Gifts For the New Year: Use Your Power to Change the Weather Here is your final Gift to help you prepare for a great 2011 — a reminder that you are more powerful than you know! This year, don’t treat your emotions like the weather – something about which one speaks but does nothing at … Read more
Gifts for the New Year: Practice Optimism to Create a Positive Future As Martin Seligman (the father of Positive Psychology) realized decades ago, we can train ourselves into any number of emotional states. He first noticed the phenomenon of Learned Helplessness in lab animals subjected to random reward/punishment activities over which they had no control. … Read more
Gifts for the New Year: Be the Real You Notice all the places in your life where you feel distracted and stressed by how you’re behaving. Happiness Principle #13, Be Authentic, reminds that when you stop trying to “play a role” to fit what you think other people expect of you, you give yourself the … Read more
Gifts for the New Year: First, Believe in Happiness At my coaching group’s annual holiday gathering, we exchange used, gift-wrapped books. When a book is opened, the person who brought it stands up to tell the story of how that book impacted impacted them, and why they chose to share it. One woman’s personal story … Read more
As you do your final preparation for Thanksgiving, remember that this is, in the end, a holiday about giving thanks and offering gratitude. Some people find it awkward to express their gratitude. That discomfort comes from living in a world that has programmed us into thinking it’s all about me, me, me and stuff, stuff, … Read more
While I ran an outplacement center earlier in my career, I know much about search tactics. But these days my passion is to help folks in this situation by emphasizing the importance of self-care during the search. As the corporate saying goes, “hire for attitude, train for skills.” What that means for the job searcher … Read more
I recently read an article written by a mom who was dealing with the myriad emotions that sprang up as she moved through the process of taking her only child to college in a distant state. She spoke of anxiety, sadness, and even panic, and her point was this: “Feelings are important, but they are … Read more
As of the moment I’m writing this, our first grandbaby’s due date has come… and gone. And my daughter is still (very) pregnant. In fact, she and Paul attended the out-of-town wedding for Kelly’s med-school roommate on her due date. Until the baby arrives, life remains normal…. Babies don’t pay much attention to deadlines and … Read more
“You can’t change other people. You can only change how you respond to them.” I first heard this life lesson from a mentor when I was a newly minted supervisor 30 years ago. At the time I was struggling with how to manage several very difficult personalities on my team. What I learned in that … Read more
Ken recently contacted me to share an article he thought my Happiness audience would also enjoy — on Smiles. Of course! Ken’s audience is nurses (www.nursingschools.net), so he’s really grounded his research in the medical world — proving that smiles are GOOD FOR YOU! ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Everyone loves the quote “laughter is the best medicine,” and … Read more