Simplify. It’s clarifying. Then one can focus. Focus on what is really going on. What you feel right now. What most matters to you. What best serves the situation. Gratefulness. "First things first" will be apparent. After all, "Life is short, and many of us tend to clutter our lives with things that we do not really want to do.”
Focus next on self-esteem.
We earn self-esteem when we learn self-confidence and self-respect. That may be the first step towards living a happier life.
Self-confidence comes from our feeling of competence in responding to the difficulties and the opportunities we encounter in our work and personal life. Self-respect means we feel worthy of being happy. That’s what psychologist Nathaniel Branden’s believes. He wrote, “Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”
Self-esteem helps us become independent thinkers, according to Tal Ben Shahar, author of the practical new book, Happier.
Paradoxically it also enables us stay open to hearing others’ differing views, I believe. This path towards a positive and resilient outlook begins with giving oneself the permission to feel.
“Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning.”
Want to grow up into happiness? Here are two tips I’ve found especially helpful from, “the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear him.”
1. Sweat it out. Enjoy an immediate, free mood elevator by getting in vigorous motion more often. A Duke University study showed that working out for 30 minutes three times a week” is equivalent to popping Zoloft.”
2. “Accept life as a roller coaster. Optimistic people have ups and downs like everyone else, Ben-Shahar says. "The difference is that happy people realize that if they're sad, they'll get over it," he says. "There's a misconception that being happy means being on a high and having positive moods all the time. That's not what happiness is. If you're happy, you have a life — overall — that you find both meaningful and pleasurable." Methinks Gretchen would agree.
There’s more to the growing popularity of the practical application of positive psychology to everyday life and its “cash value.”
