Act Happy Week, Day 1: Smile On Purpose

The focus of Act Happy Week is to educate the public about purposeful actions you can take to create chemical shifts in your body that drive Positive Emotions. Here is today’s exercise: Day 1: Smile On Purpose Smiling initiates a complex shift of muscles, breath, and body chemistry (you release endorphins!) that creates a more positive mood. Plus, what you …

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The 13 Principles of Happiness, Redux

A few weeks ago I delivered one of my core talks, “Five Prescriptions for Living and Leading in a Turbulent World” to an enthusiastic audience. One of the participants approached me after the program to say, “Jim, I’ve been a subscriber for over a year, and I’ve never read anything about these 13 Principles of Happiness that you refer to …

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19 Reasons Why You are Already Failing at Your Resolutions

Are you already failing on your resolutions?  Here’s why: The world often places obstacles on our path to happiness in life and work. But you know what? We often do a lot more to mess up our own happiness. I see this in my coaching clients all the time, and you are probably doing some of these things to yourself. …

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Happiness Comes From Love and Gratitude

Every day, people buy too much stuff, eat too much food, and waste away their hours chasing after happiness…to no avail. They may find excitement or satiation, but TRUE HAPPINESS still eludes them. Fortunately, happiness is really inexpensive and pretty simple to find, but that doesn’t mean that it comes easily.  If you’re bold, and truly willing to commit to …

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You Were Born To Shine

  Over time, fear, exhaustion and shame can dim the brightest of lights, and that is why you must, at all times, do what you can to keep that flame inside burning bright, choose the path of light and love, and allow your brilliance to be seen. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools that you can use to rekindle your spark …

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How Do You Manage Your Rabbits?

I am a gardener. My kids got me started years ago with a few tomato and pepper plants in a small strip of ground; we have evolved to large raised beds that generate hundreds of pounds of produce annually. Over time we have battled flooding (thus the raised beds), drought (we now have a watering system), overhanging trees (call an arborist), …

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Play that Happy Music!

One of my mantras is that you — and you alone — are responsible for your own happiness, that it is your decision.  And if no one else can “make” you happy, it stands to reason that you cannot make other people happy either.  Right?   Well, sort of.  Just because you can’t make someone dance doesn’t mean you can’t …

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Happiness is Hard Work

This video animation offers a great primer on the difference between traditional psychology and Positive Psych.  In many ways, it’s taken directly from many of my talks — of course the reality is that I studied with Martin Seligman and Mihaly Czikszentmihaly and apparently learned this explanation directly from the source.  The core message:  Creating Happiness in your life does …

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A Recipe for Happiness

How do you feed your soul?  Do you grab pre-packaged Pleasure from the freezer, microwave it, and eat on the run; or do you cook up your Joy from scratch using organic, locally-sourced ingredients?  Perhaps you have a saucepan of Gratitude constantly simmering on a back burner?  Or do you wait for others to invite you over for Connection and a …

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Nine Simple Strategies for Happiness

If you are totally organized and always know what you need to do next, always have control of your tasks, and always correctly forecast how long something will take… I am insanely jealous of your skillset. Starting last October, even as I started to declare 2013 as my Year of Happiness (my 15th anniversary in business, etc), I began a …

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