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Positive Psychiatry, 1.17 (V) 8 Steps to Happiness

1.17 (V) 8 Steps to Happiness

[MUSIC] The facts and figures about the correlates of happiness, the relationship of happiness to well being to social connectedness are all fascinating and can be useful useful information in themselves. But what can we actually do to make ourselves more resilient? What can we do to help us live more flourishing more connecting lives? Well a few years ago, I was lucky enough to be involved with the ABC program making Australia happy. And I worked with that crew to develop to develop a simple eight step program that would people could apply that would be evidence based that people could apply in their day to day life. And we did a great documentary on that, and it was really powerfully impacting. And I'd like to share some of those ideas with you, because they form a very useful package. Now I'm not saying there are only eight steps, there might be nine and a half steps, there could be seven steps. But these are a collection of principles that we can utilize in our daily lives. And the first one is about linking goals and values. Now often we think about goals as things we have to do. We feel we're compelled to do them, and often we engage in kind of goal pursuit that as we're trying to achieve things in our lives. And we feel disconnected and we feel tired or overwhelmed, we feel we should be doing it. One of the big mistakes that people often make when they're setting their goals is they don't connect them to their values. When I'm talking about values, I'm not talking about some sort of ethical or religious framework. I'm talking about what really resonates for you as an individual. And it's important to distinguish your personal values, the things that you value in your life, from the things that society or other people say that you should value. So when you can link your personal values to your goals, you feel much more energized. One of the simple, but useful benchmark is when you're talking about the things you want to achieve, do you feel excited? Do you feel stimulated? Do you start to kind of have what we call a pathways thinking, which is almost like intuitive thoughts about how you can get there. The things that you could do, it's almost like you visualize yourself. So that's a useful benchmark for knowing that when your personal values are aligned with your goals, a feeling of positive excitement. That's not to say that you might not feel quite anxious about getting them or even quite, it's quite a scary thing to do. But there is that generation of that energy. So spend some time thinking about what it is you want to achieve. And thinking about how that aligns with the personal values, the things that you really want to achieve. The things that make you feel complete as a person. Some of the simple techniques that we can use along that road because striving for any goal is a journey that is fraught with difficulty. If it wasn't difficult at some point, it's probably not worth doing. So how do we kind of ease the road for that? Well one of the things that we can do is we can do things for other people. There's great research out there to show that through random acts of kindness that is helping other people. Not even without them knowing, is a very useful way of placing our attention on things apart from ourselves. And here's a great little example. As you're driving through the city traffic and people are cutting in in front of you and you're in a rush home, take a moment. When someone's trying to get in, let them get in in front of you and here's the test. It only counts as an act of kindness if you don't expect a thank you. So doing those little random acts of kindness is a powerful way to kind of feel a bit more connected to the world and other people. The third thing I'd like to think about is mindfulness, mindful living. Now often when we talk about mindfulness, we have the mental image of meditation, of sitting there. And that's an important part of mindful practice, but that doesn't mean that you have to sit and meditate in order to engage in mindful living. Mindfulness is about being present in the here and now. It's about accepting life with a view of compassion and non judgmental stance, which is easier to say than do. So here are some tips that we can engage with mindfulness. As we go about our everyday life, instead of having our head all over the place. Thinking about what we need to do next, every so often just bring your attention back to now. Bring your attention back to your breathing, feel yourself settle into your body. Just allow yourself to be present for a few moments. There's fantastic research to talk about the benefits of mindfulness. The fourth area that we need to focus on, and we tend not to do this enough in our society is focusing on strengths and the solutions. So many of us spend a lot of time beating ourselves up, we have the negative voice in our head, you shouldn't be doing this, you should be better than this. We focus on problems and what might go wrong. So focusing instead on identifying your personal strengths, and taking a purposeful solution focus. Thinking about how you can get to where you want to get to, is actually a lot more helpful than listening to the negative self talk and focusing on the problem analysis and things that might go wrong. One of the ways that we can pick ourselves up when we do start to feel overwhelmed is to engage in gratitude exercises. Now again this sounds like one of those platitudes that comes out of some phony self help group. But actually there's great research by Paul Cummings and others that shows that actually taking time to express gratitude, taking time to savor the moment and appreciate what we have, really helps boost our well being. It allows us to appreciate what really matters in our lives, allows us in a way to stand back for the fortitudes, the self flagellation that many of us engage in. And just appreciate what is, so that's great stuff we can do for ourselves, but what about for other people? You be rarely find a human being that doesn't have resentments, that doesn't feel angry towards other people. That doesn't feel hard done by in some respect, that doesn't hold or harbor a grudge. When you think about the notion of harboring a grudge, what does that mean? Well a harbor is a safe place, it's a place where ships come to settle from the storm. So when we harbor a grudge, what we're doing of course is we're taking that resentment and anger and we're making a safe place for it inside. So it festers, like some sort of putrid spiritual mess. Once of the ways that we can deal with that, and I'm sure we would all agree that that is not a helpful way to be living our lives, to have that resentment. One of the ways we can deal with that, of course is by forgiveness. And writing a forgiveness letter, and this is a hard thing to do. And in fact, the more resistance we have toward doing this, probably the more we need to do that. When we have resentment towards a person, an institution, a group of people whatever it is. Take some time to write, sit down and write out a letter that you forgive, that you can see things from their point of view. Now, that's very hard to do, very hard to, you don't have to post the letter. But somehow expressing that forgiveness actually externalizes it again. And much of the things we're doing in these positive psychology exercises is taken the difficult things that we sort of deal with inside of ourselves. Taken them outside of ourselves, so that we can see them in balance. And in that way, we get better perspective and that frees us, enables us to move forward. But it's very hard to move forward on your own. One of the great findings in positive psychology is the notion social networks and the connectedness. Being resilient, being happy, being able to engage and support ourselves and other people is really dependent on social networks. So if we live in a world where there's limited social networks, I would encourage you to see how you can expand them. Now this doesn't mean go walking up to everyone in the street saying, hey how're you going? Can I be part of your social network? It may mean enriching the connections with the people that you do have. It certainly means spreading your kind of area of focus from yourself onto what you can do for other people. And here we see how this notion of social networks actually connects to a lot of the other things we've spoken about already. Taking the attention so much off yourself and really putting it out there. There is fantastic research to show that happiness and well being spread through social networks just as diseases and viruses spread through human networks. So tapping into people that you know have the kind of attitude that you want to have is important connecting with those people. Spreading the social networks, joining groups that have similar interests, really important. And I guess all of this requires us to do the last thing, which is really spending time in reflection and reviewing what we're doing. One of the main derailers that we can't have when we're trying to achieve, improve our well being is this sort of narrow focus. I must feel better, I must feel better, and we just kind of pursue this almost single mindedly. What we need to do every so often is to stop and reflect, and review where we are. Take a little bit of an inventory of ourselves as it were. What are my values? How have they changed? What am I doing? What's working for me? What's not? All simple stuff and in many ways as much as this sounds like platitudes, it's actually very powerful stuff. And in that way, we can kind of really renew ourselves and refocus. So there are those simple eight steps, all of which have got great grounding in empirical research. And we've tried to put those in a very simple kind of package. But let's have a couple of words of caution here. First of all, transformational change is a rare thing. It's very rare for somebody to go from extremely depressed to brilliantly happy. Or to become from very much an introvert and reflective person, to who's hugely extraverted. Change takes work and repetition, we need to be satisfied with small steps and incremental change. So I would encourage people to be focused. Yes, it's useful to have that big goal, but focus on the small steps. Instead of going from a four out of ten to a ten out of ten in one leap, go from a four to a five and then from a five to six. Be satisfied with small steps because actually, that's the only change that we can make really. Take time to review and reflect on what you've done. And enjoy and learn, don't give yourself a hard time. [MUSIC]


1.17 (V) 8 Steps to Happiness 1.17 (V) 8 Schritte zum Glücklichsein 1.17 (V) Les 8 étapes du bonheur 1.17 (V) 幸せへの8つのステップ 1.17 (V) 8 Passos para a Felicidade 1.17 (V) 8 шагов к счастью

[MUSIC] The facts and figures about the correlates of happiness, the relationship of happiness to well being to social connectedness are all fascinating and can be useful useful information in themselves. But what can we actually do to make ourselves more resilient? What can we do to help us live more flourishing more connecting lives? Well a few years ago, I was lucky enough to be involved with the ABC program making Australia happy. And I worked with that crew to develop to develop a simple eight step program that would people could apply that would be evidence based that people could apply in their day to day life. And we did a great documentary on that, and it was really powerfully impacting. And I'd like to share some of those ideas with you, because they form a very useful package. Now I'm not saying there are only eight steps, there might be nine and a half steps, there could be seven steps. But these are a collection of principles that we can utilize in our daily lives. And the first one is about linking goals and values. Now often we think about goals as things we have to do. We feel we're compelled to do them, and often we engage in kind of goal pursuit that as we're trying to achieve things in our lives. Wir fühlen uns gezwungen, sie zu tun, und oft verfolgen wir eine Art Ziel, wenn wir versuchen, etwas in unserem Leben zu erreichen. And we feel disconnected and we feel tired or overwhelmed, we feel we should be doing it. One of the big mistakes that people often make when they're setting their goals is they don't connect them to their values. When I'm talking about values, I'm not talking about some sort of ethical or religious framework. I'm talking about what really resonates for you as an individual. And it's important to distinguish your personal values, the things that you value in your life, from the things that society or other people say that you should value. So when you can link your personal values to your goals, you feel much more energized. One of the simple, but useful benchmark is when you're talking about the things you want to achieve, do you feel excited? Do you feel stimulated? Do you start to kind of have what we call a pathways thinking, which is almost like intuitive thoughts about how you can get there. The things that you could do, it's almost like you visualize yourself. So that's a useful benchmark for knowing that when your personal values are aligned with your goals, a feeling of positive excitement. That's not to say that you might not feel quite anxious about getting them or even quite, it's quite a scary thing to do. But there is that generation of that energy. So spend some time thinking about what it is you want to achieve. And thinking about how that aligns with the personal values, the things that you really want to achieve. The things that make you feel complete as a person. Some of the simple techniques that we can use along that road because striving for any goal is a journey that is fraught with difficulty. If it wasn't difficult at some point, it's probably not worth doing. So how do we kind of ease the road for that? Well one of the things that we can do is we can do things for other people. There's great research out there to show that through random acts of kindness that is helping other people. Not even without them knowing, is a very useful way of placing our attention on things apart from ourselves. And here's a great little example. As you're driving through the city traffic and people are cutting in in front of you and you're in a rush home, take a moment. When someone's trying to get in, let them get in in front of you and here's the test. It only counts as an act of kindness if you don't expect a thank you. So doing those little random acts of kindness is a powerful way to kind of feel a bit more connected to the world and other people. The third thing I'd like to think about is mindfulness, mindful living. Now often when we talk about mindfulness, we have the mental image of meditation, of sitting there. And that's an important part of mindful practice, but that doesn't mean that you have to sit and meditate in order to engage in mindful living. Mindfulness is about being present in the here and now. It's about accepting life with a view of compassion and non judgmental stance, which is easier to say than do. So here are some tips that we can engage with mindfulness. As we go about our everyday life, instead of having our head all over the place. Thinking about what we need to do next, every so often just bring your attention back to now. Bring your attention back to your breathing, feel yourself settle into your body. Just allow yourself to be present for a few moments. There's fantastic research to talk about the benefits of mindfulness. The fourth area that we need to focus on, and we tend not to do this enough in our society is focusing on strengths and the solutions. So many of us spend a lot of time beating ourselves up, we have the negative voice in our head, you shouldn't be doing this, you should be better than this. We focus on problems and what might go wrong. So focusing instead on identifying your personal strengths, and taking a purposeful solution focus. Thinking about how you can get to where you want to get to, is actually a lot more helpful than listening to the negative self talk and focusing on the problem analysis and things that might go wrong. One of the ways that we can pick ourselves up when we do start to feel overwhelmed is to engage in gratitude exercises. Now again this sounds like one of those platitudes that comes out of some phony self help group. But actually there's great research by Paul Cummings and others that shows that actually taking time to express gratitude, taking time to savor the moment and appreciate what we have, really helps boost our well being. It allows us to appreciate what really matters in our lives, allows us in a way to stand back for the fortitudes, the self flagellation that many of us engage in. And just appreciate what is, so that's great stuff we can do for ourselves, but what about for other people? You be rarely find a human being that doesn't have resentments, that doesn't feel angry towards other people. That doesn't feel hard done by in some respect, that doesn't hold or harbor a grudge. When you think about the notion of harboring a grudge, what does that mean? Well a harbor is a safe place, it's a place where ships come to settle from the storm. So when we harbor a grudge, what we're doing of course is we're taking that resentment and anger and we're making a safe place for it inside. So it festers, like some sort of putrid spiritual mess. Once of the ways that we can deal with that, and I'm sure we would all agree that that is not a helpful way to be living our lives, to have that resentment. One of the ways we can deal with that, of course is by forgiveness. And writing a forgiveness letter, and this is a hard thing to do. And in fact, the more resistance we have toward doing this, probably the more we need to do that. When we have resentment towards a person, an institution, a group of people whatever it is. Take some time to write, sit down and write out a letter that you forgive, that you can see things from their point of view. Now, that's very hard to do, very hard to, you don't have to post the letter. But somehow expressing that forgiveness actually externalizes it again. And much of the things we're doing in these positive psychology exercises is taken the difficult things that we sort of deal with inside of ourselves. Taken them outside of ourselves, so that we can see them in balance. And in that way, we get better perspective and that frees us, enables us to move forward. But it's very hard to move forward on your own. One of the great findings in positive psychology is the notion social networks and the connectedness. Being resilient, being happy, being able to engage and support ourselves and other people is really dependent on social networks. So if we live in a world where there's limited social networks, I would encourage you to see how you can expand them. Now this doesn't mean go walking up to everyone in the street saying, hey how're you going? Can I be part of your social network? It may mean enriching the connections with the people that you do have. It certainly means spreading your kind of area of focus from yourself onto what you can do for other people. And here we see how this notion of social networks actually connects to a lot of the other things we've spoken about already. Taking the attention so much off yourself and really putting it out there. There is fantastic research to show that happiness and well being spread through social networks just as diseases and viruses spread through human networks. So tapping into people that you know have the kind of attitude that you want to have is important connecting with those people. Spreading the social networks, joining groups that have similar interests, really important. And I guess all of this requires us to do the last thing, which is really spending time in reflection and reviewing what we're doing. One of the main derailers that we can't have when we're trying to achieve, improve our well being is this sort of narrow focus. I must feel better, I must feel better, and we just kind of pursue this almost single mindedly. What we need to do every so often is to stop and reflect, and review where we are. Take a little bit of an inventory of ourselves as it were. What are my values? How have they changed? What am I doing? What's working for me? What's not? All simple stuff and in many ways as much as this sounds like platitudes, it's actually very powerful stuff. And in that way, we can kind of really renew ourselves and refocus. So there are those simple eight steps, all of which have got great grounding in empirical research. And we've tried to put those in a very simple kind of package. But let's have a couple of words of caution here. First of all, transformational change is a rare thing. It's very rare for somebody to go from extremely depressed to brilliantly happy. Or to become from very much an introvert and reflective person, to who's hugely extraverted. Change takes work and repetition, we need to be satisfied with small steps and incremental change. So I would encourage people to be focused. Yes, it's useful to have that big goal, but focus on the small steps. Instead of going from a four out of ten to a ten out of ten in one leap, go from a four to a five and then from a five to six. Be satisfied with small steps because actually, that's the only change that we can make really. Take time to review and reflect on what you've done. And enjoy and learn, don't give yourself a hard time. [MUSIC]