Tag: Happiness

New Year resolutions….don’t bother, I’ve got a better idea

Posted on by philipdodson

Here I am again. 750Words.com it’s been a while.

I am sitting here starting to type, after having had a week or so off. I have previously done over 100 days since first joining in September 2014, with only having missed 2 days in 3 1/2 months. I had bashed out over 85k words.

New year resolutions

Each day that has passed since I decided to take a break has left me feeling a little less keen about restarting. Then the other voice has said to me ‘taking a break is good – it freshens things up’.

This is a dilemma that we face with most things in life, taking a break from any regular activity is definitely good, however, consistency and keeping the momentum going is also good.

Life is full of these pro’s/con’s situations and at this time of year, we are not only bombarded with diets and holidays offers, but we are inundated with self-help guru’s and experts.

They all have the magic formula for success and they all have their different ‘pearls of wisdoms’ and different takes on the same old things.

Wow that’s 176 words done, I guess the break has rejuvenated me and starting this again isn’t anywhere near as hard as I had built up in my mind it would be.

So what is the answer to all this annual ritual of New Year resolutions?

The answer is don’t make them, don’t have them and don’t set yourself a tsunami of new things you’re going to change this year. Don’t set yourself all these silly goals that you will run out of steam on within a month or so.

The answer is make changes in life all the time, but make the changes that are needed at the right time and take one thing at a time. Make life changes or life resolutions.

Don’t set them all at once, don’t set ridiculously huge changes and set yourself realistic expectations and realistic timeframes.

For example, I lost 7 1/2 stone, but I lost it over 4+ years and I didn’t do it via a fad diet, I did it in a series of small steps, changing habits and sticking to them. The changes I have made, have been life changes. The habits I have broken took years to break, that’s because, like most habits they took years to build up in the 1st place. Things take time.

Other changes I have made to other habits have equally taken years and some I am still in the process of changing and I know that I am still slipping back on some of them.

Here is the other thing, it’s OK to slip on them, I am human and in the past I would have beaten myself up about it, then not felt happy with myself. Then that would have triggered the things that created or made the habits worse in the first place.

Life isn’t about success or failure, money, achievements, etc. Life is about happiness. Happiness is a difficult thing to define, it is very woolly as a concept. It is subjective, as what ‘happiness’ means to me, is different for you.

Happiness is really about positive emotions and things that create well being within us.

We are all conditioned to think about working hard on goals, jobs, projects, relationships, New Year resolutions etc…We believe that once we achieve all these things, then we will be happy.

The most successful people (fill in your own bits here as to what success looks like to you) are the ones who are happy first.

If you are happy with positive thoughts and emotions, you will do happy things, others will want to be around you and you will create with them more happiness/wellbeing etc. When you do happy things it energises you and again it is what you define as happy things, you can’t read a book on it and become happy.

Today, for example, I gave some money to a regular homeless person I see, that made me feel happy. I then found £10 dropped outside the hub and found who’s money it was and that made me happy. I walked my daughter to the station this morning, as she was getting the train to school for the first time and was a bit nervous and sad that the holidays had ended. That made me happy to spend time with her and help her to feel happy. So today has been a great day at work, why? because I feel happy. I am typing this with a smile on my face – it feels good.

Success in what ever shape you want it to come in, comes to those who are happy.

So the only resolution you should have, not just on the 1st January, is to have a life resolution to be happy.

That is it, job done for the rest of your life. It is, like all things, very easily said, slightly less easily written and requires effort and the right mindset to achieve.

Whatever number of grains of sand are left in mine or your’s ‘egg timers’ of life, none of us know, but we are going to have that time, every one of those days. So we can make the choice to approach that positively, with happiness, with a sense of adventure, a sense of fun and with an open mind or we can choose to hope that we can change it all with will power and long list of things we want to change in January, just because it is a new year.

Be happy – the rest will follow.

Who said we can’t have fun?

Posted on by philipdodson

Listening to Slim Shady while writing this today. I love writing with my headphones on, it allows me to shut the rest of the world out and really get into the zone of writing.

I was sat on the sofa this morning with YouTube on the TV and my daughter was going through various music videos with Mrs D asking her for various requests. Anyway the subject of twerking came up, not sure why to be honest, so Mrs D decided she’d have a crack.

So we searched for the appropriate song and off she went. Well probably good for her that my phone was upstairs so there is no video evidence. Mrs D is actually a very good dancer and has a great rhythm (steady, this post might end up in the public domain).

However, she hadn’t got the concept of twerking and we were all in fits of laughter. It was one of those moments where you obviously had to be there to appreciate.

laughter

The thing is that life can end up being too serious and it is important to have as many of those moments as you possibly can. Maybe some of them are best for the confines of your home and family.

I observe at work or travelling or at events or in what you read, that people are too serious in life. They sit on trains and their faces are misery, not surprising if they are reading the Metro….’ebola’…’terror’…’artic freeze’….and worse of all ‘Farage’.

Sorry have to break off here, what the f… is Farage on?? This isn’t a political thing, as if you know me, you will know that I am not aligned to any of that old school party politics nonsense. In fact the recent stuff in the news that I’ve looked at on Facebook, has just confirmed my thoughts about the whole crap political system that runs most of the world.

Anyway, back on track. Seriousness, which is often associated with the word ‘professional’ is all too often present in everyone’s working life.

Now I am not suggesting that people go to work off their faces on laughing gas, so that they are just falling about the place with laughter, unable to do anything.

However, this obsession with this other old school notion of ‘professional’, which is so subjective anyway, makes work a misery for most. Why do we have to be serious all the time? Who came up with that idea? Where is the rule book that say’s life can’t be fun, that includes work?

The fact is, there is only the ‘rules’ that we as humans have written or created in our heads, that when we are working, we have to be serious.

Naturally, if you are in court and discussing a serious crime, then again it may not be appropriate to sit there and have a good laugh about it.

However, apart from the obvious, there are lot’s of situations where taking a more light hearted and good humoured view would be better for all.

After all, we all enjoy life a good deal more when we laugh and have some fun. In a working environment, a great amount of stress and anxiety could be reduced or removed, by laughter.

There is now laughter meditation, Google it, and that along with mediation is often ridiculed and ironically laughed at by the ‘serious’ and ‘professional’ people.

Maybe some will see this as all to radical and unprofessional, but really I do think there should be a lot more time in the working environment to bring in not just meditation, but laughter meditation and much more time for light heartedness.

After all who says you can’t make fun. In fact, I would bet my shirt, that if we all were allowed or allowed ourselves to have more fun in the workplace, that productivity would massively increase, absenteeism would fall and stress/illness would reduce rapidly.

So when you get back to work on Monday, try being a little less serious, try having more of laugh, see how you can make your tasks and that of others more fun. I am sure our customers would be happier if they dealt with fun people and if you service in general was more fun.

I am already laughing about some of the most serious business situations that could be turned on their heads by introducing a bit of fun.