Breaking news! Most Americans don’t like their jobs. The results of a new Conference Board study show 55% of Americans are dissatisfied with their work, which was the lowest level ever recorded in more than 22 years of studying the issue.  Is it just me, or are these results completely NOT shocking?

It’s like the groundbreaking research the University of Waterloo conducted that showed “smoking in a car poses a potentially serious hazard to occupants — particularly children.” Sorry sweetie, daddy didn’t realize that lighting up in the minivan was bad for you. Soon they’ll discover exercise can help you lose weight (whoops, it appears a recent study confirms this).

Do you want to know what I find shocking about the job satisfaction survey? That more people don’t hate their jobs. My guess is that when people were asked if they were satisfied with their jobs they either lied to the researcher or they’ve been lying to themselves.

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“Mosk” courtesy of Maciej Mizer

Our life is what our thoughts make it. Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. ~Marcus Aurelius

A belief is something you consider to be true. You cannot decide to believe one thing this week and another, opposing thing, next week. You might think you can, but it really doesn’t work like that. I read recently that baby circus elephants are tied to a strong metal post with a heavy chain because they will try to escape and expend a lot of energy on pulling at their tether. After some time, they accept that they will not be able to escape and so stop pulling. The adult elephants are tethered to a wooden stake with a light rope: they could easily escape, but they believe they are unable to do so, and so the light tethering works as a kind of symbol of their bondage. It is clear that whether your beliefs are true or not is irrelevant. What matters is what you regard to be true. It seems to me that this is a good definition of ‘belief.’

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As a coach, I often work with people on achieving goals. Starting a business. Changing careers. Getting in shape.

I’ve learned that under every goal, there is an equation the goal-seeker has made up: If I do x, I will feel y. If I run my own business, I’ll feel a greater sense of control over my life. If I find a job I enjoy, I’ll feel happier and more energetic. If I get into shape, I’ll feel more secure about my health and more attractive.

This hypothesis then guides our actions. As a next step, we spend a lot of time and effort on x goal, believing it will be a means to feeling y. Sometimes we are right in our hypothesis, and often not. Research shows that humans are actually quite bad at predicting what will bring us happiness.

The more I work with people on their goals, the more odd it seems to me that we focus our energy on a particular goal, when what we really want is the desired change in feeling. Why don’t we focus on the feeling?

When I work with clients to focus on the new feeling they want to create, they find a wealth of options for getting there, including many that are available right now.

This is what I call “The Goals Shortcut” and its awesome power is that it allows you to feel the way you want to feel right now – not way off in the distant future after a goal has been achieved.

It has five simple steps.

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When you think of improving your health and happiness, what do you think about? Is it diet? Is it money? Or is it even having that dream house with a nice car? We all have different dreams, but the thing that connects us all is the fact that we believe these dreams will make us happy.

Happiness is something that has been studied for a long time. Itís something that we cannot fully grasp. We may see happy people walking past us, but we never know why theyíre so happy and what their secret is.

As the Buddhists say ìthe secret of happiness lies in the mindís release of worldly tiesî, but do we really need to do that? Iíve gathered five simple ways you can improve your health and happiness without giving up that which makes our lives interesting.

1. Yogic Breathing

One of the five principles of Yoga is Pranayama. It is a breathing exercise that promotes proper breathing. Pretty simple, right? Proper breathing in the Yogic sense is to bring more oxygen to your brain and blood, while also controlling the Prana (life force energy).

Yogic breathing can seem mystical at first, but once you learn and try it a few times itís just like regular breathing with a few modifications. About 4 years ago, I traveled to Valencia, Spain and attended a small seminar where I learned yogic breathing.

It felt awkward at first, but as I practiced I noticed a sense of calm and serenity come over me. It is believed that practicing the Asanas (yoga poses) with Pranayama (proper breathing) is the highest form of purification and self-discipline.

Yogic breathing has been proven to help improve your lungs and when combined with yoga can do wonders for your health.

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Image courtesy of Roy Lichtenstein

Life is wonderful! Life is a miracle! Life is awesome!

Life is in fact all of these things. Unfortunately, reality being what it is, life can, from time to time, suck beyond the telling of it. Every so often life comes along and metaphorically kicks you in the gut.

During these times it is perfectly normal to want to cry. There is nothing wrong with wallowing in brief bouts of self-pity.

That key is that those bouts be “brief.” Excessive self pity accomplishes nothing. When you are ready to move on, here are five things you can do to laugh when the world wants you to cry:

(Note: I’m not talking about real tragedy, like when a loved one passes away. I’m talking about the occasions when we throw a pity party for ourselves because we got dumped, or got laid off, or lost a promotion to Chuck, the office brown noser…)

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Dating confidence tips to get you and your date relaxed and having an unforgettable time…

Nervously early for his date, Dave had plenty of time to notice his sweating palms.

“Oh great! What if she wants to shake hands?” He briefly imagined his date’s hand slipping from his like an eel from a greased plate and started feeling a little sick as he frantically dabbed his palms with a napkin. A waiter watched with a seen-it-all blend of sympathy and disdain.

“Just be yourself!” his flatmate – a regular man of the world with more dating confidence than a roomful of James Bonds – had advised. “Blimey, it’s only a date!”

“What does ‘just be yourself’ even mean?” Dave retorted in a panicked tone, trying to cover his shaving rash with an extra-wide 1970s sports-broadcaster-style tie.

He had met Kate at a party during which he’d not been entirely lucid (thanks to some imported German beer). But, he reflected, he must have been entertaining enough; he’s secured this date, after all. Full of liquid courage, he’d finally blurted: “Would you like to meet up?”

Now he wondered: Had his speech slurred? Had she just been too polite to turn him down? Should he reassure her that he wasn’t an alcoholic? No, definitely not a good opener. Would she question why a witty and lively extrovert from the other night had morphed into a shy sack of nerves? Would he even recognize her when she arrived?

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Image courtesy of Roy Lichtenstein

With the economy being as tough as it is, and so many people struggling to find work, including many who will read this, it’s very easy to fall into a dark hole of depression and despair.  How will I find another job… when will I find another job?  How will I pay the bills, feed my kids, afford the rent? When will this economy improve… will it EVER improve? As we spend hour upon hour on Craigslist and other sites searching for jobs, sending our resumes into a black hole called the internet, these are the questions that crowd our minds.

Then, of course, there is the interview process.  Our hopes held high with that first phone call: “We were looking over your resume and really like what we see…” only to be shattered later with the second or third call (or better yet, a very impersonal email): “After going through the interview process, we have decided to go with another candidate whose skill set best fits the qualifications of the position.  We wish you the best of luck in your on-going search for employment.”

It’s almost worse than getting laid-off.  Rejection is never easy.  Uncertainty never comfortable.  Unemployment never fun.  Or is it?  Could it be?  If we looked at it from a different perspective, is it possible to find an upside in all of this?

Maybe so.

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Life’s hard, isn’t it? There are lots of things in life that you shouldn’t have to do, and work is one of them. So don’t waste another second of your time in feeling good about it? With my top ten tips for feeling utterly miserable at work, you’ll soon be walking around with a permanent frown and a head full of misery!

Focus on problems, especially ones that you can’t control This is the most important skill to master. If you can crack this one then all the rest will be easy. Here we go. You should always look for problems in every situation. When one problem appears to have been solved, which does occasionally happen for some reason, look for others. The great thing here is that there are always problems – they are everywhere, so it’s really easy to focus on them. This means you don’t have to spend a lot of time finding problems because they tend to present themselves naturally, and you can focus all your energy on complaining as loudly and as widely as possible. As well as finding problems, it’s absolutely vital that you spend as much time and energy as possible complaining about them. This basic skill of complaining about problems is the foundation to a truly miserable life, and at work you have ample opportunity to practice this skill.

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Every generation has had it’s own big world events and challenges, and of course, that’s what’s shaped the values, personality characteristics and lifestyle choices of each generation. One of the big events of our generation has been the birth and growth of the internet – an event that’s brought both challenges and opportunities for all of us. In an increasingly interconnected world where we have access to information about people and lifestyles all over the world, we all have more opportunities than ever before. So many of the barriers to entry that existed before, making life and leadership difficult, have been dissolved by the internet. It’s easier than ever before to find like-minded people all over the world, it’s cheaper than ever before to start a business and serve people all over the world, it’s easier and cheaper than ever before to educate yourself about anything you’d like to learn about, it’s easier than ever before to find out your rights, comparative prices on the stuff you’d like to buy, and the choices available to you, and it’s easier than ever before to create automated systems to provide the scaffolding that can help your life to run smoothly.

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