Category Archives for happiness

Holiday Shopping: What People Really Want

What people really want for the holidays fulfills both an immediate and forever need. It is not what you think.

People go crazy figuring out what to give people for the holidays. They peruse catalogues, spend hours online, wait for a space to park their cars at the mall and trudge through throngs of shoppers going from store to store.

Often people leave wish lists online or in chain stores allowing others to choose from a variety of gifts the recipient actually desires. That process takes out the guesswork of choosing appropriate and desirable items.

Great, so these days gift giving can be less of a hassle than in years gone by.

Yet all the gifts in the world represent money spent. Does someone love a person more because they buy more expensive gifts?

If you are parent do you feel you have to spend the same amount of money on each child’s gift to show your love is the same across the board?

Is a homemade gift more or less valuable than store-bought items?

Frankly all those questions, all those seeming conveniences fail to touch the single priceless gift that everyone yearns to receive.

Why?

What people really want is not something tangible. You cannot put this desired item in a box, wrap it with festive paper and decorate that package with a beautiful bow.

The most desirable gift of all is priceless and amazingly affordable. In fact no one can claim the inability to offer this gift to anyone and everyone. This gift is intangible.

What do you want from your partner? What do you want from your kids? From your parents? From your friends? And even from your boss and the clerk in the store?

You want attention. You want to be the center of attention – even if for just a few minutes. You want the love that comes with undivided attention focused just on you.

What every person on the planet really craves is knowing he or she is so lovable that someone willingly clears their agenda of other thoughts to pay full attention, not 99% but 100% attention, on them.

The more time and focused one-on-one attention a person receives the greater and the more lasting the gift. Self worth means everything to every person. Knowing one deserves full attention – being listened to, honored and respected just as they are and just as they are not – unfortunately exists as something outside one’s realm of possibility for most people regardless of age, gender, position or nationality.

Ideally people live the habit of being fully present when with another individual. However that way of being in the world remains foreign to most people. After all you cannot live what you do not know. And to know something means to experience it.

You can create a new habit. You can give a gift of a special time or date to spend one-on-one with each person on your list. Note: for those people who live miles away you can spend that time on the phone or online chatting.

Start with a commitment of a special date to do what the recipient wants to do (not what you decide they want to do). Don’t stop there. Develop your listening skills to become someone who others count on to be fully present with them.

Powerful Questions

Every day you ask yourself questions. Some questions empower you to move forward along the path to happiness and your Very Excellent Life. While other questions drag you down and keep you down for the count.

You know, questions that steal your power and depress your self esteem pop into your head all day long. You make a mistake and ask, “Why did I do such a dumb thing?” Or, “You ninny. Why did you ever think you could do something like that anyway?”

Catch my drift?

What if instead of putting yourself down with your questions you created a new habit by asking questions like, “How can I smile even more today?” Or, “What one action step can I take today that will improve my health in the long run?”

Do you see how you can ask yourself questions that focus your energy on what you do well and the ways you take care of yourself to improve your well being? Do you think your world would change if you made a habit of asking yourself similar questions every morning as part of your daily routine?

You do follow some sort of daily routine, don’t you?

Now why would I ask if you do certain actions daily? Why would a routine make a difference for you?

In this busy world where even kids carry personal organizers to keep track of all their activities, self-care often falls by the way side. Taking time to prepare for the day, to meditate and focus within, to exercise – all those activities make a difference in how your day goes.

For me, personally, if I do not take time to meditate in the morning I rarely get to it later in the day. And my day goes noticeably smoother and easier when I begin it with meditation. I receive answers to all kinds of questions in my personal and professional life.

When I skip my exercise routine wind up getting stiff or achy.

Of course I include spiritual aspects in my daily routine and never ever miss making at least five entries in my gratitude journal.

While I consider each aspect of my morning ritual, so to speak, necessary to my overall well being and enjoyment of life, I know that adding the three questions that empower and upgrade y life made a dramtaic impact on how my day goes. even more important, that habit serves to focus my attentionon all that is already good in my world and can be even better.

Life was never meant to be a struggle. We are here to enjoy al life has to offer. When we fail to live in happiness know that is your own doing. There is no one to blame and no circumstances that interfere with how you live your life. It really is all about you.
So what kind of questions will you ask yourself today? And tomorrow? How will you make the difference in your life that you know you really want to make?

Change: How To Make the Changes You Know You Want To Make

You know you want to make some life changes. Your life is not working out quite the way you expected it to. You are not at the place you planned to be by this point. Happiness eludes you.

Congratulations on knowing you need to take different actions than what you have so far in order to achieve new and different outcomes. After all, if you keep doing what you’ve always done then you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.

Great. So you know you want to change. The questions is how in the world do you make those changes? How do you step out of your box and walk a new path?

How do you teach an old dog new tricks? One step at a time.

First decide what you want to change. How will your life look, what will your daily experience be like when you live with the new habits in place?

My guess is your list of desired changes includes more than one behavior. The thing is you will not succeed at all if you jump into many different new behaviors at once.

The only thing you will experience is overwhelm. And overwhelm quickly leads to quitting.

To really live the life you dream about you want to be persistent and consistent in acting on new behaviors while ceasing to perform all the behaviors that keep you stuck.

Sounds simple. The trick to accomplishing that desired result is to take just one small step at a time.

Start today by doing just one small action differently from how you used to do it. If you put your left pants leg on first then today put your right pants leg on first. If you take a right turn out of your driveway when you leave home then starting today make a left turn and create a new way to your destination. (Get the metaphor?)

You can do one small thing easily, right? You can commit to making one small change and follow through consistently, yes? I am talking about one thing.

Decide which one thing you will change this week and do it every day for a week and then, after successfully adding this one new small change – then add a second new small change.

If, for any reason, you find yourself forgetting to continue with either of the new behaviors then go back to doing just one.

You want to consistently repeat the new behavior for at least 28 consecutive days to instill a new habit. If two new action steps work then do two as described above.

Give yourself time. Remember that slow and steady gets you there – often more dependably than quick and impetuous. With each small success you feel encouraged to create another success with another new behavior.

As you see your stress level drop you will find all the motivation you need to continue on the slow and steady path to living in happiness now. I invite you to get quick stress relief to assist you on that new path by getting your FREE copy of my Special Report: 25 Tips To Eliminate Stress Now by filling in your name and email in the box on the right.

Happiness is Noticing How Life Happens in Cycles

Life seems to flow in cycles. When you pay attention to what has been you can get a good idea of what will come. That way the Universe will not have to hit you over the head with a 2 x 4 to make you take notice!

More than twenty years ago I deepened my study of how we create our reality. At the time I was into psychology. I discovered the link between how the mind works and how energy works.

When a friend ran energy on me following a near collapse at her house, I learned that something I could not see impacted my well being – not in a day or a week but in minutes.

Wow! What was that?

I did not understand anything about Reiki, as she called it. I just knew something energetic happened. I had long known and felt energy pour out of my hand as I healed my dancing daughter’s many injuries during her teen years.

You do not have to understand something to use it. I have no idea how electricity works. I just flip the switch and the room lights up!

Thankfully the Universe gave me an awareness of the Universal Laws long before I needed to draw upon them to recover from a life-changing brain injury.

Since I knew about energy work, after the brain injury I welcomed every offer of someone teaching me and working on me. Good thing too because that is how I healed – energetically.

As I myself became an educated healer I started strictly with energy psychology and acupressure tapping along with multiple kinesiology modalities that grew form Touch for Health.

So I moved from theory to actual energy work to the detailed work of specialized kinesiology. Each step on my journey allowed me work with more and more people with deeper and deeper issues.

I recently realized my specialty limits me to working on people who can physically get to me whereas when I did energy work I could easily do that long distance.

Only now I awakened to the fact that I can do what I do with anyone anywhere on the planet. With the internet I can communicate around the globe and guide someone to take steps to eliminate many of the blocks that formerly could only be cleared in person.

I also realize I can use a surrogate, here in my healing studio, to do work for someone on the other side of the planet.

When you realize that everything and everyone is energy all the possibilities open up so you can see what you want to see.

Happiness: Why So Many People Fail to Know Happiness

Surprisingly, in today’s world unhappy people outnumber happy people by 4 to 1.

Last night I was listening to a noted doctor speak about depression. He said that 60% of people are clinically depressed. That shocked me!

What he said next floored me.

He shared that studies reveal that 80% of people are unhappy.

Those statistics beg the question, “Why are so may people feeling so bad at this time?”

Interesting question to ponder.

If you look from the outside, these times offer us everything at our fingertips. People can go online and order whatever they want from any place in the world.

Or they can play all kinds of games with people they would never have met in person. For that matter, people can do things with their mobile phones that were not even dreams just a few years ago.

The fact is people have more toys than ever. The number of timesaving devices invented in the past ten years far outnumbers the number of devices created over all of time!

Knowledge expands faster than anyone can fathom – or take in.

Yet people are more unhappy than ever. People are also more hassled than ever.

In a time of labor and timesaving devices and conveniences why are people so stressed? Why do people have less time than they did during simpler times in history?

I have a cell phone that I can hold in the palm of my hand. On that tiny device I have a camera, a speakerphone, a QWERTY keyboard, alarm, calendar, stopwatch, count-up timer, calculator—and even a phone!

Personally I rarely use it but I have all those tools for the occasion when I may need them (mostly when I travel). I can do anything on that little device that I can do on my laptop.

And therein lies part of the problem. People feel they have to be connected every moment. Many business people think if they do to respond to every call or tweet or update in the ocean of social media that they will lose ground to their competition.

Ah! The crux of the matter…

There is enough business for everyone. The stark reality that so many of these run-run-run people fail to see is they can have their share of customers and leave the rest for others to take their share!

Life is not a competition. Even business is not about competition.

Life is about caring about others and serving them in the best way you know how. Your mission, here, is to contribute your gift so all may benefit.

Look back through history. When civilizations become greedy and businesses and governments are all about “me” the entire system collapses.

You can see it happening now all around the world.

When you look though, you will also see the new breed of business owner who serves customers the best way possible and makes a difference for all of us and for the planet too.