I thought you might be interested in the latest post over at Get Organized Wizard.

Lately I’ve been thinking about change. I’ve observed friends, and felt for myself, the difficulty of navigating through changes that we don’t want, but have no control over – whether it’s a job redundancy, end of a relationship, or some other kind of loss.

I can often identify something like the five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross…  It’s a painful cycle!

So I started thinking about an alternative cycle for navigating change that you don’t want, and can’t control. One that takes out some of the pain and eases the transition.

Here’s what I’ve come up with. Instead of stages that you go through, these are self-directed steps that you take. Read more…

While you’re there, you can download a free copy of the 5 Steps To Making Peace With Change Worksheet.  It’s available to members of the Get Organized Wizard community forums, which are filled with hundreds of posts and resources.

Become a member now (it’s free).

Till next time,

[Top image: by David Reece]

I’m still writing about happiness over at Get Organized Wizard. There I focus on strategies and programs that help people overcome procrastination and take action for a happier and more organized life.

How To Be Happy – Articles

Check out the Happiness Category for posts like these:

• How To Feel Happier Now? Face It!
  According to a recent Scientific American article, a number of studies suggest our feelings are strengthened, perhaps even stimulated, by the faces we make.
  

• Why Self-Improvement is Like Slaying Vampires
  A reader raised the issue of our tendency to backslide when we try to make a fresh start, and wondered what we could do about it. Here are some brief thoughts.
  

• Organize Your Evening Ritual: 10 Things To Do At Night For A Good Morning
  The way you bid the world adieu each night affects the way the world greets you the next day. Here are 10 things to do before bed to make the morning a good one.
  

• 5 People Who Aren’t Responsible For Your Happiness
  There are some people to whom you really shouldn’t delegate responsibility for your happiness. Don’t worry – there are only five.
  

• Get Organized Mission #7: Be Happy!
  This week’s mission is all about being happy. We’re going to spend some time noticing the things we enjoy and then (here’s the shocking part) doing them!
  

• 11 Great Reasons To Be Happy
  We can all feel good about choosing to be happier. Here are 11 of the advantages that go along with happiness – and 11 great reasons to be happy!
  

• How to be Happier: A Scientifically Proven Strategy that Costs Nada
  Just reflect regularly on your good stuff, and you’ll be on the path to a happier life. Here are some ways you can organize yourself to get more grateful.
  

Stay In Touch

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Thanks for checking it out!

Top image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/srboisvert/ / CC BY 2.0

The cover story in the current issue of Scientific American Mind is all about how a sense of humor can make you stronger, friendlier – and sexier!

Here are some key ideas from the article (quoted):

- The concept of laughter as a cure for disease lacks scientific support, but humor may indeed have significant effects on the psyche.

- Laughter relaxes us and improves our mood, and hearing jokes may ease anxiety. Amusement can also counteract pain.

- Cheerfulness, a trait that makes people respond more readily to humor, is linked to emotional resilience—the ability to keep a level head in difficult circumstances—and to close relationships. Life satisfaction may increase with the ability to laugh.

Read the whole story – and lighten up!

I thought you may find this article interesting:

Can happiness be found online?

Story Highlights:

• The ‘Virtual Happiness Project’ in the Netherlands looked at the relationship between Web 2.0 and happiness
• The findings suggest that blogs and social networks give people a strong sense of  belonging, which can be part of happiness
• It warns, however, that there’s a risk of being too internet-involved, which can detrimentally affect offline relationships

The report is yet to be published, but survey and experimental results point to findings:

that a lot of Facebook users already sense: social interaction is a driver for happiness, and the Web 2.0 is a valid way to experience it.

Read the article here.

(via @akselsoft)

Image by Kevin Zollman

If you’d like to get more organized or goal focused, you may be interested in our two most popular tools:

• Life MakeOver Journal is your month-by-month tool for setting SMART goals across all important life areas. It helps you organize goal-related actions, diary items, milestones and rewards, and ensure your goals are specific, measureable, achievable, relevant and time-framed.
• For the girls, Life & Goal Organizer is a 360-degree life & goal organizer. There are over 340 pages and more than 150 ready-made action plans across 12 areas to help you get your whole life organized.

The special prices end on Sunday – don’t miss out!

A new study has found that thinking
fast can improve your mood.

Princeton and Harvard researchers conducted six experiments requiring participants to briskly whisk through activities such as brainstorming, reading ideas on screen or watching a fast-forwarded film clip.

Thinking fast brought participants creativity, elation and, to a lesser extent, a sense of energy and power.

Scientific American observes:

It is unclear why thought speed affects mood, but [the study’s lead author, Emily] Pronin and her colleagues theorize that our own expectations may be part of the equation. In earlier research, they found that people generally believe fast thinking is a sign of a good mood. This lay belief may lead us to instinctively infer that if we are thinking quickly we must be happy. In addition, they suggest, thinking quickly may unleash the brain’s novelty-loving dopamine system, which is involved in sensations of pleasure and reward.

So up your thinking speed – and you’ll join the ranks of the quick and the glad.

Image by jurvetson

Guess what!

I’ve recently released a nifty
little Strategies for Happiness
workbook on creating more
happiness in your life.

It uses checklist-style worksheets to guide you to think about, and organize, the areas of your life you want to change, including:

• - Creating a happiness mindset
• - Optimism and beliefs
• - Goals and happiness
• - Research-based strategies for happiness
• - Releasing barriers to happiness

In fact, it’s much of the stuff you read about here, put into a ready-made action plan.

It’s an instant PDF download, so if you’re keen to get started right away, you can!
Download now!

If it’s your goal to boost your
happiness over the next year,
you’ll find some some ideas 
for what to focus on  in the post 

How to be Organized in 2009:
Day 8 – Strategies for Happiness 

at my Get Organized Wizard blog.

Ideas for goals include:

• Creating a happiness mindset
• Strategies for happiness
• Releasing barriers to happiness

You might find other, happiness-related areas to inspire you this year in the organizing your new year’s resolutions series, including Personal Development, Health & Fitness, Fun & Recreation. Managing Technology, Home, Family and Relationships.

Ready to make 2009 the year you organize your happiness?

Picture adapted from image by Aldon.

About this talk

From the TED site:

Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness — sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces.

The take-away

Gilbert gives heaps of interesting examples to show how bad we are at comparing costs and estimating value, and the problem of shifting comparisons. As a result, we make poor decisions about what will make us happy.

In essence:

• we underestimate the odds of our future pains, and
• we overestimate the value of our present pleasures.

My 2 cents

To put it another way: immediate gratification ain’t so gratifying – our brains simply trick us into thinking it will be.

Knowing that, we may find greater happiness if we adopt those old-fashioned virtues of patience, persistence and discipline.

But not when it comes to chocolate.

About this talk

From the TED site:

Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world’s most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you.

The upshot

Wallace’s ‘grueling quest’ is amusing, but if you just want the upshot, it’s this:

He ends by describing a study from researches at Stanford and CalTech. They gave participants the same wine labeled with different price tags.

Unsurprisingly, many participants said they preferred the more expensive wine.

But surprisingly, MRI brain imaging performed on the participants showed that their brains registered more pleasure for the wine with the (fake) higher price tag.

My take: The happiness, it seems, is real. We only think we need money to buy it.

Have you planned any new year’s resolutions?

I thought you might be interested in a series I’m doing at Get Organized Wizard on The 12 Days of New Year’s Resolutions for Better Personal Organization.

I’m spending 12 days posting ideas for new year’s resolutions you might like to choose for yourself. Each day focuses on a different life area:

Day 1: Personal Development

Day 2: Health & Fitness

Day 3: Career & Work

Day 4: Fun & Recreation

Day 5: Managing Technology

Day 6: Home

Day 7: Personal Presentation

Day 8: Strategies for Happiness

Day 9: Money & Finance

Day 10: Relationships

Day 11: Time Management

Day 12: Partridge in a pear tree Family

We’ve only just started, so now’s the perfect time to come check it out.

Importantly, the focus is on progress, not perfection. As humans we’ll never achieve the latter, but we have a good chance at the former.

Don’t wait to begin your new plans – 2009 is moving quickly. Come on over and join me!

Picture adapted from image by Aldon.

Oh – and I’ve listed 10 things I’m grateful for at the mo.

I’d love to hear your 10. Please come on over and share them…

How to be Happier: A Scientifically Proven Strategy that Costs Nada

Hello Happiness Strategists!

While working on my new project I’ve missed you, and I’ve missed writing about happiness.

What’ve I been doing? Creating resources for people who want to be more organized, that’s what! Come check it out: www.GetOrganizedWizard.com.

Right now you get a free Personal Planning Pack just for subscribing to the Get Organized Tips newsletter (which costs nothing) – so be sure to sign up.

The Get Organized Tips newsletter offers regular tips, tools & techniques for organizing your whole life. Yep – not just home or family or office, but the entire 360 degrees, including:

• Personal Development
• Health & Fitness
• Career & Work
• Fun & Recreation
• Managing Technology
• Home
• Personal Presentation
• Strategies for Happiness (one of my fave topics!)
• Money & Finance
• Relationships
• Time Management
• Family

The Personal Planning Pack contains 13 goal and project planners, schedules, weekly and daily organizers, master lists, and lots more. These easy-to-print tools are color PDFs – they look great whether printed in color or in black and white.

So don’t miss out!

There’s still lots to do for my new product, but I haven’t forgotten about my Happiness buds – and I have plenty more resources planned for you guys in the future.

Til then, choose to be happy – and you will be.

Ciao for now,
Michele

I figured it was worth coming out of happiness hiatus to tell you about that!

The purpose:
"To create a focus on individuals and communities choosing Happiness in every moment. It’s a scientific fact: People who experience a preponderance of positive emotions tend to be successful and accomplished across multiple life domains."
[http://www.internationalhappinessday.com/]

You can check out the site and participate – they have a bunch of suggestions for how to do that.

Or you can have a DIY happiness day and simply choose happier thoughts throughout the day. There are plenty of tips for that right here at Happiness Strategies.

Or – and this might be my favorite – you can choose NOT to be happy. Buck the trend. Stay miserable. You’ll find everything you need for unwavering woe in the series How *NOT* To Be Happy.

You don’t even have to wait till July 10th.

Sadly, I’ve had to turn off comments as I’ve been getting stampeded with SPAM (a SPAMpede, perhaps?). I’ll try turning comments back on after a few days and see if the spambots have moved on.

Thanks for understanding.

Stay happy!

Michele

PS My other project is progressing nicely, so I expect to resume happiness posts and the newsletter in a few weeks. See you then.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know I’ll be taking a short break from blogging here as I work full-time on another project.

If you need a happiness refresher while I’m gone I hope you’ll find inspiration in the archives. In particular:

• 101 Happiness Strategies
  Strategies for boosting your happiness level, based on happiness and positive psychology research
• Happiness Life Strategies
  All kinds of ways to be happier everyday – from the serious to the frivolous
• Happiness Media
  Summaries of interesting media reports related to happiness
• How *NOT* to be happy
  A favorite of readers – how to embrace your inner miserati and keep joy at bay.

See you again soon!

Michele

Technorati Tags: happiness,happiness strategies,life strategies,happiness media,how not to be happy

Image: Lukman Kusuma

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

If you have any doubt about the wonderful job our brains do, you’ll be won over by this riveting, disturbing and emotional story from Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist and stroke survivor.

‘How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their brains from the inside out?’ she asks.

In this fascinating 18-minute talk from last month she describes the euphoria and misery that accompanied the mental machinations of experiencing a stroke, and of perceiving the world alternately from the 2 sides of her brain – the parallel-processing right brain and the serial-processing leftie.

She speaks with obvious heartfelt conviction of the life-changing wisdom it brought her – the peace, synthesis and joy that’s possible by perceiving life through the right bran.

Technorati Tags: Right brain,left brain,stroke

1. Woody Allen

Failed motion picture production at NYU and City College of NY. Oh and also failed English at NYU. Before winning Oscars for directing, producing and writing.

2. Thomas Carlyle

Loaned The French Revolution manuscript to a friend whose servant used it for kindling. Carlyle went home and re-wrote the whole thing.

3. M*A*S*H

Richard Hooker received 21 rejections for this novel before it was published, became a bestseller, a huge movie success and a massively popular TV series.

4. Star Wars

Yoda et al were rejected by every Studio in Hollywood. Eventually 20th Century Fox relented and the film became one of the highest grossing movies evah.

5. E.T., Forrest Gump, Home Alone, Speed and Pulp Fiction

All were passed on by major studios. All are now iconic pieces of popular culture.

[Source: Adapted from Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul (2000) by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Bud Gardner]

The lesson from the lessons:

It’s only failure if you stop there.

More Quick Tricks

Image: carlsilver

It’s like a best-of clip show from the world’s greatest telescopes, with the images merged into a seamless spatial panascope (I know there’s no such word, but you get what I mean).

It brings to life our humble place in this spectacular universe and ignites our sense of wonder. You can’t be jaded too long watching this.

If you can, Download this TEDTalk in high-def (recommended!) >>

Otherwise, watch the low-def version below:

There’ll be a free download later this year.

Researchers using a representative sample of 973 twin pairs found that the heritable differences in happiness were pretty well explained by the differences in personality, particularly the dimensions of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness.

What does that mean for people who’d like to be a bit cheerier but may not have inherited the ideal personality? Co-researcher Tim Bates from University of Edinburgh said in an article on the study:

‘If people want to raise their own levels of well-being, our best advice is that they practice the kinds of behaviors that characterize calm, conscientious, extroverts…Try and be active and social, even if with just a few people. Practice the things you find emotionally challenging, maybe even keeping a diary to help you keep a sense of reality, and allow you to reflect on which strategies work, and which do not.’

Uh – does this all sound familiar? That’s because we’ve covered a lot of this ground in 101 Happiness Strategies.

To recap:

How to be happy – 11. Focus on what you can do to be happier

Genes – via personality – contribute at most 50% of happiness variance. That leaves a lot of wriggle room around the genetic stuff for boosting happiness.

How to be happy – 12. Make peace with your personality

Much of the personality influence works via the way people act - which is why Bates suggests we ‘practice the kinds of behaviors that characterize calm, conscientious, extroverts’. What you do affects how you feel.

How to be happy – 13. Act like you’re an extravert – even if you aren’t

Introverts who behave like extraverts are happier than those who don’t. Again, personality might be the premise, but it’s not the whole story. You drive the narrative.

How to be happy – 14. Concentrate on intentional factors

When you take into account that genes/personality might contribute 50% and external conditions another 10% to happiness, you’re left with a solid 40% up for grabs. That’s too much happiness potential to leave on the table while complaining about your personality shortcomings.

Happiness Life Strategy: Know your personality

Knowing your personality traits can help you make choices for happiness. For every personality profile there’s a situation that brings out the best – and the worst – in a person.

Technorati Tags: happiness,personality,genes

Image: PixelPet