Tag Archive for help

Gratitude Makes Us Happy

July 17, 2012 / / Comments Off on Gratitude Makes Us Happy

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

– William Arthur Ward

Evidence shows that feeling gratitude and expressing thanks actually make us happier.  It is rewarding and helps us to feel good: happy with the person we are grateful to and happy with ourselves for having shown appreciation.

Thinking about the things we are grateful for also stops us from overlooking the good things that we have going on in our lives, that we sometimes fail to see.

So, today, focus on what is working well in your life.

AND, express thanks to those who are a part of that.

  1. Who do I love?
  2. When did I last tell them so?
  3. How can I better show my love and gratitude to them?
  4. Who loves me?
  5. How can I better show my appreciation to them?
  6. What am I most grateful for in my life?
  7. What is it about that which makes me feel grateful?
  8. What else am I grateful for?
  9. And what else?
  10. Who can I thank today, and how?

Today, I am simply grateful that I am here, to experience all the wonderful things that life (and the universe) has to offer.

Of course it can be a challenge at times – two people close to me have had cancer scares this month – but that has been a gentle reminder to me that there are always things to be grateful for, and sometimes it is simply my existence.

– How can you develop an attitude of gratitude, to improve your happiness?

Good luck!

And, tell me what you think – share what you have done differently, as a result of reading this article, to put more happiness into your life – how did you feel afterwards?  – it’s great to hear your experiences, and I feature some of them in my newsletters.

Leave a comment here, or email me: Mary@Coach-me-Happy.co.uk

Category: Beliefs / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to feel happier, by helping others

March 8, 2012 / / 2 comments

The first step in my “Steps to a Happier Life” is to Help Others.

Research (by Lyubomirsky, Seligman, and others) has repeatedly shown that helping and giving to others makes us feel happier.

It needn’t be about giving money to friends/charities, though that is a nice thing to do. We can give our time, our support, our ideas, our energy and/or physical strength. We might do these things for friends and family, or for strangers; we might volunteer to join a community group.

We can also help others in little ways: by sharing positivity and spreading loving kindness. This might be by expressing gratitude, thanking someone for something they have done; or by sharing something positive like a joke or a happy story; or it might be as simple as smiling at people we come into contact with.

My coaching clients take action to feel happier, and often simple things seem to have a huge effect.   Here are some ideas for things you can do to spread some happiness and thus feel happier yourself:

1) Smile at 5 strangers today; better still, strike up positive conversations with some of them.

2) Take the time to write a letter / email to someone to thank them for something they have done that has had a positive impact on your life – tell them the effect it had.

3) Pick one day each week to perform 5 acts of kindness to friends and strangers, or perform a different act each day – these must be things you do deliberately and consciously (it doesn’t work to look back over the last 24 hours and work out what you did that might count) – acts could include: buying cakes for people at work, visiting a friend, passing on a book you enjoyed, helping someone with their shopping, giving up your seat on the bus, etc

Questions to think about:

1) Who could you give some time to this month?
2) Who might benefit from your ideas at the moment?
3) Who would appreciate your support right now?
4) Who struggles to do the cleaning / gardening / shopping, that you could give your physical strength / energy to this week?
5) What community groups are in need of volunteers, that you could consider helping?

Tell me what you think – share what you have done to help / give to people, and how you felt afterwards – it’s great to hear your experiences, and I feature some of them in my newsletters.

Leave a comment here, or email me: Mary@Coach-me-Happy.co.uk

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