Do you rob yourself of happiness with toxic self-criticism? If so, read on…

Happiness can be yours if you engage in the right types of positive behaviours.

But happiness will never be yours if you engage in toxic self-criticism; constantly undermining yourself and being negative about all and who you are!

So if you want more happiness, and mental strength among other things, check out this article with its 7 ways to overcome negative self-talk…

via Inc.com by Amy Morin

Your private inner dialogue can either be a powerful stepping stone or a major obstacle to reaching your goals. If you constantly make negative predictions like, “I’m going to mess up,” or you call yourself names, your self-talk will rob you of mental strength.

Your thoughts affect how you feel and how you behave. The way you think has the power to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thinking, “I’ll never get this job,” may cause you to feel discouraged as you walk into an interview. Consequently, you may slump your shoulders, stare at the floor, and make a poor first impression–and inadvertently sabotage your chances of success.

If you have a harsh inner critic, you’re not alone. Self-doubt, catastrophic predictions, and harsh words are common. But, you don’t have to be a victim of your own verbal abuse.

Although there are many exercises that we use in therapy to help people change the way they think, here are seven ways to tame your inner critic:

1. Pay attention to your thoughts.

You’re so used to hearing your own narration that it’s easy to become oblivious to the messages you’re giving yourself. Start paying close attention to your thoughts and you may discover that you call yourself names or talk yourself out of doing things that are hard.

It’s estimated that you have around 60,000 thoughts per day. That’s 60,000 chances to either build yourself up or tear yourself down. Learning to recognize your thought patterns is key to understanding how your thinking affects your life.

2. Change the channel.

While problem-solving is helpful, ruminating is destructive. When you keep replaying a mistake you made in your head over and over again or you can’t stop thinking about something bad that happened, you’ll drag yourself down.

The best way to change the channel is by getting active. Find an activity that will temporarily distract you from the negative tapes playing in your head.

Go for a walk, call a friend to talk about a different subject, or tackle a project you’ve been putting off. But refuse to listen to your brain beat you up…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE

4 more tips to help you achieve your goals in 2018

Happiness is achieving your goals.

Happiness is accomplishment and the satisfaction that comes with it.

Happiness will be yours if you put in to practice the tips in this great article…

via Inc.com by Gordon Tredgold

As we enter the goal setting season, I think it’s important that when you set your goals, you give yourself the best chance of success. Especially when you look at the failure rates, according to Forbes 92 percent of people failing to reach their targets. Here are five goal setting tips that I have used which will help you to join the 8 percent of people who achieve their goals.

Aim High, But Start Low, Celebrate and Keep Going

If you have read any of my previous articles, it will come as no surprise that I am a huge fan of setting big bold goals, and I think they are exciting and inspiring and can really help you to not only achieve but also exceed your full potential.

But when setting big bold goals, it can be daunting in the early days, and the best way to counter this is to break down your big goal into a series of small goals.

When I set the goal to run my first marathon in 6 months, my first goal was to run for just 15 minutes per run in the first week and then just increase the time I ran by five minutes per week for next two months. Taking this approach allowed me to generate some early success, which allowed me to build momentum and increase confidence, which then encouraged me to raise the weekly increase by 10 minutes for the next two months and then 15 minutes per week for the last two months.

Taking these small steps and then just increasing by comparatively small amounts put me in the position where, after 24 weeks, I was able to run for over 4-hours which then allowed me to be successful in achieving my big bold goal.

When it comes to setting you big bold goal, the more you can slice that elephant the higher your probability of achieving it…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE

How to achieve every goal you set this year (almost guaranteed!)…

So you’ve set your New Year goals. And you want to be happier, more successful, achieve more etcetera…

…but how many times have you set similar goals and not accomplished all you wanted?

Happiness and success (in any shape or form) can be ours; but as we all know, it’s easier said than done.

So this year, in 2018, make sure you prioritise happiness and success and all goals you’ve set; and make sure you read this article to ensure you make it happen…

via Inc.com by Jeff Haden

New Year’s resolutions: We love to make them. And, statistics show, we almost never keep them. (Eighty percent of people who make New Year’s resolutions abandon them by the second week of February.)

Of course you could try using silence to accomplish a goal. Or you could try to sneak up on big goals. Those strategies help, but they are far from foolproof.

As I explain in my new book, The Motivation Myth: How Highly Successful People Really Set Themselves Up to Win, even if you’re trying to achieve a huge goal, the difficulty of achieving that goal isn’t really the problem.

The problem is your approach.

So let’s fix that.

1. Make your goal extremely specific.

Say you want to get in better shape. “Get in better shape” is an admirable notion, but what does it mean? Nothing; it’s just a wish.

“Lose 10 pounds in 30 days” is a specific, measurable, objective goal. Not only do you know what you want to accomplish, but setting a goal that way also allows you to create a process guaranteed to get you there: You can set up your workout schedule an your diet plan, and then all you have to do is follow the plan.

Another example: “Grow my business” sounds great but is also meaningless. “Get five new clients a month,” on the other hand, allows you to figure out what you need to do to land those clients.

Make sure you set a goal that allows you to work backward to create a process designed to achieve it. It’s impossible to know exactly what to do when you don’t know exactly what you want to achieve…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE

What if you were afraid of happiness; and didn’t even know it!

Happiness…we all want it.

Well, we think we all want it!

But what if you were afraid of happiness and weren’t even aware of your fears? This great article is well worth reading…

via the Huffington Post by Shannon Bradley-Colleary

You Might Be Blocking Happiness and Not Even Know It!

If you were raised in an unpredictable, volatile or drug-and-alcohol addicted home, you may have developed a Fear of Happiness.

In my family of origin, I learned that happiness, fun and gaiety could be swiftly followed by rage and/or withdrawal. As a result, I unconsciously began to fear Happiness, because sometimes it was followed by pain.

I also unconsciously attracted relationships that kept me in low-grade misery; a state of worry, anxiety and control, partly because I was fearful of too much good coming into my life. Then I’d actually have something to lose!

After working 12-step recovery, I fell in love with an emotionally available, kind man who was head over heels for me. This is when things got worse.

The happier I was in the relationship, the more terrified I became that something awful would happen to my love. I’d never felt so exposed and vulnerable.

How Do You Know if You’re Staying in a Toxic Relationship Because You’re Afraid to Be Happy?

Answer these questions:

1. When something good happens, do you downplay it because you worry the universe will take it away, or balance it out with something painful?

The cause of this might stem from being physically or emotionally abandoned by one of our important caregivers.

2. Do you feel shame when someone is kind to you, or something good happens to you, because you feel you’re not worthy?

When we were children, someone might’ve criticized us, and those voices live in our unconscious mind; constantly undermining our ability to feel worthy of love and happiness.

3. Were you taught Happiness is associated with laziness?

Many of us come from families where we’ve learned that if we’re happy we must be goofing off, not working hard enough, or not taking life seriously. Workaholism was our main value.

Choosing Happiness as a New Value

Below is a photo of me with my husband of sixteen years, because marrying him was the happiest choice I’ve ever made.

Yet I still have nightmares we’ve been separated; that I can’t find him; can’t dial the numbers on my phone to reach him; or that he doesn’t love me anymore.

One day we will be separated by death. It’s inevitable. But, I have to train myself not to push him away, or enact barriers to protect me from that inevitability.

Guarding myself against misery by shoving away happiness will not make the misery any less painful when we one day part. So I’m practicing happiness. Tentatively allowing myself to feel it — even if it scares the ever-loving shit out of me…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE

The Stop Procrastinating Now Course is Open to Join (but Closes on Monday)

We have now stepped into a brand new year.

And to help you to get 2018 off to a great start and make it your most successful, action-filled and fulfilling year yet I have now opened up the doors again to the 10-week Stop Procrastinating Now Course.

If you join during this period you also get free life-time access to all the material in my 31 Days to a Simpler Life Course as a special bonus.

The registration to join this course will only be open for 5 days this time, until 1.00 p.m EST (that’s 18.00 GMT) on Monday the 8th of January.

Click here to learn more and to join the course

The Stop Procrastinating Now Course is filled with all the best things I have learned in the past 10 years.

These are the strategies, exercises and simple step-by-step methods that have helped me to stop putting so many things off for so long.

The habits that have been a true life-changer for me.

A year from now, where are you going to be?

Each week of the course you’ll get a written guide, a worksheet to help you gain better understanding of your own situation and results as you go through the course and an audio version of that week’s guide that you can listen to anywhere when you need a boost.

At the end of the weekly guide you’ll get just a few specific action-steps to take that week to minimize the risk of you feeling overwhelmed and getting lost in procrastination again.

Because I want as many as possible to not only to read the information. But also to take small steps forward each week to make a real and lasting change in their lives.

In this course you’ll, for example, learn how to:

• Understand the 7 basic reasons for procrastination. So you can understand yourself better and where you need put your attention.
• Find the crucial balance between doing fully focused work and having plenty of guilt-free rest and play.
• Setup your daily work environment in just a few minutes to keep the distractions to a minimum and your focus sharp.
• Stop doing busy work and wasting so much of your time and life. And start getting what will give you the biggest results done each day.
• Overcome the 4 fundamental fears that drive us to procrastination step-by-step. So you can take action on what you deep down want and not be held back any longer.

And a whole lot more.

The window to join The Stop Procrastinating Now Course closes at 1.00 p.m EST (that’s 18.00 GMT) on Monday the 8th of January.

Click here to learn more about The Stop Procrastinating Now Course, to join it and to make 2018 your best year yet

 

Hey parents; want happier, less anxious kids? Play with them!

Happiness is a heathy dose of positive emotions AND, notably, minimal negative emotions.

Happiness is keeping safe AND feeling confident you can manage risk and uncertainty.

Happiness is what all parents what for their kids and if that’s you, then keep reading…

via the SMH by Belinda Tasker

Parents who play games with their kids, challenge them to a race, or simply muck about with rough-and-tumble activities may be helping reduce the chances of them developing anxiety problems.

A recent study by Australian and Dutch researchers found that certain behaviours by parents play a role in protecting preschoolers from becoming anxious because they are encouraged to take risks, safely.

They studied a group of 312 families and discovered that mums and dads who used more so-called challenging parent behaviour (CPB) had kids whose anxiety levels were significantly less than others…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE

Making one (albeit difficult) change will make you happier. Are you up for it?

Happiness…what would you do to have more of it?

Happiness…you could enjoy much more of it if you make this one (albeit challenging) change…

via Inc.com by Minda Zetlin

What if there was one simple thing you could do that cost nothing and took no extra time, that would make you much more creative than you are now? What if it would also make you sleep better, and perhaps happier in general. Would you do it?

Well here it is: Put away your smartphone. Not all the time, and not forever, but for a day, or part of a day. That message comes from Manoush Zomorodi, host of the NPR podcast “Note to Self,” and author of Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self.

As the new mother of a colicky baby, Zomorodi, a former globe-trotting journalist, discovered first-hand how boredom can lead to some of our most innovative ideas, as she explains in her engaging TED Talk. It turns out that there’s a neurological reason for this, as various scientists explained to her. When you’re bored and you let your mind wander, you slip away from purely conscious thought and begin dipping into your subconscious mind. It’s a similar effect to when you begin drifting off to sleep. Having that bit of subconscious thought in the mix allows you to have insights and make connections you might never make otherwise…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE