Jobsworths take over our happiness

From the Telegraph Newspaper online today: The Government hopes that they will gain a better insight into society from the survey than from traditional economic indicators and tests.

"At the moment there's a fairly high level aspiration that policy should be based on more than just economic measures," said Paul Allin, ONS programme director.

The 200,000 people involved will be asked to rank how "satisfied" they are and how "anxious" they felt the previous day.

From April, the ONS will ask:

• How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?

• How happy did you feel yesterday?
• How anxious did you feel yesterday?
• To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
There will also be broader questions that are designed to try to explain people's feelings, to dig down into the drivers of individuals' happiness.
Other countries are devising similar measurements. French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a former White House adviser and World Bank chief economist, and a group of international experts to find new ways to measure economic progress taking into account social well-being.
Mr Stiglitz's report was critical of the way GDP, a raw measure of economic activity, was being used to gauge society's well-being. An increase in fuel consumption, it noted, would boost growth figures even if it merely reflected more traffic jams and pollution.
My Comment: Do these questions really find out about happiness? Did you know that we are all very good at deceiving ourselves and tend to rate our happiness higher than it is?  What is the difference between 'satisfied' and happy? Does pursuing happy feelings really result in happiness?

Happiness in Britain is....

Taken on my camera phone. First things first lads - put the shovel out of the way and get the tools plugged in. The kettle. Aaaaahhh - happiness is a nice cuppa.

Love and relationships are two different things

Happy love means conflict -free love? Alain de Botton muses on why a bookish life is a poor preparation for marriage! He says Western literature's obsession with unrequited love means the average love story is of help only to the lovelorn. And he argues that the blandness of the word marriage hides a "welter of intensity and depth that put to shame the most passionate works of literature'. Listen on Radio 4 here

"Huna and Ho'oponopono 2: The Hawaiian Code of Forgiveness"

Free recording. "Huna and Ho'oponopono 2: The Hawaiian Code of Forgiveness". Huna was originally called Ho'omana. Ho'o means to make. Mana means life force. Taken together the word Ho'omana means empowerment or to empower. Huna is about empowerment, about increasing your spirituality, energy and metaphysical healing powers.
Matthew B. James, MA, PhD provides a brief introduction to Huna and Ho'oponopono while also guiding you through an induction and the process of healing. Ho'oponopono (1) helps to cut the aka connections with everything, while Ho'oponopono (2) is very specialized and is for use with a single transgressor.

Choose: more happy slobs or more unhappy intellectuals?

BBC Four just re-ran Michael Sandel’s lecture on Utilitarianism and Happiness. It's saved for you to watch here. Sandal puts JS Mill's assertion that 'it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.' This lecture is a good opener on this old debate, which still rumbles on; for example, Professor Layard, who advised the recent labour government, took James Bentham's opposing view.

Part 1 -- PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE: Sandel takes a modern view to explore how we attempt to resolve moral even political dilemmas. He makes a neat job of showing the possible objections to the utilitarian logic of seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

Part 2 -- HOW TO MEASURE PLEASURE: Sandel then introduces J. S. Mill, a utilitarian philosopher who argues that seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number” is compatible with protecting individual rights, and that utilitarianism can make room for a distinction between higher and lower pleasures. Sandel tests this theory by playing video clips from three very different forms of entertainment: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the reality show Fear Factor, and The Simpsons.

Andy Murray - why did he underperform?

Any crashed out to a straight sets loss against Djokovic in the Aussie Open on Sunday. How come he so under-performed? Yes Djokovic played extremely well. We've seen Andy Murray play some great matches against great opponents - so it's not that he lacks the capability. Was he physically drained? Possibly, but my guess is that he has found the energy in previous situations like this. So what else might explain it?

Any top performer plays his very best when he or she is fully aligned at all levels of consciousness; this allows them to get into the state of 'flow'. At this high level of competition, any slight doubt of any kind can be enough to sink the ship, as it were. I recall one sprinter saying that if you were going to compete against Linford Christe, if you had any slight doubt even for a second in the week before the race, then you had already lost. In NLP language, that's a lack of alignment at the unconscious level. And yet, it's quite easy to put right.

Of course, the old-fashioned way is to keep going until you get a break and your mind suddenly fully realises that you really ARE a winner; rather like appeared to happen for Roger Federer after his first Wimbledon win. But that's a risky strategy. I think that's what never happened for Tim Henman. Agassi transformed his approach as a result of NLP coaching.

For any of us, the real difference that makes the difference as to whether or not we get what we are truly capable of in life, is about unconscious mis-alignment. Simply put, we have either unrecognised doubts or competing desires which undermine our focus and determination. It's totally fixable these days.

Is real happiness unrealistic? Beware of reality checks; check on reality itself first

Let's say life is good... but, being honest with yourself, is it the way you'd be if you had 'three wishes' - or even just one :)   Aaah but we have to live in the real world. What if you discovered that reality is not as real as we tend to believe? Check out this BBC Horizon video and just wonder...

What is Reality? Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Happiness on video - free

From the World Conference on Happiness and Its Causes, Sydney
Some great presentations recorded for you to watch free online 
Don't miss this opportunity - I don't know how long they will be there (I had to buy previous recordings as DVD sets). 
<View the whole programme here>

I particularly recommend these two: 

Happiness of a compassionate life

Dr Robert Thurman

Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Department of Religion, Columbia University, USA

    * Can we find a reliable source of happiness?
    * Is it possible to have enduring satisfaction in life without depriving others?
    * Compassion and generosity can be fun.
    * Can we educate ourselves and our children to live life to its fullest? 

Happiness: Is it beyond our control?

Hugh Mackay

Psychologist, social researcher and novelist, Author: Advance Australia…Where? and Right & Wrong: How to decide for yourself

    * How have changes in Australian society affected our psyche?
    * Does the pace of change create an unrealistic obsession with “control”?
    * Why we need to embrace the full spectrum of human emotions – not just happiness
    * Why we need to accept that life is for living, not controlling

 His ideas on ALL emotions being important echoes my own ideas, that emotions are feedback signals from the mind-body system trying to maintain internal equilibrium within its environment.

Is wealth bad for your health?

Complex economic formulas developed by two professors of economics, Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran, and published in the current edition of the Economic Journal, suggest that greater affluence can seriously damage a nation's health. Based on their mathematical modelling, the economists advance the theory that once a country reaches a reasonable standard of living there is little further benefit to be had from increasing the wealth of its population. Indeed, it could make people feel worse off.
Read the full article on wealth is bad for your health here.

New Happiness Post

The Physics of Happiness

In this email:

• A basic truth for happiness & success
  
• News bites
  
• Training & events
• Free Stuff

Hi! We'll soon be in Spring!

Time for new growth - and many of us in business would like some of that!

The common wisdom is that the best you can hope for is to balance work and life. I think it's all wrong. Passion + your strengths = success and happiness. Do less of what you don't like and more of what you do.

A rediscovered old truth

 

The basic requirements for success and happiness

Anyone who has sustained amazing business success will tell you that two ingredients are necessary: (i) self-belief and (ii) doing something you enjoy. The trouble is, most of us don’t fully get what the second requirement is all about. Creating and keeping something significant takes a lot of work. This applies whether you want happy relationships, a great career or business, or a lovely family. How are you going to sustain the effort if you are not fully focussed on why you enjoy it? You will get moments of weakness that will let you down.
You have to always ask WHY you want what you want. Even more importantly, what will your achievement enable you to continuously do, or be, or have? What will be happening? Go out to that future, now, and check – does it make you really excited, ongoing? It has to have real passion and meaning to you. Try it this way – imagine all your bills, your mortgage, your concerns were all met; what would you be doing in life then? The answer gives you clues about what you need to be doing. When it comes to business, make sure you pick out things that you are naturally excellent at.

Inspiration only comes when you put yourself on the edge; when you burn your boats; when you take a risk and invest in yourself. At that very point, your mind gets creative; you tune into new ideas and get creative. If you don’t, you stay just ‘off-station’ and no new information will come to you. It’s rather like the difference between tuning into a live broadcast compared to listening into a replay of yesterday’s news. This is ancient wisdom, consistent with Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish traditions, which hold to a sacred truth: ‘live in the present moment’. Many people think that this is only a modern idea. It has been held true for thousands of years.
So, the ancient wisdom, just as the modern business gurus, say get rid of all self-doubt or bad feelings that get in the way, and make sure you are being authentic to yourself. Invest in being yourself – all other posts are taken! Listen to no reasons or excuses – they become self-fulfilling alibis. Get whatever help you can to speed this up. In this current financial environment, where the tide has gone out, so-to-speak, it’s time now to have a good look at what it reveals on the exposed beach. It’s an opportunity you may not get twice.

 

Newsbites

 

In the flow


Ever had that wonderful, timeless feeling that arises when you're absorbed in a challenging task, one that stretches your abilities but doesn't exceed them? Pioneering psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state 'flow'. Countless studies have shown that flow is highly rewarding and usually provokes feelings of joy afterwards. Little researched until now, however, is the idea of 'social flow', which can arise when a group of people are absorbed together in a challenging task. In a new study, Charles Walker finds that social flow is associated with more joy than solitary flow - 'that doing it together is better than doing it alone'. He concluded by leaving open the question of why more social tasks lead to a form of flow that provokes more joy. Source BPS Blog where you can read the full article.

 

Spin really works

A take-away restaurant near your house might offer free home delivery or a ten per cent discount if you collect. It sounds much better than saying you get no discount for picking up and suffer a ten per cent fee for delivery – this is the power of spin or ‘framing’ (which we teach in NLP). Now David Hardisty and colleagues have dug a little deeper into framing, to show first, that these kinds of effects can interact with people's political persuasion, and second, that they can act by altering the order of people's thoughts. Source BPS Blog where you can read the full article.

Olympic athletes reveal their mental strategies

Here's one for the boys at Top Gear to think about - apparently having an obsessive passion for driving can predispose people towards aggression behind the wheel. The idea is that for these people, driving has become an overpowering compulsion, such that an obstacle - for example, a slow driver in front - provokes great frustration, which leads to anger, which explains why they sometimes drive right up your bumper and flash their headlights.

'When obsessively passionate, the person wants to pursue activity engagement because of an internal compulsion that comes to control him or her,' the researchers explained. 'Within such a state, being prevented from engaging in the activity by an external agent is conducive to anger toward this agent.' Source BPS Blog where you can read the full article.

Training & Events

Would you like to Learn to Hypnotise Anyone in One Day?

 

Now, you may or may not have experienced hypnosis; most probably you have seen demonstrations on T.V. or somewhere.  How does it really work? How can you use it to help people, or for your own benefit? Well I'm going to tell you how on 20 March (only £30 if you book by Wed 10th - tomorrow). Find out more <here> (there's also a free hypnosis audio download).

Learn NLP  - extra dates 

 

Now scheduling an extra 8 day NLP practitioner training, this summer. First come first served in confirming the precise dates. Certified by the ABNLP. £1399 includes a pre-study training pack of audio and video recording (pre-saved on a free personal MP3 player), two course books and comprehensive manual. Live training will also include the amazing time line therapy techniques.  We will be a small and friendly group, where personal attention is assured. Contact Richard now. Download Brochure and booking details.  

Free stuff

 
The Business Manifesto

I spoke about passion and vision above. Rich Schefren is a highly respected business advisor on creating success using the web. One of his early ventures was to create a chain of hypnosis centres with some savvy marketing methods, with a $7 million turnover in four years. He is now regarded as the guru's guru. Tap into his knowledge by downloading hi 'Business Manifesto' at his blog. Follow the trail to download both 'The Missing Chapter' and the 'The Final Chapter', all free. I heartily recommend following his blog from the beginning too.