Tag Archive: Happiness

5 Essential Communication Skills For A Happier Marriage

Communication is vitally important because we’re so dang bad at reading our partner’s mind (until we’ve been married for many years, that is). The best marriages have a great deal of communication; the worst have little or none. But every aspect of a marriage requires communication in some form. When our emotions get fired up, we are quick to make assumptions based almost entirely on our own unrealistic thoughts about the situation. Most of the time, these assumptions are partially, if not completely, wrong.

Because thoughts shape behavior, communication skills shape how you interact with your partner. Authentic communication takes practice and more practice. But simply talking is not the same as communicating. True communication in a great marriage is a tw0-way conversation. Therefore, it takes practice from both people. However, you can only do your practicing and encourage your partner to do the same. It can be tricky when a partner doesn’t want to communicate, but that doesn’t mean the partner doesn’t want to solve the issue. It takes time, patience, and even great care to develop solid communication skills; it’s always a work in progress. But you can’t master something you’re not practicing, so how do you practice communication? The following five skills are essential for a happier marriage.

30-Day Challenge: Declutter Your Life

When you look all around you, do you see stacks of mail that need to be processed? Perhaps you’ve got books laying around along with a million miscellaneous scraps of paper with scribbled notes on them. Remember that thing you were going to fix that you put aside until you had more time…and now you’re tripping over it every day?  Whether you want to be more disciplined, more organized, or just plain happier, clearing out the clutter and freshening up your environment will make a huge difference. In fact, you may not realize how much your psyche is affected by clutter and how different you can feel until it’s all gone.

Well, now is a great time to get a fresh start by trying this 30-Day Challenge. Thirty days from today, you could finally have your office cleaned up, or that space in your attic. Perhaps you’ll finally tame that monster hiding in your garage and have room to, once again, park your car. I feel like clutter is a type of psychic cancer, eating away at your creativity, your energy levels, your inspiration and totally draining your motivation even before it gets started. Well, it’s time to change that. It’s time to rediscover your inspiration, your creativity and your floor! Here’s how:

FYI: Happiness Set Point

Happiness Set Point is your overall happiness average. Imagine a graph that looks like a roller coaster; a line moves across the page dipping down and swinging back up, then dropping again. The high points are when you’re happiest. Obviously, the low points represent when you’re a bit depressed or just not really all that happy.

As with graphs that chart trends, your happiness set point sometimes trends upward, trends downward, or may stay mostly the same over time.

We all face challenging lives. Sometimes we’re in a good mood, other times, we’re not feeling so cheery. But somewhere between your wonderful highs and your depressing lows, you’ll find your average level of happiness or happiness set point. In spite of all the highs and lows of life, your happiness set point tends to stay relatively stable. But that doesn’t mean you’re happy on average. It only represents your average mood, or how happy you tend to be, overall. So if you don’t feel very happy most of the time, your happiness set point might be lower.

The happiness set point is like a groove. You’ve practiced it so much that it’s easy to fall back into it no matter how high or how low your mood goes. The good news is that your happiness set point can be raised over time, by making a conscious effort to spend more time doing things that cause your happiness to go up and stay there longer. Want to raise your happiness set point? Try out these simple strategies:

For Sale: Happiness

If happiness were for sale, how much would you be willing to pay for it? I’m not talking about a pill. Imagine buying a box, and when you open it, you would have instant lifelong happiness. Good deal? Maybe…

Suppose it was really expensive, say $500…maybe $1,000, or even $10,000, would you pay it?

How much you’re willing to pay might be determined by how unhappy you are to begin with. If you’re desperately miserable, you might pay anything for some relief.

What if you took the box of happiness to the checkout register and found out that it was free? All you have to do is practice happiness for 12 hours every day for the next 12 months. That means you would have to constantly practice being happy. Don’t know how? Well, that’s why they call it practice. Just do the best you can. Right?

But wait, there’s an owner’s manual with this box of happiness. It says the following:

An Accidental Experiment In Elevating Happiness

Recently, I had an unusual experience. I was at work and, for reasons I could only guess at, instead of feeling the effects of too much gravity and too little sleep, I was completely alert and steady. I had plenty of energy and also felt a greater level of focus than usual. The odd thing was, I wouldn’t have known that my level of focus (or my clarity of mind) was running higher than its usual level until I experienced this unexpected contrast.

When something unusual happens, I like to examine it, try to understand what is normal and what the variables are so I can determine what was different. This particular morning seemed normal in every detail, except one: I took a cup of coffee to work. Normally, I don’t drink coffee in the mornings until the weather starts to get colder. Since it was a little chilly, I thought a cup of coffee sounded like a good idea. And since I hadn’t been drinking coffee in the morning for months, I suspected that this may have been the cause of my alertness and clear mind.

You might be thinking, “Duh!” Okay, me too. But there’s more to it than that. Of course I realize that coffee causes, shall I say, heightened alertness and elevated energy. But more than this, I felt happy…really happy! I wasn’t jumping-off-the-walls wired, but I just felt great.

I Hope You’re Satisfied

“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing, it’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it!”

~Margaret Thatcher

How wonderful it is when you can feel “supremely satisfied,” as Margaret Thatcher put it. For me, every evening I assess my day to evaluate how productive I was. When I feel a bit anxious as I try to fall asleep, I know that I could have done better. If I can relax and feel content, then I know I spent my time doing meaningful  things, which makes me feel calm and at peace.

I realize that we all need time to relax in front of the TV; time to de-stress after a difficult day at work or taking care of other business. But when we end up sitting in front of the TV nearly every day, or mindlessly web surfing for hours, watching videos online, or playing games on Facebook, eventually you’ll get stuck in a deep behavioral rut that can feel impossible to climb out of.

The Link Between Money and Unhappiness

working man wearing hard hatBy the time I graduated from high school, society had already drilled into my head the importance of money. Making plans after high school, whether I went to college or not, revolved around getting a job that paid well. In fact, this was such a high priority that it almost didn’t matter what kind of job I got, as long as it paid well. Of course, having no practical job experience meant getting a job that paid next to nothing.

Early in my working life, I wasn’t so concerned where I worked. I picked up any job that I thought I would enjoy, or could, at least, tolerate. The pay was typically low, but eventually, I knew that the amount of money I made would determine how quickly I could go out into the world, away from the safety net of the home I grew up in. So the search for a high-paying job became my number one priority. But by then, I had already discovered the joy of credit cards…as well as the pain from getting into too much debt. Money, for all its greatness, was already making me unhappy.

Your Story or Mine?

This story could be just about anyone’s story. It might even be yours. We come off the assembly line, known as public education, and we each follow, in lock-step, the person in front of us.

About
Hi, I'm Scott and I have a passion for helping people change how they see things. Few people really understand how thinking and behavior affects their lives and motivation. That's where I come in. I help people make that connection. I'd like to show you how simple adjustments in your thinking can make your life better.
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