Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

A new study, reported last month in the media and about to appear in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, looked at the way our bodies produce antibodies in response to infection.

(Flu vaccines were used as a proxy for pathogens because the body’s response is similar for the purposes of the study.)

Not everybody has fun flu fighting

In the first experiment, Two groups of women were given flu vaccines. The high self-discrepant group - women who were displeased with themselves and their progress toward goals - produced fewer antibodies in response to the vaccine than a second group of women who were satisfied with their lives and goal progress. The levels stayed low for more than a month post-vaccination.

In a second experiment high self-discrepant women were asked to write - one group wrote about goal-related concerns, a second wrote about daily activities. The first group reported fewer flu symptoms and showed higher antibody levels.

Happiness life strategy

To have a strong immune system it helps to be on track with our life goals, or at least to be at peace with our progress.

But if we can’t, there’s still hope for fighting the flu.

By getting our disappointments out of our head and onto the page, we can be more rational in examining our expectations, more clearheaded in questioning our approaches and more constructive in coming up with alternative ideas.

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, maybe we should eat it while writing.

Image: ppreacher

Thomas Leonard, considered by many to be the father of life coaching, coined the term ‘irresistibly attractive’ to describe the drawing of people, ideas and opportunities to you rather than the pursuit or seduction of these things by you.

Here are his top 10 steps to becoming irresistibly attractive, reproduced verbatim from
http://www.topten.org/public/BK/BK2.html

The Top 10 Steps to Becoming Irresistibly Attractive

1. Don’t need much.
If you need something, usually it will run away/escape you. Get your personal and financial needs met first and you’ll find yourself attracting vs seducing.

2. Think big, really big.
Attraction occurs when there is a healthy vacuum between where you are and what you want to have happen. The wider the gap, the greater the pulling power of attraction.

3. Eliminate the holes in your life.
Where are you being depleted? By whom? Plug those holes by extending boundaries, raising standards, resolving past issues, healing. Attraction won’t find you until you’re ready. Get ready.

4. Pay attention to what’s happening to/around you RIGHT NOW.
Attraction LIVES in the moment, not in the future. Are you responding fully to both the problems and the opportunities that are occurring — in force — right now, in your space? Gotta start here, where attraction can find you.

5. Learn from people who are naturally attractive.
Some people are; some people aren’t. Hang out with those who are and emulate them. And ask for help. They’ll be happy to tell you how it works. Just be ready to make changes in your thinking, assumptions, actions and behavior.

6. Increase your awareness.
Sounds trite, but it’s necessary. Attraction is a subtle phenomenon. You won’t feel it or get it until you’ve increased your awareness of yourself, those around you, how you think, your life assumptions.

7. Add value to whomever or whatever you encounter.
We all have something to add. Add it. If you don’t have enough to add, learn a new skill. When you ADD what you have to other’s lives, whether they are clients, friends, potential customers, family, YOU become much more attractive.

8. Tell the truth.
This means more than not lying. There is a level of telling the truth that will truly set you free and attract others to you. And, there is a way to tell the truth from a place of love vs power. Usually having awareness and advanced phrasing is what helps this process occur naturally. That, plus having enough reserve in your life so you can afford any consequences of telling the truth.

9. Build a reserve in all areas.
When you have enough money, time, space, love, ideas, opportunities, friends, you’ll become an even stronger magnet for what you want — because you won’t NEED it.

10. Do what YOU want to do in life.
We’ve all been overly influenced by shoulds, oughts and have-to’s. So much so that what you/we want to do has been suppressed WAY down deep.

Happiness life strategy

Leonard’s idea of attractiveness - of being the kind of person who draws to you the things you desire, rather than having to madly chase them - well, it’s a very attractive idea. But I find his steps a little overwhelming. How can we apply them in our own lives?

One approach is to read over each one and see if you feel prompted to make a particular change or take up a certain action that gels with where you are now. Then you could re-visit the steps in, say, a week or a month (I always diarize tasks I want to remember) and notice what speaks to you then. That way, you can slowly absorb this notion of becoming irresistibly attractive and allow it to permeate your life.

And if it still seems a little overwhelming, maybe that’s not a bad thing. As Leonard says, you want a ‘healthy vacuum between where you are and what you want to have happen. The wider the gap, the greater the pulling power of attraction’.

Image: mike@bensalem under the terms of a creative commons license

Review Step 1: Run a reality check

Review Step 2: Translate ‘what’ into ‘when’

Review Step 3: Focus on progress, not perfection

Step 4. Make it fun!

Don’t be too earnest with your resolutions. Adding some fun to your goals can help you stick with it when your motivation’s down.

Here are some ideas and accoutrements that can add a little levity to getting your goal.

Study
Colored highlighters, pens and sticky notes; funky folders

Exercising
Music, podasts or audiobooks; cute workout-wear

Being a better cook
Your favorite celebrity-chef DVDs; beautiful cookbooks

Being less grumpy
Comedy DVDs; funny novels

Taking up camping
Sorry dude, you’re on your own

Also remember to celebrate your successes. Acknowledging what you’ve achieved reinforces your efforts and helps strengthen your persistence muscles - so you’ll be in great shape for the next goal you want to pursue.

Is it 2009 already?

Image by Crystl under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Review Step 1: Run a reality check

Review Step 2: Translate ‘what’ into ‘when’

Step 3. Focus on progress, not perfection

Once you’ve got a sensible target that’s embedded into your schedule, it’s important to focus on progress, not perfection. As long as you’re heading in the right direction, rest assured that change is happening. Keep going and you’ll get there! Once you start obsessing about the 4 M&Ms you ate, the 1 interview out of a several that blew or the single novel-writing session you missed because your mother-in-law was visiting, your hard drive died and the kids all had a nasty bout of ebola, it’s game over.

It helps to look back to where you started from and remind yourself that you’re slowly but surely changing your life. Seeing how far you’ve come reassures you that change is happening, even if it’s not as fast as you’d like.

It can also be motivating to look ahead to this time next year.

• How will you feel if you’ve achieved the goal but it took twice as long as you’d hoped?
• And how will you feel if you gave up because it didn’t happen fast enough?

Don’t let short-term hiccups distract you from the big picture. Keeping your eye firmly on the up-trend in your life it a good strategy for maintaining motivation over the longer term. 

Tomorrow: Step 4. Make it fun!

Image by blumpy under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Review Step 1: Run a reality check

Step 2. Translate ‘what’ into ‘when’.

So you’re starting the year with a realistic goal - now what? Any goal - anything you want to do differently - needs a diary entry that converts it from a vague what to a crystallized when.

Whether it goes in your Outlook, your Filofax or your head, it needs to be recorded - or you can pretty much fugeddaboutit.

Here’s how to convert a what into a when:

Yuk: I’m gonna take up exercise next year.
Yay: I’ve scheduled 20-minute lunchtime walks on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

It’s important when time-tabling your whens that you don’t wait for the scheduled time to arrive before you decide what to do with it. Whether your resolution is to go on more outings with the kids, write that novel or find a new job, make planning the project part of the resolution. This takes the sting out of getting started, taps into your motivation when it’s high and helps you make some early strides.

For instance:

Yuk: So kids, waddya wanna do this weekend?
Yay: Hey kids, how about going to the aquarium on Sunday afternoon?

Yuk: I’m gunna write that dang novel this year, so help me!
Yay: I have a rough plan for my novel and I’ve split it into small chunks. Each week, I’ll tackle one of the chunks.

Yuk: I hate my job. Gotta find me a better one.
Yay: I’m taking [friend's name] to lunch to help me brainstorm all the things I need to do to find a great new job. Then I’ll do a couple of tasks each day/weekday/weekend.

By converting your resolutions into diarized tasks, you boost your chances of making the changes you desire in 2008. Then you have to keep it going…

Tomorrow: Step 3. Focus on progress, not perfection.

Technorati Tags: new year’s resolutions,goals,goal setting

Image by imurdock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.