to be happy is what changes everything. When you decide with all your heart to be happy, you are calling upon the grace and the power of your original nature to help you out. In truth, happiness is a choiceless choice. Why? Because your Unconditioned Self has already decided to be happy. It wants to be what it is. So, when you choose to be happy, you are not trying to create something that does not exist yet; rather, you are choosing to be yourself again. Happiness is a journey home from the ego-mind to the heart of your Unconditioned Self.

Happiness is

a journey without a distance,

a journey that takes no time,

a journey that has already

been made.

Finding Happiness Through Our Connections With Others

Happiness is determined in part by genetic factors, such that some people are naturally happier than others (Braungart, Plomin, DeFries, & Fulker, 1992; Lykken, 2000), but also in part by the situations that we create for ourselves. Psychologists have studied hundreds of variables that influence happiness, but there is one that is by far the most important. People who report that they have positive social relationships with others—the perception of social support—also report being happier than those who report having less social support (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Diener, Tamir, & Scollon, 2006). Married people report being happier than unmarried people (Pew, 2006)1, and people who are connected with and accepted by others suffer less depression, higher self-esteem, and less social anxiety and jealousy than those who feel more isolated and rejected (Leary, 1990).

Social support also helps us better cope with stressors. Koopman, Hermanson, Diamond, Angell, and Spiegel (1998) found that women who reported higher social support experienced less depression when adjusting to a diagnosis of cancer, and Ashton et al. (2005) found a similar buffering effect of social support for AIDS patients. People with social support are less depressed overall, recover faster from negative events, and are less likely to commit suicide (Au, Lau, & Lee, 2009; Bertera, 2007; Compton, Thompson, & Kaslow, 2005; Sk?rs?ter, Langius, ?gren, H?agstr?m, & Dencker, 2005).

Social support buffers us against stress in several ways. For one, having people we can trust and rely on helps us directly by allowing us to share favors when we need them. These are the direct effects of social support. But having people around us also makes us feel good about ourselves. These are the appreciation effects of social support. Gen??z and ?zlale (2004) found that students with more friends felt less stress and reported that their friends helped them, but they also reported that having friends made them feel better about themselves. Again, you can see that the tend-and-befriend response, so often used by women, is an important and effective way to reduce stress.

What Makes Us Happy?

One difficulty that people face when trying to improve their happiness is that they may not always know what will make them happy. As one example, many of us think that if we just had more money we would be happier. While it is true that we do need money to afford food and adequate shelter for ourselves and our families, after this minimum level of wealth is reached, more money does not generally buy more happiness (Easterlin, 2005). For instance, even though income and material success has improved dramatically in many countries over the past decades, happiness has not. Despite tremendous economic growth in France, Japan, and the United States between 1946 to 1990, there was no increase in reports of well-being by the citizens of these countries. Americans today have about three times the buying power they had in the 1950s, and yet overall happiness has not increased. The problem seems to be that we never seem to have enough money to make us “really” happy. Csikszentmihalyi (1999) reported that people who earned One lakh Money per year felt that they would be happier if they made Two lakh per year, but that people who earned two lakh per year said that they would need Five lakh per year to make them happy.

HAPPINESS IN LEARNING PROMOTES ABILITY

Education, of all enterprises, cannot neglect…the normative aspect of happiness…. We hope that children will learn to derive some happiness from doing the right thing, from satisfying the demands of their souls. Positive emotions flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin. These are chemicals that not only make us feel good. They also improve our memory and ability to learn.

HAPPINESS PROMOTES LEARNING BETTER

Happiness gives you an edge when you need to learn new stuff.

How might that be?

Well, it’s a chemical edge so to say. Happiness and positive emotions create dopamine and serotonin. When these substances are released into the brain it has positive effects on our memory as well as our brain’s ability to learn.

The chemicals increases the brain’s capacity to make connections and make connections faster. That way they make you more creative and improve your problem solving skills.

Not only does happiness and positive emotions increase your information processing skills, they also help you memorizing the new information, and help you access it faster in the future.

Example of how simple happy thoughts help us learn better 

It really takes very little to get this learning advantage from happy and positive thoughts.

Just take a look at the experiment where a group of researchers had 4 year old children doing different cognitive tasks involving blocks of different shapes. One group of kids was simply asked to put the blocks together as fast as possible. Another group was given the exact same task but before starting the children were asked to think of something that made them happy.

The children who were asked to think happy thoughts before starting the task did far better than the others and completed it faster and with fewer errors.

That is a quite astonishing finding! If something so simple as thinking on something that makes you happy before starting a task can significantly improve your performance, imagine the potential of making this into a habit and doing it on a consistent basis.

The fact that it had an effect on children at only 4 years of age also shows that simple positive thoughts have an effect. The children probably thought of something like their favorite toy or candy.

The smallest things can improve your cognitive powers. The book “The Happiness Advantage” gives examples of how easy you can boost your mental powers and improve in areas such as job performance.

And that’s not all. Happiness has many other positive effects 

Here are some of the other advantages of happiness and a positive, optimistic mindset: You get a better immune system You live up to 10 years longer Your eyesight is improved.

HAPPINESS AT HOME PROMOTES HARMONY IN LIFE

Our homes are an extension of who we are: what we do within the walls of our abodes shapes our mood, affects our productivity, and influences our outlook on life. Scientific studies have shown that we can have an impact on our happiness by adjusting the tiny little habits and routines that constitute our daily lives — we are, in fact, in control of our outlook on life.

1. Balancing work and home life

It’s not easy balancing your work and home life, but how you manage it can make quite a difference to your relationship with your family. Having a balance between work and home – being able to work in a way which fits around family commitments and isn't restricted to the 9 to 5 – boosts self-esteem as you're not always worrying about neglecting your responsibilities in any area, making you feel more in control of your life. Your family will be happier to see more of you, and you'll have a life away from home.

2. Look after yourself

Parents often spend all their time looking after everyone else in the family and forget about themselves. If you don’t look after yourself, you can end up feeling miserable and resentful, and you won’t be able to give your children the support they need. Admit to yourself that you actually have feelings and needs of your own. It’s not selfish to treat yourself once in a while! It doesn't have to be expensive - but putting aside some time to do just what YOU want to do, even if it's only 10 minutes a day - is so important.

3. Discipline

Rather than thinking of discipline as a punishment, you should use it as a way of teaching your children how to meet their needs without hurting or offending anyone. While you may be angry, it can help to keep calm and teach your child how he or she could have handled the situation differently, and how he or she can go about it differently next time. This way is both more positive and more constructive.

4.Setting Boundaries

We often use boundaries to protect children from harm or danger. But it is important that you try to explain why boundaries are there, rather than issuing orders – for instance, if you pull them away from an open fire explain why. Children may be reluctant to follow instructions if parents command them. However, an explanation as to why the instructions are important will help your child understand, and therefore cooperate.

5. Communication

Communication is important – during both the good and the tough times. Children often find it hard to put their feelings into words and just knowing that their parents are listening can be enough. Talk about yourself – not just about your problems but about your daily life. If they feel included in the things you do they are more likely to see the value of including you in the things they do.

6. Quality Time

Try to organise some time together as a family a few times a week – perhaps three meals a week you could sit down to eat as a family. This will give you all a chance to connect and talk about the important issues, as well as the more fun topics. Ask your children to help you with the chores or to run errands. They may protest but they will feel included in your life rather than being an outsider.

7. Joint Decisions

With older children, it is normal for them to test the limits of boundaries to see what they can get away with. You may need to adapt boundaries as children grow into teens – it can even help to involve your child in the negotiation of new boundaries. Too many restrictions will be hard to keep on top of, so it is a good idea to work out which boundaries are really important to you, such as the ones for your children’s safety, and which boundaries are not worth fighting about. With fewer restrictions, your children will appreciate that the boundaries you do set are serious.

8. Comforting

It is important for a family to be there for each other through the hard times, as well as the good times. If there is a family tragedy, or a family member has a problem, pulling together can really help. Your children will need your help at this time, and it is important to be open and communicate with them. They will need reassurance and explanation, and will react differently depending on their ages. It can also help to talk to someone impartial.

9. Be flexible

More than anything, children just want to spend time with their parents. It can be lots of fun to make time for an impromptu game or an unscheduled trip to the park, as well as being something that you and your children will remember fondly. It’s good to have a routine, but it’s not the end of the world if it’s interrupted from time to time for spontaneous fun and games. For busy families, it can be useful to schedule in a few hours every now and then for a lazy afternoon together.

10. Spend quality time with your partner

It can be difficult to find time for you and your partner once you have children, but it is important to make time for each other. After all, children learn about relationships from their parents. Make sure you communicate with them frequently about all the day to day matters, as well as just things you enjoy talking about. Try to organise time that you can spend with each other, whether it’s going out for a meal, or just relaxing in front of the TV together.

HAPPINESS PROMOTES PRODUCTIVITY IN WORKSPOT

Here are ten key reasons why creating a workplace and an office environment that people love is critical for your business:

1. Happiness has a multiplying effect

Happiness is contagious and, when encouraged, can spread throughout an entire company. Employees who take joy in their work make excellent role models for their fellow workers and encourage them to also take joy in their work.

2. Happy employees are successful employees

Employees who genuinely enjoy their work are more productive, happier, and more successful. This increases self-confidence and inspires greater performance and greater success for both employee and employer.

3. Happy employees have the right attitude

Unhappy employees have a negative attitude that can permeate their work and stifle job performance and creativity. Happy employees, on the other hand, have a positive can-do attitude that allows them to succeed.

4. Reducing stress increases productivity

Stressed-out employees are distracted employees. This can have a devastating effect on productivity. Eliminating stress and worry can lead to an instant productivity boost.

5. A positive work environment encourages risk-taking

Business is not about playing it safe. Business is about taking the right risk for the right rewards. Happy employees are more likely to take calculated risks, while unhappy employees are more likely to play it safe.

6. Happy employees support each other

Positive, fully engaged employees are more willing to support fellow workers and to provide positive support and encouragement for group projects. And happy employees are more likely to ask for support if it is needed.

7. Happy employees are not afraid to make mistakes

A supportive work environment encourages your team to learn from their mistakes rather than fear them. Mistakes can be a powerful learning tool that can lead to unforeseen success. Workers who are afraid to make mistakes will miss important learning opportunities.

8. Leaders lead by example

Managers who take real joy in their jobs - and encourage their workers to enjoy their work - inspire confidence, dedication and loyalty. Leaders who set positive examples are a critical component of the success of any business.

9. Happiness inspires creativity

Innovation is the lifeblood of any business, and happy employees are inspired, creative employees who will create the solutions your business needs to succeed.

10. People like to work with happy people

Finding joy in your work can yield enormous benefits by improving relationships between both employees and employer. Happy workers are more willing to work together for the common good, more likely to encourage company loyalty, and more like to encourage the strong team building that is vital to your company's success.

Creating a work environment that is fun and happy is not easy. The more you try the bigger dividends it will pay.

Building a successful company (or living a happy life, for that matter) is not about embracing someone else's philosophy, but staying true to your own beliefs about the world and learning from the mistakes you make along the way.

BE HAPPY!!!! POST YOUR REFLECTIONS AND FEEDBACKS AS COMMENTS.......