7 Ways to Discover Deep and Lasting Happiness

Image courtesy of Arwen Abendstern

Do you find yourself consistently miserable and stressed? I used to but now even my infamous ‘grumpy-old-man’ moods are underpinned by a strong undercurrent of contentment and joy. Why? Because along the way I have learned some awesome ideas that helped me to discover deep and lasting happiness. Here’s 7 of them…

1. Stop Looking for Happiness

When I was growing up my mother was often depressed. At the time I had never experienced this (it came later) and I didn’t understand it. By the time I was about twenty I figured out one reason why she was so regularly unhappy: because she was focusing on wanting to be happy too much.

I gave her a cheesy embroidery piece in a frame (warning: cheesy, but actually works) which said:

“Happiness is like a butterfly: If you chase it, it flies away, but when you turn your attention to other things, it comes and quietly lands on your shoulder.”

I have no idea if she ever really got anything out of that, but soon after she started to study accounting, and went on to become a practicing accountant. She had always enjoyed numbers and so she was quite happy with this career path, which was her first ever full-time job outside of the home.
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How To Be A Rockstar

Whether you are an aspiring rock star or not, this list will help you achieve success in your field. It will also show you how some timeless ideas are still vital in your new-fangled social networking environments.

I Was A Teenage Rock Star … kind of …

As a younger dude – sans cell-phone and computer oblivious – during the “upside-down 60s” (AKA the 90s) I had the weird experience of being the lead singer in the biggest indie band in my home city.

Admittedly, it wasn’t a big city – Adelaide, population 1.1 million – but conquering that molehill was an intense trip nevertheless. (After that it all went pear-shaped, but that’s another story.)

Step 1: Don’t Just Dream – Obsess

When I was a pre-teen bookworm, I wanted to be a writer, but at 12 years old I heard the squeal of a heavy-metal lead guitar solo and my focus shifted instantly to becoming a fully-fledged, card-carrying “Rock Star”. It was obviously way sexier. (Pfft! Writer. What the hell was I thinking?)

From that moment on, while my musical tastes matured, my chosen career path remained fixed. It was Rock Star or bust. School was useless to me, so I just stared out the window and obsessed about becoming a Rock Star. Church was useless to me, so I refused to go anymore and lay in bed listening to this month’s flavour and obsessing about becoming a Rock Star.
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How Meditation Improves Your Health (Part Three)

Photo by j / f / photos

If you have been following this series on the health benefits of meditation, then hopefully you have given meditation a go by now, and as you meditate and relax, you may well have asked yourself ‘What is actually happening here?’

What is happening is this – The Relaxation Response is kicking in, thanks to your Parasympathetic Nervous System, which is the opposite of your Sympathetic Nervous System.

When you meditate, or rest effectively, the Parasympathetic Nervous System takes over and gets to work reversing the ‘flight or fight’ stress response, counteracting its effects, relaxing the mind and taking your body on a healing journey back to a balanced state of homeostasis.

This is the Relaxation Response. It is proven scientific fact.

This is the single most tangible thing that beginning a regular practice of meditation can do for you and your health. Meditation can be of great help if you are a person who has trouble switching off the mind and unwinding. Even if you are a fairly chilled-out person, you will still benefit from the deeper levels of relaxation, and the healing that this will encourage.
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How Meditation Improves Your Health (Part Two)

Meditation promotes good health by fighting off the adverse effects of stress – but what is stress anyway?

Stress is the response to a situation that motivates us to perform an action – whether that be fleeing from an attacker, worrying, or just mowing the lawn.

How Your Body Reacts to Stress.

If you become stressed (even mildly) your Sympathetic Nervous System works to cause you to act appropriately. Hormones like adrenaline and others kick in; we get excited or anxious; muscles tighten; blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate rises. We use up more energy. This is the “Fight or Flight Response”.

Whether it be a small event or a life-threatening one, our bodies respond to stress in a similar way. The difference is that the level of response adjusts to meet the perceived level of threat.

This system can get out of whack and people may find they are overreacting to some of the smaller stressors of life.
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How Meditation Improves Your Health (Part One)

Fact 1: Meditation assists healing. If you have any kind of health complaint at all then meditation can help you to get better.

Fact 2: Meditation can help you to stay healthy. If you are in good shape and want to stay this way, then regular meditation is a good idea.

Twenty years ago these would have been considered fringe ideas rather than facts, but not anymore…

Meditation Goes Mainstream

Meditation no longer belongs solely to the worlds of pseudo-science and spirituality, but has now been embraced by modern science as well.

Good western doctors know how meditation works to relax and heal. A recent survey of General Practitioners found that up to 80% of doctors had referred patients to practitioners of the three most popular Complementary Therapies – which included meditation, along with acupuncture and hypnosis.
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7 Reasons to Set Fire to Your Career Plan

Common wisdom has it you should plan out your career in detail otherwise you set yourself up for failure. So why should you do something as crazy as setting fire to your detailed career plan? Here’s why:

1 . The Most Successful People in the World Often Don’t Have a Detailed Plan

I’ve read loads of biographies of the most successful people of the last couple of hundred years and about 80% of them followed their bliss – not a detailed plan. The formula is this: Outrageous Goal + Action Habit = Score!

But then what will you do with each day? Well, Jerry Seinfeld once said something about how he never had any plans to become the most successful comedian ever, all he did was work hard at the one thing he was passionate about, come what may. I am sure you’d like to be as successful as Jerry (or even partially) and of course you can because your future is unlimited – so there’s your answer – just pursue your passion relentlessly.

And for those who are worried about spending too much time on irrelevant tasks. Well, surely you have enough intelligence to recognize a complete waste of time when you see one? Always be doing the next thing you can do that will move you closest to your goal.
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How To Leverage Your Regrets

“No regrets!”

It’s a popular stance to take, an uber-cool Hollywood cliché – but I don’t buy it. Just sounds like they’re kidding themselves to me.

Ask yourself this: can you honestly say that you have never done anything that in hindsight you don’t regret?

What about when you lost it at your partner and said something really hurtful that you didn’t really mean? Or the carefree way you racked up thousands of dollars worth of credit card debt when you were overseas?

Obviously these specific scenarios might not apply to you, but surely you can see what I’m getting at right?

You can say “no regrets” but I don’t believe you.

And anyway, what’s so uncool about regret? Why do people see it as some kind of badge of honor to take this stance? Read the Rest of This Article »