Strategies for Personal Change

This Too Shall Pass

This too shall pass. Now would be good.

  ARE YOU AN OPTIMIST OR A PESSIMIST? It is said that an eastern monarch once charged his wisemen to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and all situations. They presented him with the words: “and this, too, shall pass away. “How much it expresses! How chastening …

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Act Happy Week, Day 4: Act Like an Optimist

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 4: Act Like an Optimist Pessimists look to the future and expect things to go wrong, while Optimists look to the future and expect things to go …

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Third, Use Optimism to Create a Positive Future

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.  When he replicated the experiments …

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The Choices You Choose

Michael J Fox has been in the media a lot.  He’s written a new book and is doing a promotional tour.  You may recall that he walked away from acting many years ago when he went public with his battle with early-onset Parkinson’s disease.  He’s since become an activist for stem-cell research into neurological disorders. I saw his interview with …

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Happiness is Winning an Oscar!

I watched the Academy Awards on Sunday nite and was, of course, THRILLED when Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture.  I loved the book (Q&A) and I wrote two posts about the movie back in December when I first saw it. I had to stay up past my bedtime to watch them open the envelope , and I was happy to …

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There Are Other Places To Sing

A reader sent me this story as a response my post on Saying Goodbye.  I teared up as I read it, and now pass it along to you.  My Aunt Corrine passed on last Friday evening — she’s now singing in a different place. I hope you enjoy it. THE OLD PHONE When I was quite young, my father had …

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Happiness and the Stock Market

There’s been very little happiness in the financial world.  In order to keep from slipping into the black hole of depression about our financial situation, I’ve withdrawn a bit.  Do I really need to know what is happening in the market on an hour to hour basis?  No.  Day to day?  Hmm.  One day it’s down 700 points (sadness) and …

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Happiness is cool nites and dinner on the deck!

As my wife and I were preparing dinner last evening she looked at me and asked, “when was the last time we ate dinner at the kitchen table?” Hmm.  Great question.  We traveled back on our calendar and realized that we started eating dinner on our deck when we returned from our vacation, which was 56 days ago.  Wow!  AND …

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