Happiness and ...

We all have a neurological fear system embedded within our brains. This neural network once helped us survive, but it now can limit our lives… the biological circuitry that once saved us is the number enemy of happiness.

This “fear system” is our storehouse for past trauma, current anxiety, fear of the future and old instinctual terrors. We needed this part of the brain to keep us alive… the instant ability to spring into action at even a threat danger. It became faster with process of rational thought, faster again with the feeling of love. It became faster than any other human action.

We survived, and became hardwired for hard times.

And not in modern times what is good for our survival is bad for happiness and even for our long-term health. So the question is, where do we go from here?

For most of us in modern life, survival is not the cut and thrust of hunt or be hunted. It’s paying the bills, working, coming home. We don’t need that instinctive primal fear to propel us with a clast of adrenaline, yet we can’t get rid of it.

To balance this, we have evolved to possess the human neocortex, which is the primary area for intellect - this is the creative, the intuitive, the intellectual, the spiritual. More importantly, it is the home of happiness.

***Special Note: Most of this section has been learnt through the teaching of Dr. Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth, from the book “You’re Only Six Steps Away From Happiness”. We highly recommend this book as part of your journey.

Giving Up Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a myth. When someone says “I am perfectionist” what I am hearing is that they have no standards. Perfectionism cannot be achieved, so it’s the same as saying you want to achieve the impossible. Yet isn't interesting how much time people spend trying to attain it. Saying we want perfection is really another way of saying I don’t feel confident to say  the task is complete. And isn't that another way of saying I fear not being enough?

Hmmm…

How about instead of focusing on perfection you focus on the results you want to achieve? Giving up the illusion of perfection is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, because it frees up your energy and time to focus on what really matters.

When people are first introduced to this is they feel a level of fear because they have convinced themselves that it’s necessary to achieve this. Abandoning perfection seems scary because they are unclear about what to replace it with.

The solution is simple. Replace perfection with what it is you really want.

The Power of "No"

I used to say yes to whatever was asked of me. believing that way I would be liked. What I was really doing was managing my fear of not being loved or not belonging. What would happen was I would run around for someone else, then feel resentful for being “used” if they didn’t express enough gratitude. Maybe you have a pattern like that, and you’re noticing that it’s tiring making everyone else happy. Especially if it means you aren’t.

The  solution is to learn to say no. It won’t offend the other person, unless they expect you to comply to their every request, in which care why is that? If you have trouble saying “no” , then say “I will have to get back to you,”  This buys you the time  to think about whether this is something you really want to spend time on, and also means you won’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings.

Once you've said you’ll get back to them, you can then think of another solution that doesn’t involve you. And maybe you’ll choose to experience courage by saying you can’t do the task.

The 80/20 Rule

We all have the same 24 hours in each day but have you noticed how sometimes that doesn't feel like enough?  This means it’s important to make some smart choice about how you spend your time and your energy. The 80/20 Rule simply means that 20 percent of all your activities are likely to produce 80 percent of the meaningful results in your life.

What is your 20 percent? What is the small number of activities that produce the key outcomes you are wanting in your life? The more time you spend on these activities the faster you will be propelled towards your ultimate life.

What are my top three 20 percent activities?

What will focusing on these activities give me?

How to Manage Your TIme and Your Life

If you’re one of those people who has scraps of paper around the place on which  notes, phone numbers, things to do and ideas are scattered, you are not alone. Have you noticed that these scraps of paper can be difficult to  locate occasionally? There must be a better way , you wonder… The simplest solution is to create five to ten files or boxes in which all these scraps of paper go, depending on their category.

For example, say your focus in your life is family, friends, work, finances, art class, exercise, self-development and gardening, all you do is create a file for each of these seven areas. Whenever you write a note to yourself, or receive some information about one of these areas, slot it immediately into the relevant file. That way when you need it it’s exactly where it is supposed to be.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It means you are organised, and has the added bonus of making possible for you to get away from the “busy-ness” of the tasks you need to do. What so I mean by this? Have you ever noticed that a proportion of your time is spent running around doing errands that perhaps aren’t that important to you? If you answered yes. you’re in the majority. Now imagine taking each of these files and instead of just making your way through the to-do--lists they represent, you ask yourself a better question… what is it I ultimately want to achieve in this area> What will achieving this ultimately give me?

Let’s look at the example of exercise. The person above wants to achieve greater fitness, but always run out of time. They also notice they want to spend more time with their family and on personal development. Why are these areas important? Because what they ultimately want is to feel great about themselves.

Can they achieve this without having to do everything that’s on each of the to-do lists? Absolutely. Perhaps they could go for walks their family, or jog as they listen to a personal development tape. Notice that these options combine activities to get even more juice into what they want. Now they are propelling themselves closer to what they ultimately want.
What this means is you are creating for yourself a smarter system for achieving your ultimate life. Instead of spending each day simply getting through the lists of what needs to be done, you combine tasks.

This system also allows you to eliminate tasks also. Say you want to spend more time on your gardening and new business idea, and find yourself spending too much time on errands. Instead of chaining yourself to the mundane tasks of dry cleaning runs and ironing, you hire a cleaner runs and ironing, you hire a cleaner, and with the extra time you’ve created you develop your business faster and more efficiently.

What if you can’t afford a cleaner? How about delegating more of these tasks to family members who wouldn’t traditionally do these things? Or how about doing them all in one hit once a week in “down-time” when you would normally watch TV?

If you eliminated TV three days a week from your schedule how much more would you get done? How much closer would you be able to be towards building your ideal life?

Getting Organised

To make the change you want in life you need to make the time and create the space for them. Cluttering your life with the noise and busy-ness of your life can get in the way of you achieving what you want. Bill Gate, who runs many companies, has exactly the same number of minutes in the day as a surfer. We all have the same amount of time in our day, the only difference is how we choose to use it.

Creating Space:

Allocate time for yourself and your goals and dreams. Don’t hope you’ll find the time one day. That’s the old pattern and it will deliver the old results. Diarise when you will take action toward your goals. .

What I have diarised:

Work out how you spend your time during the average day. This will reveal to you where you have been wasting time. Most people who do this find another half an hour to two hours per day.

Where I found I was wasting time, and commit to eliminate:

Add up how much time you spend on yourself, your goals, your personal and physical development.

The amount of time spend on myself, my goals, and my personal and physical development:

The amount of time I now commit to spend on myself, and my personal and physical development:

Develop and stick to a filing system that works. People who rely on their memory and scraps of paper to run their finances and their lives are limited by how much they can remember. 

What I have done to improve the management of my life:
If  “no time “ is a constant excuse or story you tell yourself to prevent you doing what needs to be  done to achieve your goals, replace it with a belief or story that will work.

The old story about time:

My new, story about my time and how I can choose to use it:

Declutter your house of anything you haven’t used for three years. This includes clothes, cooking implements, bedding, furniture and the rest of the useless stuff we gather throughout our lives. 

What I have decluttered:

What this action has freed up in my home, my business, my cupboards, and in my mind:

Take a few moments to answer the questions below.

What activities took up the largest proportion of your time last year?

What was the most valuable use of your time last year?

What were your five biggest time wasters last year?

Approximately how much time did you spend watching TV each Day?

Approximately how much time did you spend focusing on your dreams and goals each day?

Everyone on the plane has the same number of hours in the day.

People who say “I’m too busy” are investing in the “busy-ness” of their lives, instead of investing in what truly matters to them

Creating Your New Empowering Values

You have in place a picture of your ideal life, your top five one year goals, empowering questions for driving you towards your destiny. Now it’s time to put in place the values you need to support you as you go about creating your ideal like.

As we said earlier, values are the drivers… they are instrumental in determining the quality of our life and whether or not we are happy and fulfilled.

Look at your old values and ask yourself, which of these values will support, nurture and serve me as I go about creating my ideal life? Which values wouldn’t? For example, if you have designed more fun in your life, and your values are about obligation, duty and commitment, there is a conflict. It would be difficult to experience fun. If you want to experience more achievement in your life and your values are around fun and freedom and your moving away values are rejection and failure, achievement is going to elude you.

It’s time to create values that are going to conspire for your success. It’s time to think about the values that you want driving you as you build your extraordinary life.

Extraordinary of Value

Honor

Courage

Tolerance

Passion

Persistence

Faith

Outrageousness

Fun

Happiness

Love

Commitment

Self-Trust

Compassion

Tenacity

Openness

Achievement

Adventure

What kind of person do you ultimately need to become in your lifetime?

What do you want to stand for? What do you want to believe in?

What do you want your life to really be about?

What do your values need to be to achieve the extraordinary life you are designing for yourself?

What order do these values need to be in order to achieve your extraordinary life?

What rules do these values need to have in order to achieve your extraordinary life?

Melissa’s Number One Value”

Health and vitality

My rule for this value to be met:

I experience health and vitality anytime I walk, or

I do class at Lifetime fitness, or

Eat health, or

Drink Water, or

Go to the beach.

What are you noticing? How easy do you think it is for me to achieve meeting my top need for health and vitality each and every day? The key to this is to make your rules about your values as easy as possible to achieve.

Now it’s your turn to construct the values for your life that will be a guiding compass, regardless of what is happening or you think is happening.

What kind of person do you ultimately need to become in your lifetime?

What do you want to stand for? What do you want to believe in?

What do your values need to be to achieve the extraordinary like you are designing for yourself?

What order do these values need to be in order to achieve your extraordinary life?

What rules do these values need to have in order to achieve your extraordinary life?

When constructing these rules, make sure they are as easy to achieve as possible… conspire for you own success.

For example:

Love

I experience love anytime I see someone being kind, OR

Feel love, OR

Show my love to someone, OR

Remember a loving moment, OR

Take care of myself, OR

Tell someone I love them or care for them

Notice in this example how easy it is to feel the value of love? Make sure you give yourself the same gift of successfully being about to feel the emotional states you want to all the time. Make sure that your rules can be met by you alone. If you are reliant upon someone else to do or say something you are surrendering your opportunity to feel that emotional state to someone else.

Number One Value:

Rules to experience this value:

I experience ____________________ anytime I _____________________________, OR

___________________________________________, OR

___________________________________________, OR

___________________________________________, OR

___________________________________________, OR

___________________________________________.

Now let's create your moving away values that you know, if you were to experience them, you were disconnecting from your authentic self. For example, my number one moving away value is self-pity. I know if I choose to do self-pity. I know if I choose to do self-pity what I am really doing is being self-involved and selfish, and I am ignoring the truth that I have all I need within me now. I am also ignoring the truth that I am 100% responsible for how I experience my reality. 

My other moving away values included overwhelm and stress, because I know that when I choose those emotional states what I am really doing is hoping it will all just go away and I won't  have to deal. The truth? I have the resources I need to turn it around, and there is always a practical or spiritual solution to everything. 

When you originally did this exercise, you may have chosen rejection or failure as a moving away value... We trust that you are beginning to appreciate that rejection and failure are an inevitable part of any experience. Without the risk of experiencing our three greatest fears, we can't learn appreciation or love or what we are truly capable of.

Choose for yourself right now moving away values that will give you the most leverage for creating the momentum you are seeking for yourself. Once you've done that, create some rules that reflect your new leverage. 

For example:

Melissa's moving away value: Self-pity

Rule for experiencing self-pity

Anytime I forget my true potential: OR

Anytime I forget I have the resources within me now: OR

Anytime I choose to be self-involved and selfish: OR

Anytime I want it to be all about me, like a martyr....

Notice how strong my language is around this moving away value. What chance do you think I have of wanting to do this emotion very often? Hardly ever. In fact, whenever I do this emotion, I feel an amazing amount of discomfort and pain, Because I know I am choosing to disconnect from my authentic self. 

MOVING AWAY VALUE NUMBER ONE

_______________________________

Rules for experiencing my number one moving away value:

I experience _____________________________ anytime I

________________________________________________________, OR

________________________________________________________, OR

________________________________________________________, OR

________________________________________________________, OR

________________________________________________________.

YOUR COMMITMENT TO LIVING YOUR VALUES EACH AND EVERY DAY WILL EQUAL THE AMOUNT OF FULFILLMENT YOU EXPERIENCE.