WOW Word-Of-the-Week #74: Happiness
May 12, 2009 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on WOW Word-Of-the-Week #74: Happiness
Happiness – a state of well being; ranging from contentment to deep intense joy in living.
Happiness Experienced!
Did your parents tell you, “I just want you to be happy” like mine did? I spent years trying to figure out what happy was. And then I woke up one morning and realized that for me, happiness represented a sense of contentment.
My personal and professional lives were going well. I was fortunate because I was no longer “just surviving,” as I had felt at times in my younger years, but living a life I enjoyed.
The author of the book, Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman says, “Happy people remember more good events than actually happened, and they forget more of the bad events. Depressed people in contrast, are accurate about both. Happy people are lopsided in their beliefs about success and failure. If it was a success, they did it, it’s going to last, and they’re good at everything. If it was a failure, you did it to them, it’s going away quickly, and it was just this one little thing.”
In my seminars and playshops I describe that as “Mental Manipulation Coupled With Selective Amnesia.” In other words, we distort and forget the things that aren’t positive! As we get older, I have found that it gets easier to “not sweat the small stuff.”
So this week, your assignment is to identify what makes you content and where you experience a deep intense joy for living.
Reader Responses
“Thanks for the WOW # 74…I can definitely relate.” — Wayne Vollmer