The Secret Of Happiness

There's been a lot of guff written about happiness in recent times. On the one hand, you've got the positive thinking gurus peddling their often simplistic fast track to deep joy and on the other you've got the doom-mongers telling us we're richer, healthier and unhappier than we've ever been.

Despite being somewhat cynical about the way happiness is regarded as the panacea for all ills, I confess to being part of the industry which promotes it as a life-affirming goal. Some see happiness as sentimental dream or fleeting fantasy. But I realise through my work as a hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner that it is possible to create a happy state of mind and spread a little of this magical ingredient.

What makes you happy is only relevant to you. A loving partnership and strong friendships are more highly prized than material things by most of us. It's a given that happiness is not necessarily about millions in the bank, a yacht on the Med or any of those affluent trappings. Many are the tales of how lottery winners lose their friends, community, identity and even their loved ones over arguments about new found loot.

There's no question, cash equals freedom of choice. More to the point, earning it equals a healthy sense of self worth which no trust fund kid will ever know (hence the less than life-enhancing addictions that often fill the gaps in their lives).

In a wealthy western culture, few of us go hungry or lack material goods. The poorest and most disadvantaged have access to housing, healthcare, education, the welfare state, iPods, mobiles and flat screen TVs.

What makes the starving happy is a good meal. It takes more than that to sate an emotionally starved but nutritionally nourished appetite. Whilst not life-threatening, such a condition undermines energy, motivation and focus, impairing the ability to set and achieve goals. High flyers in both primitive and technological societies often start out the hungriest and succeed simply because they try harder.

So it seems that the old fashioned Protestant principle of good old hard graft leads to a very secular kind of satisfaction. And being a bit peckish is no bad thing. It makes those little snacks in life so much more tasty. In this indulgent era of comfort and excess, those who make an effort and choose energy over inertia, those who curb their appetite enough to truly savour all that is plentiful and those who take the time to nurture their loved ones are the winners in the happiness stakes.

Karen Martin

http://www.hypnotherapykent.co.uk

The Secret Behind Happy Hour in Regards to Staff Management

Most people work long hours meeting deadlines and satisfying clients, making most workers lack the time to socialize. The closest that the working class generation comes to socializing is through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or Tagged.

Happy hour has proved to be a very powerful tool in promoting teamwork and smooth flow among staff. Many companies have adopted this fun way of doing things and have actually discovered an avenue that opens up revenues for relaxation. Happy hour is usually a time that is set apart probably once a month, from two in the afternoon when every member of staff officially downs their working tools and mingles with each other and get to know one another well.

At happy hour, the CEO holds hands with the cleaner. This is very powerful in propagating trust between management and staff. You can bet that a company which goes one on one with its employees hardly ever experiences problems when it come to staff management.

It is through such activities that a salesperson can get to have a feel of what the IT person does on a day to day basis and vice versa.

A budget for snacks is provided and all kinds of goodies and soft drinks are shared among employees. Mind you this is not like a party, so alcoholic drinks are strictly forbidden. For the management team who are used to driving to and from work the exercise thereafter proves to be very helpful.

After a successful happy hour which works well preferably on a Friday, the team is ready to face another month of sitting behind their desktops, laptops, steering wheels or whatever else they sit behind without complaining and generate huge profits for the company. In addition, the managers are able to easily apply sound staff management.

Stephen writes rich content on Online Business Programs. He is an Online Business Merchant and his webpage is on Money Making Ideas and Home Business Strategies. Visit his informative and insightful website at: Money Making Secrets [http://moneymakingsecret07.blogspot.com] for Updated Internet Business Solutions.

Great People Skills Are The Secret To Happiness

Having and developing great people skills will bring you happiness in work and in your social and private life. Great people skills tend to attract people. People with great people skills are generally the first to get promoted at work; they are the ones who have good relations with the opposite sex; they are the ones who people gather around at social events and because of these factors, they are the ones who are happier with their overall life.

The number one key to having great people skills is to care about yourself, and equally important is to care for others. Caring about yourself is not about thinking of yourself first. But rather, it's more about respecting yourself and maintaining a way of life that reflects that you care about yourself. When we care about ourselves we reflect that to others in our verbal and non-verbal behaviors. This is reflected in how we care for others. Thus, caring is a great people skill brings us happiness in itself.

Caring people treat others with kindness, rather than cruelty. Kindness can mean different things to different people. However, kindness is rooted in respect for another. This respect is demonstrated in behaviors like intently listening to the other without judgment or interruption, as an example. When we truly listen to another person we become engaged and participate in a meaningful conversation and interaction with them, aiming to developing a relationship that helps them.

One great people skill that will lead to happiness is trustworthiness. When people trust us they want to be around us because they know that they can talk to us about anything regarding their lives, knowing that what they say to us stays with us. A trustworthy person doesn't run around telling the secrets of another, but rather keeps that information to themselves. Also, the trustworthy person doesn't use that information against another.

Another example of a trustworthy person, but more related to honesty, is the one who finds something of value that belongs to someone else. But rather than keeping it for themselves, they do everything in their power to return the valuable to its rightful owner. When a person behaves in a trustworthy and honest manner they will most certainly experience happiness.

Reliability is another people skill that leads to happiness. Family, friends, acquaintances, and employers want to be able to rely on us, for whatever might need to be done or taken care of. Related to reliability is commitment. When happy people make a commitment they follow through with that commitment and, if for whatever reason they can't fulfill that commitment, they take the responsibility of letting the other know. Reliability, commitment and responsibility are all interrelated and each is a great people skill that enhances one's happiness.

The ability to connect with others is a great people skill to have. People who are able to connect with another are empathetic and that empathy is reflected in their conversational relations, both verbally and non-verbally. The body language of the person who can connect with another demonstrates an interest in the other and has patience, which is obviously seen in one's body language. Their body language is presented in such a way that it draws the other in, rather than rejecting them.

Great people skills obviously rely on knowing the appropriate thing to say. Their language is not abusive or threatening, but rather it is insightful and caring. It takes account of what other people are feeling and thinking and reacts to them accordingly in verbal and non-verbal communication. Having great people skills is a real gift because it allows you to put other people at their ease; communication will be made so much easier that you are bound to be happier.

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. This report reveals the secret strategies all high achievers use to communicate with charm and impact. Apply now because it is available for a limited time only at: http://www.howtotalkwithconfidence.com/blog

The Secrets about Happiness

My purpose with this article is to give an understanding of where happiness comes from.

So - where does happiness come from..?

Experiencing happiness is a magnificent ability we are born with,

a wonderful gift we all have in common as human beings.

From the perspective of evolution, happiness can be seen as a

fundamental teaching-tool that nature uses to further our success

as a species.

This tool is especially notable in connection with life's fundamental

needs - in that when we satisfy the basic requirements of sustaining

our existence, we automatically derive a sense of happiness.

For example, happiness is an unmistakable reward we experience

when we eat, drink, meet friends or love. And our happiness is

generally stronger the more pressing the need - The first taste of

water never tastes better, or gives more joy, than when our throats

are very dry and our thirst is very great.

This guiding, or teaching if you will, clearly helps us maintain the

conditions we function best in.

It's for this very purpose that pain overrides almost all other

emotions. In this way, we can't side-step or ignore this alarm-signal

that something is very wrong. It remains with us as an acute

reminder that something must be done.

In general, we experience negative feelings more intensively than positive ones, moreover, these unpleasant feelings are more easily activated.

Happiness is also a feeling we often must strive to experience, while its opposite comes upon us on its own: For while fear, anger and sorrow are instinctive responses to the outer-world's dangers and eventual set-backs, nature has created pleasant feelings and sensations as not so subtle lures to draw us into and maintain desirable, life-favoring situations.

The above is a brief description of happiness from a fundamental perspective.

The fantastic thing about happiness, however, other than what's been described above, is that it originates within us.

The latest research reveals that it is primarily the outlook we have to the world around us that determines our sense of happiness - not the world in and of itself. Everything we believe it takes to guarantee a happy and meaningful life - money, education, children, travel, and so on - don't have a greater impact on our happiness-barometer than our fundamental outlook, not in the long run; nor do difficult, even tragic experiences - divorce, sickness, or the death of people we hold dear. These researchers hold that most of us exaggerate the impact stressful experiences make on the course of our lives. With most of these experiences, even the worst of them, we're able to put the greater part of their affect behind us.

Obviously, there's a limit to how much adversity people can live with and still feel happy and content with their lives. This limit, or border, is passed, as previously noted, in connection with having enough food for the day, a roof over our heads, and people around us we can trust. Most of us have these fundamental necessities of human life.

In general then, it's not a lack, or an abundance of life's necessities that determines our happiness in the long run, but rather our fundamental outlook, our basic way of looking at ourselves and the world around us.

People who are happy and content are those people who perceive, value, and apply their strong sides, accept their weaknesses and take life as it comes.

Download your free Happiness booklet with tips for happiness at: [http://self-esteemnow.com/to_your_happiness.pdf]

Julia Nestler is a Personal Self-improvement Trainer and Author of the breakthrough book "How To Find The Secrets Of Your Self-esteem"

Download your *3 free chapters* of the "How To Find The Secrets To Your Self-esteem" program at: [http://www.self-esteemnow.com/index2.htm]

The Secret of Happiness

There's been a lot of guff written about happiness in recent times. On the one hand, you've got the positive thinking gurus peddling their often simplistic fast track to deep joy and on the other you've got the doom-mongers telling us we're richer, healthier and unhappier than we've ever been.

Despite being somewhat cynical about the way happiness is regarded as the panacea for all ills, I confess to being part of the industry which promotes it as a life-affirming goal. Some see happiness as sentimental dream or fleeting fantasy. But I realise through my work as a hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner that it is possible to create a happy state of mind and spread a little of this magical ingredient.

What makes you happy is only relevant to you. A loving partnership and strong friendships are more highly prized than material things by most of us. It's a given that happiness is not necessarily about millions in the bank, a yacht on the Med or any of those affluent trappings. Many are the tales of how lottery winners lose their friends, community, identity and even their loved ones over arguments about new found loot.

There's no question, cash equals freedom of choice. More to the point, earning it equals a healthy sense of self worth which no trust fund kid will ever know (hence the less than life-enhancing addictions that often fill the gaps in their lives).

In a wealthy western culture, few of us go hungry or lack material goods. The poorest and most disadvantaged have access to housing, healthcare, education, the welfare state, iPods, mobiles and flat screen TVs.

What makes the starving happy is a good meal. It takes more than that to sate an emotionally starved but nutritionally nourished appetite. Whilst not life-threatening, such a condition undermines energy, motivation and focus, impairing the ability to set and achieve goals. High flyers in both primitive and technological societies often start out the hungriest and succeed simply because they try harder.

So it seems that the old fashioned Protestant principle of good old hard graft leads to a very secular kind of satisfaction. And being a bit peckish is no bad thing. It makes those little snacks in life so much more tasty. In this indulgent era of comfort and excess, those who make an effort and choose energy over inertia, those who curb their appetite enough to truly savour all that is plentiful and those who take the time to nurture their loved ones are the winners in the happiness stakes.

Karen Martin

http://www.hypnotherapykent.co.uk

Needful Life Phrases About Happiness - Be Secretly Happy No Matter What is Happening in Your Life

Can you keep a secret? I mean, can you keep a really, really important secret? If you can, then you have a big head start on keeping yourself happy.

Tragedies of many "sizes" happen all the time. Events occur that are way beyond your control. What do you do to keep yourself going?

Steve came through the door of my office looking as though he had been run over by a pickup truck and left for dead. He was literally dirty, clothes torn, blood dripping from his left nostril.

"What happened to you?" was all I could manage.

"I just got mugged up town on my way to see you. That's way it been going these last several weeks," Steve said. (Not his real name.) "My life is a wreck. I messed up and my wife left me and took the kids. I was laid off my job after 17 years. My mother died two weeks ago. Father was already gone. My house is about to be foreclosed. I am just not happy."

Pardon me, but I almost laughed when he said, "I am just not happy." I managed to stifle the laughter, however. Steve didn't say that to be funny. He said it because it summed up his entire life at that moment.

We went to the restroom across from my office and got the bleeding stopped and his face washed. Then back to my office so we could talk. He told me the usual tale of how he had been raised to believe if he just had the right stuff, the correct job, lived in the proper neighborhood, drove this certain car, he would be happy. Instead, all these, plus his family, were gone in a few weeks time.

I said, "I'll teach you a secret. It won't cure your problems, but it will help you deal with them. Can you keep a secret?" I am sure this sounded much too light for him, but he was game for anything at that point.

I told him happiness resided on his inside, not his outside. I said to him that I was not making light of his circumstances, but the secret was he could be happy even in the midst of great discomfort or tragedy if he remembered this secret and applied it in every circumstance.

"You have seen, unfortunately, first had, that depending on outward situations does not bring happiness," I said. "You need to develop an inward space, a hiding place, if you will, where your happiness is locked away. Then nothing can finally destroy you."

I told him all he had to do to have and keep this secret was to decide it was so. Decide that at the Core of the Universe, and therefore his own core, there was deep, profound and everlasting Harmony that nothing could disturb or demolish. He needed to latch onto that Harmony by being in touch with It daily. Taking just a few minutes a day to deeply concentrate on being happy on the inside. That he needed to see this happiness radiating out to "cover" all contingencies.

Is there such a place within each of us? Oh, yes. Make no mistake, we are hardwired to the Core of Harmony of the Universe.

So, I told Steve, the world can be falling apart around us, yet we can remain cocooned in our happiness. Not as a means of permanent escape from the substantial world. But as a place of retreat where we can refresh our spirits and regain our strength for the fray. Steve left a little bit better off than when he appeared dirty and bleeding. As I heard from him over the weeks to come, he was feeling much better about himself and his world.

You, too, can feel much better when you develop and maintain this secret place of happiness within you. It takes just a few minutes each day to retreat to this site of refuge, to reequip yourself for whatever is happening in your physical world. Does it cure problems? No. But it surely helps you deal with them. Decide now, right now, that you have this secret of happiness within you.

And I invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to a Force-Source-Resource where you will find more about inward happiness. Just Click Here. There are several to choose from. One is titled, "Two Life Phrases for Self Development 'I Am My True Self' and 'I Am Conscious'" Remember, one bit of information can give you a lifetime of satisfaction. You'll get that info here.

My blog: http://themeaningoflifewithdrbob.com/blog where we talk about the meaning of life, which is to be happy.

24 Secrets To Happiness

Are you happy? Would you like to be even happier? You can if you understand what brings true, long-lasting happiness. We all have the ability to create a happy life and we all deserve it.

I learned a lot about happiness from my clients. As a Marriage, Family Therapist for 27 years, I first discovered what happiness is not. Many of my clients of all ages had many things happening in their lives that anyone would think would make them happy. To my surprise, men and women who had beautiful homes, cars, successful careers or businesses, good health, wonderful children, and free time to travel and participate in sports, were still very unhappy.

When I guided them through a process called HART, which stands for Holistic And Rapid Transformation, they changed their negative thoughts to positive ones. Then the clients were able to realize the messages below, and believe that happiness was in their grasp. As they focused on what they could do to feel true happiness, their lives improved dramatically.

The following 24 guidelines can assist you to enjoy this wonderful feeling.

Happiness Is....

1. Experiencing my life as an exciting journey.

2. Courageously doing what I want to do even if I'm scared.

3. Realizing that I have everything inside of me to make me happy.

4. Knowing that I'm the only one who can decide what is right or wrong for me.

5. Thinking positive thoughts which are attracting to me what I want and need.

6. Forgiving myself and others for what I perceive to be not okay.

7. Accepting that I'm okay even when I blunder and learning from my mistakes.

8. Realizing that I'm only responsible for my thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

9. Understanding that what people say or do is a reflection of them and not of me.

10. Listening to my inner wisdom, my intuition.

11. Stimulating my mind and caring for my body.

12. Balancing my life between work and play.

13. Understanding that every precious moment is all that matters.

14. Being caring and loving and pursuing my interests and talents.

15. Learning from my past, setting goals for the future, and focusing on the present.

16. Allowing myself to feel all of my emotions and to express them in healthy ways.

17. Taking the time to smell the flowers.

18. Sharing my truth in a loving way.

19. Overcoming my fears and resolving all my problems with win-win solutions.

20. Accepting changes, and flowing with them.

21. Understanding that my true success of each day is how much I have expressed caring to myself and others.

22. Being grateful for all that I have and for all that I am.

23. Accepting that I am okay and I deserve to be healthy, happy, and successful.

24. Giving and receiving unconditionally.

Copyright 2007 by Helene Rothschild, MS, MA, MFT, a Marriage, Family Therapist, intuitive counselor, speaker, and author. Her newest book is, "ALL YOU NEED IS HART!?. She offers phone sessions, teleclasses, books, e-books, MP3 audios, tapes, posters, independent studies, and a free newsletter. http://www.lovetopeace.com , 1-888-639-6390.