100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Scientists and academics have spent entire careers investigating what makes people happy. But hidden in obscure scholarly journals and reports, their research is all too often inaccessible to ordinary people.

At last, social scientist and psychologist David Niven, Ph. D., distills the scientific gobbledygook of over a thousand of the most compelling and important studies on happiness and habits for happiness is illustrated with a clear example and illuminated by a straightforward explanation of the science behind it to show you how to transform a ho-hum existence into a full and happy life.

1. Your Life Has Purpose and Meaning
2. Use a Strategy for Happiness
3. You Don’t Have to Win Every Time
4. Your Goals Should Be Aligned with One Another
5. Choose Your Comparisons Wisely
6. Cultivate Friendships
7. Turn Off the TV
8. Accept Yourself—Unconditionally
9. Remember Where You Came From
10. Limit Yourself to Thinking About One Subject as You Lie Down to Sleep
11. Friendship Beats Money
12. Have Realistic Expectations
13. Be Open to New Ideas
14. Share with Others How Important They Are to You
15. If You’re Not Sure, Guess Positively
16. Believe in Yourself
17. Don’t Believe in Yourself Too Much
18. Don’t Face Your Problems Alone
19. Age Is Not to Be Feared
20. Develop a Household Routine
21. Don’t Be Overprotective
22. Pay Attention. You May Have What You Want
23. Don’t Let Your Religious Beliefs Fade
24. Do What You Say You Are Going to Do
25. Don’t Be Aggressive with Your Friends and Family
26. Root for the Home Team
27. Don’t Confuse Stuff with Success
28. Every Relationship Is Different
29. Don’t Think “What If”
30. Volunteer
31. If You Can’t Reach Your Goals, Your Goals Will Hurt You
32. Exercise
33. Little Things Have Big Meanings
34. It’s Not What Happened, It’s How Your Think About What Happened
35. Develop Some Common Interests with Loved Ones
36. Laugh
37. Don’t Let Your Entire Life Hinge on One Element
38. Share of Yourself
39. Busy Is Better Than Bored
40. Satisfaction Is Relative
41. Learn to Use a Computer
42. Try to Think Less About the People and Things That Bother You
43. Keep Your Family Close
44. Eat Some Fruit Every Day
45. Enjoy What You Have
46. Think in concrete Terms
47. Be Socially Supportive
48. Don’t Blame Yourself
49. Be a Peacemaker
50. Cherish Animals
51. Make Your Work a Calling
52. Never Trade Your Morals for Your Goals
53. Don’t Pretend to Ignore things Your Loved Ones do that Bother You
54. Get a Good Night’s Sleep
55. Buy What You Like
56. Accomplish Something Every Day
57. Be Flexible
58. Events Are Temporary
59. Be Your Own Fan
60. Join a Group
61. Be Positive
62. There Will Be an End, but You Can Be Prepared
63. How We See the World Is More Important Than How the World Is
64. Keep a Pen and Paper Handy
65. Help the Next Person Who Needs Some Minor Assistance
66. Take Care Not to Harshly Criticize Family and Friends
67. Some People Like the Big Picture, and Others Like the Details
68. Do things You Are Good At
69. Go visit Your Neighbor
70. Smile
71. Don’t Accept Television’s Picture of the World
72. You Always Have a Choice
73. Be Agreeable
74. Don’t Ignore One Part of Your Life
75. Listen to Music
76. Let Your Goals Guide You
77. Use Your Job Positively
78. Don’t Forget to Have Fun
79. Believe in Ultimate Justice
80. Reminisce
81. Be Conscientious
82. Don’t Dwell on Unwinnable Conflicts
83. Enjoy the Ordinary
84. Focus Not on the World’s Tragedies, but on the World’s Hope
85. Get a Hobby
86. Envying Other People’s Relationships is Pointless
87. Give Yourself Time to Adapt to Change
88. Focus on What Really Matters to You
89. Realize that Complete Satisfaction does Not Exist
90. Surround Yourself with Pleasant Aromas
91. Don’t Let Others Set Your Goals
92. You Are a Person, Not a Stereotype
93. Know What Makes You Happy and Sad 94. Keep Reading
95. We Must Feel Needed
96. Say “So What”
97. Have a Purpose
98. You Have Not Finished the Best Part of Your Life
99. Money Does Not Buy Happiness
100. What Does it All Mean? You Decide

Until my next post,
Elvin Peria

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Empowerment

For almost two years, I subscribed to Hugh MacLeod's GapingVoid mailing list. Everyday, I am receiving emails from him. Today, I got this email and this explains why every people living on the 21st century should write their thoughts down. Every struggles, every hardships, and every painful events that happened should be written down. Of course, success stories should be written too. 

Who knows, perhaps there will be one person who will be empowered with the stories that you have shared. Who knows, his life might change because of that piece of literature published online or offline. We'll never know. 

I can talk about this topic all day long but I guess that's for my future post. For now, enjoy Hugh McLeod's post.

“Empowerment” doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Empowerment is part of a story... your story. You feel empowered depending on the context. 

I believe that every person needs to know, at least once before they die, that their life- with all its mess and suffering- was worth it, somehow. 

And how do they know that? by telling stories. By telling THEIR story... 

And making it great. 

When someone is using your product, don't ask what stories are they telling about you; ask what stories they're telling about themselves, and how you product fits into it. You'll get a far more interesting answer.

Until my next post,

Elvin Peria

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Tips on Multitasking and Planning a Project Effectively

I stumble upon this post from Brian Tracy's blog while I was updating our facebook page. It is entitled How to Multitask and Effectively Plan a Project. This post is very timely because my wife and I just started our new online project with the help of Millionaire Society.  Enjoy reading!

All of life is a series of projects. A project is a complex task. It is often called a multitask job. This type of job requires the coordination of efforts of several people, each of whom is responsible for a part of the job, with every part of the job being necessary for successful completion. Your ability to handle these multitask jobs is a critical skill for success. All achievements of consequence are complex, and they involve the cooperation of many people.

The Key Management Skill

A study by Stanford University of the qualities that companies look for in promoting people into the position of chief executive officer concluded that the ability to put together a team to accomplish a task was the single most important identifiable quality of an executive who was destined for the fast track in his/her career. Your ability to put together teams to do multitask jobs, ability to complete complex projects, and visible qualities of leadership will determine the course of your career as much as any other factor. It will enable you to multiply yourself times the talents and efforts of others, and accomplish vastly more than you could do on your own.

A Learnable Skill

Project management is a learnable skill, like riding a bicycle. It can be divided into a series of steps, each of which you can master, one at a time. In managing any project, you begin by defining the ideal desired result of the project. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? What will the project look like if it is a complete success?  Start by defining a successful completion of the project, the ideal desired result.

Start at the Beginning

Once you are clear about your desired result, you then start from the beginning. Determine what you are going to have to do to get from where you are to the completion of this project, on schedule and on budget. Determine a specific deadline or target to aim at. Make sure that it is realistic and achievable.

Assemble the Team

Bring together all the people whose contributions will be necessary for the success of this project. Sometimes you need to assemble a team before you can even decide upon the ideal result and the schedule. Remember that people are everything. Take ample time to think carefully about the people who are going to be the team members.

Share the Ownership

Instill ownership of the project in the team members by sharing the job with them. There is a direct relationship between how much a person feels a sense of ownership for the job and how committed he is to making the project a success. One of the key jobs of management and leadership is to instill this feeling of ownership in each member of the team, so that each person feels personally responsible for the accomplishment of the overall project. You accomplish this by discussing every detail of the project with the people who are expected to carry it out.

Develop a Shared Vision

A shared vision is an ideal future picture of success that everyone buys into. How do you develop a shared vision? You sit down and work with the team to answer the question, “What are we trying to accomplish?” You encourage everyone to contribute, visualize, and to imagine the ideal outcome or desired result of the project. Once this vision is clear and shared by everyone, you move on to the development of “shared plans” to achieve the vision.

Set Schedules and Deadlines

Once you have a shared vision and shared plans, and everyone knows exactly what is to be done and what the ideal results will look like, the next step is for you to set a deadline for project completion based on the consensus of your team.

Create a List

Create a to-do list and write down every task, function, and activity that must be completed, right down to the smallest job. Make it easier for yourself-get the project finished on time and break the project down into individual jobs and tasks as much as you can.

Organize the Project

Organize the different parts of the project in two ways: sequential tasks and parallel tasks. You organize by sequence when you determine which jobs must be done before other jobs can be done, with each task in order. Sequential organization is necessary where a particular task requires that another task be completed before it can be started. In almost every case, before you do anything, you have to do something else first. Organize the tasks sequentially with a logical process of activities from beginning through to the end of the project.

The second way to organize the tasks is through parallel activities. Parallel activities exist when more than one task can be done at the same time. Two or more people can be working on two or three different tasks independently of each other.

I hope you enjoyed this post.  Please leave a comment and share with your friends! 

Until my next post.

Elvin

PS. By the way, I will be sharing my review for the online group Millionaire Society on my next posts. 

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