Self-Help Happiness Blog

Make a face in the mirror. Make another. OK, now make another face.

Make sure they are funny faces.

We adults are so silly. We sometimes get so caught up in our serious worlds that we forget to act silly. And that is silly, because acting silly is a great stress reliever. It is a great reminder of our own humanity. It helps us to go easier on ourselves for our slip-ups. It connects us with our selves.

It’s not that we are happier when we act silly, as much that we are usually happier if we act silly every now and them. Acting silly is like a release valve, and all the tensions and all the guilt and all the negative energy is allowed to dissipate into the atmosphere.

So go ahead and make a silly face in the mirror.

Imagine you are driving down the road, half paying attention, half listening to the radio or reviewing the grocery list in your mind or steaming over some injustice at work or doing whatever you usually do while driving.  (Yes, most people pay only half attention while driving down a familiar road.)

All of a sudden you see something happen on the road.  There is a car or a truck or a bus that is spinning out of control.  Or traffic has suddenly – very suddenly! – come to a screeching halt.  Or you hear the sound of CRASH! right behind you.  Before you even have time to react, you feel the sudden lunge of your car as it is hit or as it hits something else.

It all happens so fast, you can’t even be sure what happens.  But you are in pain.  The details will vary from crash to crash, but such are the stories of people filing claims for personal injury.  Even in cases of whiplash, people don’t always know what happened, because it usually hits them from behind.  People filing claims due to whiplash might not even remember all the details, because the pain might not kick in for a few days.

Their stories may differ, but their emotions don’t.

• Crashes place stress on a person.
• Injury places stress on a person.
• The legal system places stress on a person.

Happiness After Personal Injury

There are ways to rebuild your happiness after the crash. Here are a few tips to recover emotionally:

Call in the troops.

Your friends and family are there to support you, so now is the time to ask for help.  Let them help you consider your options.  let them listen to your thoughts and feelings.  let them laugh with you – yes, go out and have some fun with friends and family.  Do things that are less painful, of course, but you need positive company to regain your strength.

Dive deep.

You are wonderful.  Yes, I am talking to you.  Whether you are hang gliding off the coast of Madagascar or sitting in pain on your  sofa at home, you are wonderful.  The crash is just a situation; it is not you.  The pain is just a situation; it is not you.  The legal process is just a situation; it is not you.  What really counts is you – who you are deep inside.  Focus on yourself, on who you are, on your values.  These have not changed.  This is your rock.

Look ahead.

In most cases, the pain will go away and the injury will heal.  Or, you will learn to cope with the pain and manage your life with the injury.  Sooner or later the lawyers will leave and hopefully you will have the extra money that you need to put your life back together.  Imagine yourself past the trauma, part the anger – really, close your eyes an envision enjoying life when the doctors and lawyers have packed up their bags and gone.

It’s time to let go of some baggage.  It is time to get rid of the guilt.

“Who, me?  Guilty?  I don’t feel guilty.  I don’t have anything to feel guilty about.  Hey, what are you implying?…”

Relax.  Most people feel guilty.  Yes, even all the innocent people feel guilty. We feel guilty about not spending enough time with our kids or our spouse, and if we spend more time with them we feel guilty about not spending enough time with our friends or our work, and if we spend more time with them we feel guilty about not spending more time on church or community projects, and if we spend more time with them … STOP!

There are only 24 hours in the day.  Portion them as best as you can.  If you do that, please do not feel guilty.  You have nothing to feel guilty about.

Not everyone has the courage to be honest, straight-forward, and easy to deal with. In every situation, disagreement, or problem there are always two pictures; the “little” picture, how something is seen by one individual, and the much larger picture, how it is seen by everyone else involved.

Self-centered people cannot see the bigger picture. All they see are their own needs, wants, and desires. Their entire world revolves around them. When forced to fight for one of their desires they rationalize reality, make excuses, and attempt to get their way by nit picking and splitting hairs.

How many times have you been able to reason with an unreasonable person? The instant someone disagrees with them they dig in their heels, close their minds and begin to “yea but” everything said.

One absolute freedom everyone has is the freedom to be wrong. When we like someone we unconsciously enlarge their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. When we dislike someone we minimize their strengths and enlarge their weaknesses. Personal perceptions are modified by emotions, biases, and beliefs. This happens to everyone. It is that old saying, “Nothing is either good or bad … but thinking makes it so.”

For years I thought it was my responsibility, my higher calling, to straighten out the uninformed. We all know where that led. Hundreds of hours were lost trying to raise people’s awareness with logic and reason. Logic only works with logical people.

What I eventually learned to do with nit-picking and hair-splitting people is step away, knowing that their minds were closed and they would have to live with whatever they believed … not me.

Viewed from the much larger picture the nit-picking hair-splitting people are only sawing sawdust. So what? Life is too short to be little.

This was a Guest Post by Dick Warn, author of The Miracle Minute.

Want to feel more energized and less stressed? Perhaps you spend a lot of time in front of the computer screen, the TV or some other screen. Here are a few ways to feel energized.

The most obvious is to stop spending so much time in front of a screen. OK, not always practical.

So get up during commercials or every half hour and stretch.

In fact, get up and do some aerobic exercise, even just for 30 seconds. Jumping jacks. Dance. Fast-paced push-ups. Skip rope. Anything.

Every few minutes move your eyes away from the screen. Roll your eyes up, to the left, to the right, but most importantly, focus them on something closer and also on something farther than the screen.

Force a yawn. Stretching your face will boost that energy and reduce that stress.

Energize!

Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slow, was a guest of Christine Louise Hohlbaum at the blog “The Power of Slow”.  Carl offered ten tips on how to slow down the pace of your life.  Here is that top-10 list: 

1. Downsize your calendar. 
2. Question your inner speed demon. 
3. Take up a slow hobby. 
4. Stop clock-watching. 
5. Rediscover the joys of the table. 
6. Take a walk. 
7. Meditate. 
8. Consider an alternative approach to your health. 
9. Vacation slowly. 
10. Turn it off.

It is comforting to know that I do about half of these. For more details on each of these points, you can read the interview here.

MEMORY

Are you frustrated because someone in your family keep forgetting
things or you information just does not sink in? Well, the more ways
you deliver the information, the more likely he or she will remember.

Tell him.

Write it down.

Send a follow-up email (Yes, intra-home emails!).

Leave a voicemail for her.

Show the situation so that she can act on what she sees, not just on
what you tell her you see.

Ask what he thinks should be done. He will remember the conclusion he
draws better than any solution you come up with.

If there is anything visual, such as a map, draw it.

So, “Honey, don’t forget to pick up milk”, “uh-ha”
becomes….

1. Honey, don’t forget to pick up milk.

2. Here’s a reminder note (a drawing of a carton of milk)

3. Come to the fridge. See, there’s just a couple drops left, what
do you think we should do?

No need to be frustrated when you can make sure that the forgetful
one remembers.

From today’s Daily Dose of Happiness…

HEALTH

If happiness rests on health, health rests on…four pillars.

1. Nutrition. How we choose to fuel our bodies very much effects our health, and certainly as we grow older it makes a difference how mobile and disease-free we feel. If we fill our bodies with sugar and artificial coloring, will that really make us healthy?

2. Fitness. As I watch family and others age, it is clear that nothing affects their mobility more than their level of fitness throughout their lives. It’s never too late to start, and it’s always too early to stop.

3. Stress. If we feel stressed all the time, it takes a toll on our bodies. We can’t always feel relaxed, but we can take control of our stress and just say “no”. Not always easily, but we can do it.

4. Sleep. Boy, am I in trouble. Sleep affects everything else, and I never get enough of it. When we feel fatigued, we tend to eat all the wrong things, skip the workout and create stress with people around us.

How are you doing with your four pillars of health and happiness?

 

This is not a new theme, the importance of sleep for happiness.  A well rested person thinks more clearly and is much less likely to react sharply at the slightest provocation.  A sleep-deprived person feels more stress and is less effective in everything he does.  There is a superb article with tips for getting a better night’s sleep.

Among the sensible tips:

• Avoid a nightcap – alcohol impairs sleep
• Don’t bring a TV to bed – for goodness sakes, is there no escaping that thing?!
• Go to bed earlier
• Don’t argue just before bed – stress makes for less “productive” sleeping

Good night. 

You have heard “A place for everything and everything in its place.”  There
is nothing more stressful than losing something when you are already in a
rush.  Things like glasses.  Things like car keys.

Create a specific place for everything and then discipline yourself to put
it there every single time.  Imagine the stress you could avoid if you never
had to scurry around frantically looking for something so basic that you
really can’t manage without it.