Happiness Talk Blog
Mental Health
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A New Start, Goals, Life-Planning, and Success
This is the beginning of a new decade, a natural “marker” to reflect and gauge our journey. This provides us with an opportunity to look at the highs and lows, the success and weaknesses of our last decade. January becomes an imaginary “new start” when we can compost the past and with a beautiful new pen set priorities and create a magnificent decade ahead. Many of us may have made New Year’s resolutions that already have slipped and here at the end of January, we aren’t any more successful than we were in December. So what can we do about that disappointment?
Getting Started – Reflect and Daydream About All Areas of Life
Take the majority of a day or two to establish a plan for this decade. What are the most important things you would like to do? Spend a little time daydreaming and visualizing how you would like your life to be. Look into the specific areas of importance: health, love relationship, family, career, spirituality, interests and hobbies, finances, personal growth, service, etc.
Write Outcome Goals
Make a decision about what you would like each area of life to look like ten years from now. Write what that looks and feels like. Express the specialness of that vision or goal in the present tense, as if it is NOW true: I am enjoying the excellence of my health; the fulfillment of eating organic and “clean” foods; the ease of movement I experience as I walk, dance, and do everything with my 130 pound feminine, fit and sensual body.
Benchmark
Now go backwards and benchmark the goals or milestones from that outcome goal to where you are now. That outlines the steps you take to get from where you are to where you want to be. It fills in the gap or the part to which we usually do not pay enough attention.
Small Steps
Next pay attention to all the small steps you will start with to attain the next goal. These are the attitudes, plan of action and support you need to accomplish the beginning of your journey. Write each step in detail.
What It Looks Like
You will have a paper, a wall, a notebook, something that shows your movement from left to right, present time to ten years in the future for your first goal. You’ll have lots of detail in present time and just sketchy milestones as you move through the ten years. As you get to the next milestone, or perhaps the next month or quarter, you’ll fill in the details of your steps.
Do the same thing with each area of your life: write the outcome goal, fill in the milestones, and complete the details of your next steps. You will have the next decade completed of your life plan. If the decade seems too long, try 5 years or a marker that makes sense for your life.
Keys For Success
It is up to you to work on these goals daily and weekly so you establish new behaviors and habits. Savor your successes. Celebrate the accomplishments of milestones. Get someone to be your accountability partner or a group of people who are doing the same thing so you can support each other. I have a group of friends who have been doing this together for eight years. We meet on the phone at least once a quarter to review our progress and get help with anything we need. We add additional meetings to learn or address specific items, such as organizational systems, educational/business systems, etc. We also set up special calls with each other for coaching when we need the on-going support of a coach. (We are all coaches by profession…) We have written books, started new businesses, expanded businesses, been hired as consultants, secured corporate contracts and speaking engagements, supported each other through deaths, births, marriages, divorces, relocations, second homes, awards, and many other highs and lows of life. The support and accountability make this life-planning enjoyable and worthwhile.
Take Action
You have one week left in January. Do you want to get started on your life-planning journey? If you read this during another month, well, you can still get started!
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 01/26 at 10:17 AM
Happiness •
Career •
Mental Health •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Monday, August 24, 2009
How to Stop the Negativity in Your Life
Don’t interact with your negative thoughts
First, there are our own thoughts. These are negative thoughts that just seem to come up in our minds like pop-ups. These can be self critical or they can be about other people or situations. It is our job to refrain from interacting with these thoughts. In other words, don’t follow a negative thought with another thought as if in conversation with the first. Do everything to not enlarge or enhance the negative thought. That way you will avoid rumination and reinforcing your own negative beliefs.
Ask others the end their verbal negativity
There are negative comments we hear from others in the form of gossip and sarcasm. Right along with these is the continuous flow of negative comments that others make. They might be about other people, maybe their own victim type stories, or about situations that evoke their criticism. We can choose to not listen to these. We can attempt to have the other person change by encouraging him to speak more positively or to not share gossip with us.
Deal with others’ negativity by changing something in oneself
More importantly we can change the situation by changing something in ourselves.
- We can inject more understanding, acceptance and compassion into our attitude.
- We might also rid ourselves of judgment and strive to be more open.
- We can take action that involves doing something different so we create a different result.
- We might also try focusing our attention on something more positive. We might think about the people or situations differently or find appreciation in them. What we attune to is what we see and experience. We have a choice of where we place our focus.
- In addition we can put another meaning on the situation or interpret it differently.
Distance oneself or end relationships with negative people
Our last resort might be to choose to end the relationship with negative people or to reduce our involvement. It is very important to rid ourselves of negative influences if we cannot deal with negative people and situations.
Reduce or end other negative influences
It is easier to be positive if we reduce or eliminate as much negativity as possible from our lives. We could stop much of the violent television we watch. Turn off the negative news. Stop the newspaper. End the negative music, movies and video games. What might life be like if we didn’t feed our minds and souls with such negativity? There would be so much room for positivity. I suspect it would be a mental muscle we’d all have to get used to exercising!
Dispute negative thoughts
When you experience your own or others’ negative thoughts, you will want to work hard at disputing them. Examine the facts and prove the positive is true. Argue with yourself as if you are the best attorney. Prove the thoughts to be incorrect.
Be mindful
One of the most important skills to control your negativity is mindfulness. Mindfulness means to pay attention to your thoughts and responses in an aware, objective and detached manner. You eventually learn to detach or create distance in watching your reactions and responses to things that happen. You are trying to not have an emotional action or reaction. This allows you to create neutrality or more positive emotions while you simply allow the negative thoughts and emotions to pass through you. It’s like watching them but not building on them. You want to build on the positive but not the negative. Mindfulness reduces stress, pain, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive experiences, and self-injury, improves immune functioning, and changes metabolism in brain circuits known to underlie emotional responding. It even increases a certain part of the brain. You can learn to meditate by taking a workshop, reading a book, or just sitting and relaxing
Exercise
Take a look at your negativity this week to see how you can refrain from interacting with your own negative thoughts, change your behaviors or thinking in relation to others, don’t participate in or listen to gossip and sarcasm, turn down the amount of negative media in your home, dispute your negative thoughts, and begin to meditate, even if you are only quiet and slow down your breathing for 5 minutes a day. You might want to make a chart to help you keep track daily of reducing your negativity.
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 08/24 at 10:24 AM
Happiness •
Mental Health •
Spirituality •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Monday, June 15, 2009
When You Want to Improve Your Life, Where do You Start?
When you want to improve your life, where do you start? How do you go about it? Many clients have come to my office wanting to be out of the pain they are in and desiring to experience more happiness. They arrive with many different presenting problems and we always look at the superficial solutions to those symptoms. But there is always something underneath that we can discover which dictates their sabotage or repeated failures in life. It’s usually about their excuses. So, whether they come in for help with depression, anxiety, trauma or a relationship, we look at the underlying causes, the excuses, and the patterns that began in childhood which do not work so well in adulthood. So often we learn beliefs and behaviors when we are two, three, four or five years old that do not work quite the same when we are 30 or 40. This is the stuff of therapy.
For those of you who are reading this who are not in therapy and who do not wish at this time to begin such an adventure, I’d like to offer you some things which you can do on your own which will give you insight into your core beliefs and help you clear unfinished business of childhood and early adulthood. I also want to help you stop your excuses and start being successful in the areas you have avoided. I also want to help you forgive yourself and others and get onto the business of loving – loving yourself and loving others.
If you are in therapy, this will help you in working with your therapist. It may give you an outline for self-help work or you may pick and choose what you and your therapist think will help you with your particular issues and patterns. If you are in coaching, it will also help you to work with your coach on what you do to excuse and sabotage your success.
Where to start?
What makes you mad? What can’t you stand? What drains you or zaps your energy? What causes you pain? What are your guilty about? What would you like to change in your life? These questions about negative influences in your life or negative reactions should shed some light on where you can begin. Start journaling about these questions. You might separate them into items or issues or people or situations. When you are writing about them, just let your thoughts flow and your feelings get expressed. Be sure to indicate what happened, who did what (including yourself), who had less than respectable behavior? What did you do that was a mistake or wrong in some way? What did others do that was a mistake or wrong in your opinion? How did you feel or how were you affected by what happened? How do you think the other people involved may have felt? What good came from this? What good could come from this if you determined that it would? What action do you have to take to compost this experience and make it a learning experience in your life rather than a drain because of negative emotions? How will you take this action? When will you do it? Who will know about it? Who can give you recognition or praise about correcting this lesson in life?
Whenever you have a negative experience or something that has affected you in a negative way, try to identify your errors, the others’ errors and what you can do to correct it. Also identify the lesson in it for you. Find a way to become grateful for the experience and feel and express your gratitude. It might take you a couple months to get over the anger or hurt. It is important to get over it. It’s important for you to move past this place to a place of acceptance, understanding and even gratitude for having an opportunity to learn and grow.
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/15 at 12:58 PM
Happiness •
Career •
Family •
Leisure •
Mental Health •
Phsycial Health •
Relationships •
Spirituality •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Friday, June 12, 2009
Gratitude Is The Easy Answer to Happiness and Well Being
Expressing our gratitude is an activity that increases our happiness levels by over 25%; gives us higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress; gives us better sleep quality and more energy; and it is one of the more effective ways of coping with disease, disability and even death. People who keep gratitude lists make progress toward completing important individual goals such as academic, interpersonal and health-based, according to research by Robert Emmons.
Keep a Gratitude Journal
Establish a daily habit of recalling and writing ordinary events that happened to you today, the valuable people in your life and what they contribute to you. Spend the day looking for people, incidents, events, and qualities that you enjoy and that support your life. Look for the gifts, grace, benefits and good things in your life.
1. Think and recall throughout the day the good things happening…
2. Write at least three things of gratitude toward the end of the day.
Share Gratitude with your Family
1. Have your family share at dinner three things that happened to each of you that were good or things for which you are grateful
2. Have our children recall and speak gratitude when going to bed
3. Share gratitude blessings with your spouse at the end of the day
4. Make Thanksgiving a holiday of super big thanks all around the table
Write letters of gratitude
1. Write thank you notes for gifts, events and special thoughtful acts
2. Write letters of gratitude to people who have improved or touched your life – teachers, friends, family members, old friends, former spouses, etc.
3. Write birthday letters sharing about the person’s qualities and good acts
Think of ways you can see the challenges of life as a gift and then how you can express your gratitude.
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/12 at 07:57 AM
Happiness •
Career •
Family •
Mental Health •
Phsycial Health •
Relationships •
Service •
Spirituality •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Forgiveness Is Urgent
It is important to forgive yourself the mistakes you have made and the things you have done that have been most hurtful to others. By writing them you give yourself the gift of making your load lighter as you attempt to experience more happiness.
It is a good thing to forgive people who have done things that have been hurtful to you. It allows you to move on past that incident or wrong and be in present time without bitterness or anger in your heart. Forgiveness is for you, not the other person.
This is a simple exercise. Either take out your journal or sit at your computer and start writing:
1. These are things I have thought, said or done for which I want forgiveness or for which I want to forgive myself.
2. These are things others have said or done that I want to forgive, clearing me of all negative feelings.
After writing the items, say aloud you forgive yourself and you forgive others. Ask for forgiveness and imagine being your perfect spiritual or higher self, understanding, accepting and loving yourself. Imagine your parents doing the same. And sense the forgiveness of God or the creative force of the universe. Then again say aloud your forgive yourself and you forgive others who harmed you.
Sometimes it is important to share these things with your clergy, a therapist or a trusted friend. Receiving acceptance and feeling the caring or love of another makes it easier to move into forgiveness and let go of the negative feelings.
Life gets better and well being is strengthened when you regularly clear and forgive these actions of yours and others. Feeling gratitude after forgiveness helps solidify the release of negative emotions.
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/11 at 06:15 AM
Happiness •
Career •
Family •
Leisure •
Mental Health •
Phsycial Health •
Relationships •
Spirituality •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Do You Get Stuck and Sabotage Yourself?
Getting yourself unstuck requires motivation, a certain awareness, and discipline.
I have a dear friend who has wanted to write a story about his aunt for a couple of decades or so. After enough avoidance and busyness, focusing on other business ideas and even start-ups, he decided he had enough failure and wanted to see some success. He had to dig down to find his motivation - the joy of having his children and best friends think highly of him. Then he had to get his awareness up to his mind in 2009. He had failed at enough great ideas - just thinking and talking about them. Now he wanted to put a great idea into action. Finally finding enough self esteem and confidence, he started to write. And what a beautiful writer he is! Now it’s time for the discipline. Every weekend he is creating the time to write.
He finally got down to his negative core beliefs and worked trough the stages of change to take action. You’ll hear about the book when it is finished! Check back in about a year.
Look at some of the negative beliefs you have that are self-limiting or that sabotage your ability to be your very best. Sometimes we refer to these beliefs as negative self-talk or negative tapes in our heads. They are “gremlins”. These are the things we believe that hold us back or prevent us from being authentic and healthy. Some examples might be: I have to be perfect; I can’t make a mistake; I am not smart enough; I can’t do it; If I am successful I will have to be accountable; Money is the root of all evil; etc.
Find some of your self-defeating beliefs and write them. Using all the enthusiasm you have, write the opposite, motivating, positive belief about yourself. Spend the day thinking about and repeating inside your head these lovely affirmations of your authentic self. If you find the negative beliefs winning, keep working to prove the positive is true. Find the evidence and convince yourself of your greatness!
If you still have difficulties succeeding at your goals, do they line up with your values? If they do, read James Prochaska’s book, “Changing for Good” and get into the action stage to make your dreams come true.
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/10 at 05:48 AM
Happiness •
Career •
Mental Health •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Compliments
Expressing positive things about another person is like giving them a gift. It says you recognize something special, unique or even just ordinary about them. By bringing it to their attention you are encouraging them to continue doing or being that positive way.
It is also important to tell them how it affects you. An example could go like this: “You called to tell me what you would like to do this evening. You are sensitive to my need to plan a little in advance and I appreciate that you are considering my preferences.”
Please give 3 compliments a day to anyone with whom you are living or spending a lot of time (spouse, children, co-workers, or friends).
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/09 at 10:05 AM
Happiness •
Career •
Family •
Leisure •
Mental Health •
Relationships •
Service •
Spirituality •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Acts of kindness
Doing an act of kindness is one of the best things you can do for yourself and others. When you do something thoughtful or nice for another, the regard comes back to you in multiples. You help make a better world when you pick up trash that blows around your neighborhood. Your vacationing neighbor appreciates putting the newspapers and trash can out of site. The elderly woman at the doctor’s office is thankful for your holding the door and the elevator.
Your magnitude of loving and sense of happiness can grow exponentially if you do some acts of kindness as secrets. The secret act of giving can be enormously fun and fulfilling.
During the holidays we sometimes play “Secret Santa” to someone in the office and leave them small gifts like a special coffee from Starbucks or perform a small task without them knowing who is doing it. Why not be a Secret Pal all year long? I know a creative and big-hearted woman who secretly goes to a friend’s home and decorates the outside of it for every major holiday. She does it in the middle of the night so her friend never knows who the Secret Decorator is.
Take this challenge: do one act of kindness each work day this week, Monday through Friday.
If you are wanting to try another challenge, here it is: Select three things to do in the next month that are secrets from the receiver. Be a “Secret Pal” and do something for three different people where they cannot discover who you are. Good luck! Please share your stories with us if you’d like. We’d love to hear from you!
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/06 at 04:42 PM
Happiness •
Career •
Family •
Leisure •
Mental Health •
Relationships •
Service •
Spirituality •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Laugh Away Your Stress
Stress is a normal part of life but sometimes we have too much, requiring us to call on our resilience to deal with it. Our response to stress is a complex series of hormones surging through our bodies, our sympathetic nervous system amps up, and the limbic brain goes into overdrive.
Stress causes heart attacks in men and reproductive problems in women. We narrow our focus and respond less to new ideas. We sleep less and argue more. Irritation and frustration are heightened while romance and sexual interest are lessened. So what are we to do?
Our resources and resilience are called out to the forefront. This is the time to use your resources to create positive emotions. We know from Barbara Fredrickson’s theory of “broaden and build” that positive emotions like joy, delight, lightness and amusement allow us to expand our thinking.
We know from many researchers in medicine and positive psychology that humor is a strength that diffuses the stress and allows us to manage it with easy success, returning us to a healthier state physically and psychologically.
The things you might do to reduce your stress include reading the comics, look up some of those silly emails we all receive, call a friend and ask them to help you laugh, watch a funny movie or listen to a comedy show. One of the easiest and most rewarding things to do is watch a baby and enjoy their amusement with life. Go to “You Tube” and watch funny videos to change your outlook and your chemistry in just a few minutes.
One of the main things to do to reduce your stress is to start laughing. Join a laughing yoga group or a laughing club. Without anyone else to depend on, just start laughing. Fake it until you make it and you will reduce your stress. Try it in the morning – just laugh, even if you don’t feel it. Keep laughing; try it for 5 minutes or 20. Even 1 minute is a stretch! If you have to prime your pump, think about Lucille Ball, a master of creating laughter. Try it now.
Laugh away your stress.
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 05/26 at 06:39 PM
Happiness •
Career •
Mental Health •
Phsycial Health •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Take Vacation Time
I’m being very nice to myself and going on vacation. If you need help doing this for yourself, call me at 702-242-4222 and leave a message. Please note I will not return the call until I am back. Enjoy life!
Love,
D’Arcy
Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 05/12 at 10:35 AM
Happiness •
Career •
Family •
Leisure •
Mental Health •
Phsycial Health •
Relationships •
Retirement •
Service •
Spirituality •
Wealth Building •
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Institute for Happiness Studies
and
Center for Relationship Happiness
8440 W. Lake Mead Blvd., Suite 206
Las Vegas, Nevada 89128-7648
Office: (702) 242-4222
Toll Free: (800) 834-7616
Fax: (702) 242-4429