Want To Increase Your Level Of Happiness?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: A 12-Step Life-Happiness Program for Everyone

Competencies: self-development, managing self, stress management

Who benefits: Anyone 12 or older

Consultant Usage: good for healing self; help heal others

What’s it about? I was recently reading an interesting article on Huffington Post about a man who devolved into a mid-life crisis at an early age and evolved into a happier person. I like the idea of being happy. I plan to live a long life just to see if it has a happy ending.

So this guy, Jacob Sokol if you are stickler for details, reads a book, finds 12 guiding principles in the book and emerges from his funk. He summarizes the 12 principles in his article. I am going to summarize his summary and urge you to read his full article or even the book. The well-reviewed (by critics I respect) book is The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky, if you are a stickler for details.

It is always good for a writer (in this case, me) to be transparent with his readers (that would be you). When I looked at the list of 12 guiding principles they immediately grabbed me. I thought “yeah, this is good stuff”. The first four were a breeze. I do these. I am a good person, a happy person. But, truth be told, I am stuck on number 7 and I really struggle with number 12. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all experience number 8 at work?

In summary of the summary, I wanted to share these tips in hopes that some of them resonate with you. He we go:

1. Express gratitude
2. Cultivate optimism
3. Avoid over-thinking and social comparison
4. Practice acts of kindness
5. Nurture social relationships
6. Develop strategies for coping
7. Learn to forgive
8. Increase flow experiences
9. Savor life’s joys
10. Commit to your goals
11. Practice spirituality
12. Take care of your body

So, do any resonate with you? Do you think this is a good recipe? Will these principles help you get up when you are having a down day? Hope you have time to think about them.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.