Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Self-Help
Publisher: Helpful Media
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 215
Copyright: March 2015
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Using positive psychology principles and principles of management, this book makes many positive suggestions that motivate, inspire, help with reinvention and serve to guide to becoming a better person.
Published on International Happiness Day, March 20, 2015, "Finding Happiness and Success" by Lawrence J. Danks is a guide to developing your best self through a summarized review and constructive commentary of proven principles from positive psychology and management. Among the fascinating,inspirational topics are:
FINDING HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS
HAPPINESS & WELL-BEING
SELF-CONFIDENCE, POSITIVE ATTITUDE AND AVOIDING STRESS
HOW TO FIND HAPPINESS
IMPROVE YOUR THINKING
GOAL SETTING, DECISION MAKING AND CONTROL
FINDING SUCCESS
PITFALLS TO AVOID IN TRYING TO FIND HAPPINESS
THINK SMALL
MAKE LITTLE BETS
IMPROVING YOUR LUCK
BEING AN INNOVATOR AND BEING CREATIVE
MOTIVATE YOURSELF
REINVENT YOURSELF
BECOME A BETTER AND HAPPIER YOU
Excerpt
Finding Happiness and Success
Finding happiness and success is an individual matter. There is no one size fits all. It takes experimentation and discovery to find what the right fit is for you. Fortunately today, we don’t have to go it alone. There is a substantial, and growing body of positive psychology and management thought that can be used to guide you. This e-book provides insights into these areas. It is my hope that you will take the time to obtain and read the books mentioned here and use the expert advice you find to help facilitate your journey.
Need more happiness, success and fulfillment in your life? This book contains multiple segments of personal growth, positive psychology, and management readings on happiness, success, innovation, motivation, luck, reinvention, job hunting, career advice, and service.
IT'S IMPORTANT NOT ONLY TO BE HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL, BUT TO HAVE A WELL-LIVED LIFE
In the article, "What Happy People Do Differently", authors Todd B. Kashan and Robert Biswas-Diener, ("Psychology Today" - August 2013) indicate that:
"In a study of more than 10,000 participants in forty-eight countries, psychologists Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia discovered that people from every corner of the globe rated happiness as being more important than any other desirable personal outcomes, such as having meaning in life, becoming rich, and getting into heaven...Most people accept that true happiness is more that a jumble of positive feelings - it's probably better described as a sense of 'peace' or 'contentedness' ".
"The good life is best construed as a matrix that includes happiness, occasional sadness, a sense of purpose, playfulness, and psychological flexibility, as well as autonomy, mastery, and belonging....Not only do people differ in their happiness matrices - but they can shift in their own respective matrices from moment to moment…
Overall, people who are the happiest tend to be superior at sacrificing short-term pleasures when there is a good opportunity to make progress toward what they aspire to become in life. If you want to envision a happy person's stance, imagine one foot rooted in the present with mindful appreciation of what one has - and the other foot reaching toward the future for yet-to-be uncovered sources of meaning."
This section is an excellent prelude to the many helpful thoughts you will find in the pages that follow. As you go through the book, jot down or highlight any ideas you get along the way. These resources are simply a starting point to set goals for yourself and to improve your outlook and your life.
Many outstanding happiness and success works are cited here. It’s important to experience them yourself by reading from the original sources. The tests contained in some of them are valuable and an essential element in knowing how to move forward more effectively. Also, my summarizations may not be as relevant as something else you would see that would speak more directly to you. I hope that they will serve as an encouragement to do that.
Bridge Building
I’m not a psychologist, career counselor or a management theorist, but I appreciate the identified and proven benefits to be found through the research of others. It is my intention to pass the essence of some of this on to you. You will read the very valuable things they have say. The best way to think of these resources is that they are intended to be a “bridge builder”, leading you to further detailed and customized study that will tell you more about yourself, and lead to other educational experiences, and also to professionals, who are highly trained and experienced to help you. Reference to these resources is only the first step. It is not an end in itself.
It’s important to your success to seek out a variety of opinions. By the time you finish, you will have had many, including mine. But that’s not enough. You need to consult with people who know you best and also with others who are familiar with areas you have an interest in. All the advice you’re going to get is not going to be good. You might also not agree with all of it either. Just take it all in and evaluate it as you go along. Just keep an open mind.
The benefit of these resources, and any further courses of action it leads you to, can only be determined by the actual steps you take to improve your life. Just reading about it, while highly worthwhile in creating the proper motivation and frame of mind to help you move forward, is no substitute for setting meaningful goals and accomplishing them.
How long should you keep at this? Keep these two thoughts in mind as you go through life:
"Plan To Live To Be One Hundred"
The famous motivational speaker, Dr. Robert Schuller, says that this is the proper time reference. (It makes no difference how long you actually live.) The idea is to always have personally relevant goals or a project, for as long as you live. This will give your life meaning – and meaning helps produce happiness and a feeling of success. (A feature on “Sixty Minutes” indicated that the population segment over ninety years old is the fastest growing one in the country. It’s projected to quadruple in the coming decades. You might not make it to a hundred, but you might still get to be a nonagenarian!)
"You're Never Don"e
“How will you know when your work is done?” The answer: “If you’re still breathing, you’re not done yet.” So always have goals, and keep at them, even if at age ninety, it’s simply to speak with two friends a week, listen to the evening news, take care of your pet, tend to your herb garden, fill the bird feeders every other day, and watch the 57th season of “House of Cards”! Always keep Renoir’s last words in mind: “I am still progressing.”
The famed British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried on South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic, a region where, in his failure to reach the South Pole in the early 1900's, he arguably established the gold standard standard for leadership, engendering loyalty, and team building. If you ever feel that you’ve have taken about as much as you can take, or that you have failed at something and don’t feel good about it,read "Shackleton’s Boat Journey" by Frank Worsley. It will hold you spellbound, and in wonder, about how much human beings can face and still come out on top, no matter how long the odds are.
And what about the “you’re never done” part?” Let it be said of you, as it was of Shackleton:
“Never the lowered banner, never the last endeavor. Keep fighting until the end." There is much in you to give and a great example you can set for others...
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