Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being which can be defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. The word has different meanings for different people. For many, the sense of happiness derived from a luxurious vacation, or a new dress may seem short-lived, but what if it was possible to extend the joy?
Researchers from the University of Minnesota and Texas A&M University decided to explore whether the way people frame their goals for an experience influences how much happiness they glean from the experience over time.
While this approach may be effective in setting work, exercise or weight loss goals, the researchers hypothesised that this may not be as beneficial when happiness is the goal. In this area of life, general goals may be an advantage because people will be open to experiencing a broader range of positive emotions.
Study author, Rohini Ahluwalia, said, “If people watch a movie with a specific goal like feeling excited, then they may be less likely to remember the funny or meaningful elements of the movie. We predicted that people with general goals would engage a broader range of emotions and experience more happiness over time.”
She added, “Our findings suggest that people can change the amount of happiness they get out of an experience. A general happiness goal can leave a longer-lasting positive emotional imprint.”
This can apply to material purchases like a new car or dress as well as experiential purchases like spending money on vacation or a new pair of shoes.
Another experiment in the study showed that participants with broader happiness goals experienced more positive emotions after listening to a new song than the participants who had a specific goal of feeling excitement and energy. The participants with the broader goals were also willing to pay more for the song.
The full findings are present in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Source: http://english.samajalive.in/now-you-can-make-happiness-last-longer/
Smiling is the best way to face any problem, to crush every fear and to hide every pain.
“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” ~Bessie Anderson Stanley
Love. Purpose. Selflessness.
That’s it. Everything I’ve learned about happiness lies in those three words.
Why those words?
Because in their absence it’s hard to be happy. Your mind wanders and sets upon trying to fill that void, leaving little room for joy and happiness elsewhere.
I’m willing to go as far as to say that these are the three most essential elements to your happiness.
I spent my formative years trying to understand why I wasn’t happy. And in the times I felt happy, what had fallen in to place to make that feeling possible.
Of course, happiness can be seen through different lights for different people. But I am not talking about in the moment happiness. The kind you feel from a lovely gesture or good news.
I’m referring to the long-term happiness that sits in the back of your mind, every day. The kind that makes you feel whole. The kind that makes Carpe Diem that much easier.
These words are like a Jenga tower. With all the blocks in place, happiness can flow. Remove one, and the tower can fall. Their importance relies only on what you are missing.
It’s easy to feel lost, abandoned, and as if you’re walking through a dark forest all alone; unloved, and as if the world does not care about what if going on in your life.
Behind the tree, in the darkness that has been created, lies an army of people who truly care about you. But it’s up to you to reach out in to the darkness and feel the light.
Without love, and the subsequent support that comes from it, happiness is rarely ever possible.
That is not to say that single people are not happy, or those people who choose to go it alone are not truly happy.
But to feel unloved creates a gaping hole that runs deep.
Love goes beyond that of a partner and intimate relationships.
It stretches out in to the reaches of parents, cousins, siblings, friends, and those around you who care for you.
It’s the people in the world who offer complete and utter support, regardless of how bold, fragile, or doomed-to-fail the thing you’re working on is.
Around my neck I wear a necklace the reminds me that I’m always loved. It reads: “My dear Grandson, forge your own path, anything is possible.”
And with that love, I can achieve anything.
“Try harder next time, son,” said the Recruitment Officer as he closed the door on the way out of the room.
Sitting alone in a tiny cabin on the Air Force base where I so desperately wanted to work, I broke down in tears. I cried until my face hurt and there was nothing but braille-like dark blue patches on the front of my shirt.
I was seventeen and my life was still ahead of me, but in that moment, it was over. My hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the last ten years all shattered by one sentence, from a man who had no idea how hard I’d tried.
For me there was no way out. It was two years until I could reapply, and for seventeen year old me, that was an eternity.
The subsequent months saw me fall in and out of depression. My long-term relationship fell apart, I dropped a tremendous amount of weight, and I no longer felt like James Johnson.
It was a downward spiral in to one of the deepest and darkest pits I would ever find myself in.
There was nothing for me to get out of bed for. I wasn’t walking the path towards my mountain.
My purpose was gone.
Until one day, reading the newspaper, I stumbled upon a personal training course and started down a path toward a new mountain.
Training people, researching how to make them better, faster, stronger, leaner and healthier. How to have a positive, lasting effect on their lives. That became my purpose.
And suddenly, I was well again. I was happy, and I was back to being James Johnson once more.
My purpose is different now, and I have cycled the same emotions time after time.
I’ve seen it not only in myself, but in the people I love.
When they have lost all direction. When they are walking aimlessly on a road to nowhere, they become despondent and their happiness slowly starts to fade away.
Truly happy people have a clear idea of where they’re going. They have something they want to live for. Something to strive for. Something to try and attain.
It doesn’t have to be career based. It can be passion for fishing or gardening or designing tiny little paper houses from recycled newspapers. Anything you want.
But in order to focus on being happy, you should take the time to sit down and identify what it is you want to do. What you love to do. What gives you purpose.
What makes you, you again.
In 2013 I moved to America for nine months to coach soccer.
The company I worked for had a pretty simple structure for your living arrangements: You coach their kids, and you live in their houses.
That was what we were thrown in to.
And we’d move from house to house, and from town to town. Sometimes I’d stay with a family for sixteen weeks, others it would be one.
They would feed me, let me do my laundry, and take me out with them to do some amazing things.
But there was one family in particular that gave me a lesson in selflessness that will stick with me forever.
In Burbank, California I had to coach a program for twelve weeks. And for the first two weeks, we had places to live; after that, our boss had decided to let me fend for myself.
And I scraped, and I scrounged, and I came up with the odd place to stay for a few nights, or a week or so, before moving on to somewhere else. It was a feeling of upper middle class homelessness.
But there came a point where I had no place to stay at all. No house to move on to from where I was staying. And I was going to spend the best part of the next six weeks living out of a motel 6, eating Panda Express.
The family I was staying with heard me talking to my colleague about this one day, and they offered to let me stay for the remainder of the time.
This was something they didn’t have to do. But they did.
And, they treated me like family the whole time. I was one of them. And I was a part of their daily life. I did everything from watch their kid’s soccer games, to going on their family trip to Disneyland.
They showed me I was loved. They let me fulfill my purpose. And they made me extremely happy.
That is what selflessness is.
It’s going above and beyond you, to let another’s happiness be facilitated.
It’s seeing the bigger picture. Making someone else smile. Showing them the same things that you wish to be shown in your life.
Without any return, because it is the right thing to do.
Truly happy people find themselves taking pleasure in making other people happy, because it is the most universal and sought after currency in the world.
Source: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/3-essential-elements-long-term-happiness/
Deciding what to charge for your time is probably one of the most emotionally-charged decisions an entrepreneur in a service-based business can make. I have firsthand experience with this dilemma. As an immigrant from post-Communist Ukraine, I started my coaching business on my bathroom floor (my apartment was that tiny!) selling coaching sessions for $27 even though I had earned a Ph.D. at age 25. I was even thinking of selling my engagement ring to finance the growth of my business! Fast forward close to three years; I now sell those same services for up to $120,000 and I’ve built a seven-figure business.
Looking back, I think I was probably my own worst enemy. There are many solid strategies to determine pricing, but here’s the thing: None of them work unless you have the right mindset. Here are a few tips to get yourself on the right track:
1. Work on your success mindset. The more elevated your mindset, the more you believe in yourself and the value of your offers, the more you will be able to charge. In life and in business you get what you're the right match for. To charge X, you need to be X first. Who is the person charging that price? What needs to change in your life, in how you position yourself online, in your brand, to charge that price? If you're constantly doubting yourself, lowering your self-worth and accepting negativity, you will not be able to convince others of your worth. Sometimes you see someone very talented charging very little while someone with much less talent or expertise charges 10 times more. The difference is that one person believes they are worthy of more while the other doesn't.
2. Walk your talk. Price doesn't mean anything until you put energy behind it. Are you sold on your own price? Do you embody the person who can charge at that level? Ask yourself “Who do I need to be to charge that price?" Be the woman you want to become first. Then charge what your future self would charge by stepping into that that future every single day with simple steps: wake up earlier, work out, take care of yourself first, do something positive, help someone who needs helps, grow yourself, make healthier food choices, take time to dress up, and make time to do what you love. All those little things matter because they make you the person you want to be -- the person who charges what she knows she’s worth.
3. Change the way you think about price. People will buy the same product for $100 and $1,000. Remember, they’re often not paying for the offer/product; they are paying for the expectation that their life and their career will be transformed. They’re paying for anticipated results. So the focus should be on those things -- whether it’s income, the ability to travel, a higher caliber of client, etc.-- rather than price. Detach from the price, because the price is NOT about you, it's about them. The price is about their transformation, not how much money you make. People first need to have confidence that you can deliver what you promise, and then you can shift the conversation to price specifics.
4. Know that your pricing empowers your clients. Ask yourself: "If the transformation of my client equals the price, would I charge more or less?" You see, the more you charge, the more you believe in your client. By charging more, you are sending the message that you believe they are worth it, they can do it, and that you see that bigger version of them. Look at the price as a motivator for your client to actually do the work and use what they've paid for. Free doesn't work because when people are not invested, they don’t do the work. The higher the price people pay, the more skin in the game they have, the more interested they are in the ROI. Charging more = believing more in your client. By charging a higher price, you're saying to your client: "That's how much I believe in you.”
5. Set standards. Decide what kind of work you are and are not available for and try not to compromise. Make a written agreement with yourself that you will not go lower than X price. Make sure the price expands your vision of yourself rather than contracting it. You can't cheat on yourself. Lock the price in. Print the agreement out, laminate it, frame it and put it on a wall where you will see it every day. Remember, price is not just a number; it's energy
By charging what you're worth, you increase the self-worth of your clients. That's why you need to focus on raising your self-worth first.
— Zig Ziglar
— Dalai Lama
“Happiness has to do with your mindset, not with outside circumstance.”
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— Lyndon B. Johnson
— Willie Nelson
— Helen Keller
