No Ulterior Motives

By |2017-05-21T16:06:00-07:00June 25th, 2012|General|

No one is going to pay you to do what you love. Well, I guess another way to say this, is once you start getting paid to do what you love, you will likely stop loving it quite as much. As humans, we have two motivational forces: intrinsic and extrinsic, in other words internal and external motivating factors. Usually, the things we do that make us most genuinely happy and the things that we do because they make us most genuinely happy. This is what is referred to as intrinsic motivation: the things we do [...]

Comments Off on No Ulterior Motives

Who Said This Would Be Easy?

By |2017-05-21T16:06:01-07:00April 4th, 2012|General|

Believe it or not we can often actually change our emotions by choosing to engage in some sort of behaviour or activity that is the opposite of how we are feeling. If you’re feeling up to the challenge, try a little experiment.  Next time… Next time you are AFRAID, do whatever it is that you’re afraid of, with gusto (and within reason, of course). Next time you feel ASHAMED, continue doing the thing that makes you feel ashamed over and over again… and in public. You might be imagining that if you do this you [...]

Comments Off on Who Said This Would Be Easy?

Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

By |2017-05-21T16:06:01-07:00March 18th, 2012|General|

Because we were created as social beings, when we do things that make others feel good, we can’t help but feel good ourselves. In continuing with the conversation about gratitude I found in my research on happiness a neat little gratitude exercise. The exercise involves writing a gratitude letter. Pretty self explanatory. In detail though, it entails expressing our appreciation in concrete terms to someone who has been kind, thoughtful, or helpful to us in one way or another. It could be your mother, father, an old friend, a new friend, a teacher, a coach, [...]

Comments Off on Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

Becoming a Natural

By |2017-05-21T16:06:01-07:00March 11th, 2012|General|

Further to the conversation on increasing happiness in our lives, research suggests that one of the things that people with high levels of happiness do is remember to be intentionally grateful. Gratitude has been shown to be a very powerful antidote to sadness, frustration, depression, anxiety, and envy. By choosing to focus on and be grateful for what we do have we become much less likely to focus on or be worried about what we don’t. Now I’m not trying to be trite and recommend in the midst of despair that we should just stuff [...]

Comments Off on Becoming a Natural