“In a culture that sometimes equates work with suffering, it is revolutionary to suggest that the best inward sign of vocation is deep gladness—revolutionary but true.” ~ Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

People prefer leisure to work—no surprise there. What is surprising is that they report more optimal feelings of being “in the zone” when engaged in work.

This strange, yet revealing, paradox may contribute to why many U.S. retirees experience depression and ultimately return to work.

While we clearly associate leisure with pleasure, we seem to have an unwarranted prejudice against work: We automatically associate it with pain. This belief is so deeply rooted that it distorts our perceptions of actual experiences. It’s a learned response that severely limits our potential for happiness at work.

To achieve professional satisfaction, you must experience—and consciously record—the positive emotions you feel on the job. When we fail to recognize pleasurable moments at work, focusing solely on the negative, we miss out on experiencing more happiness and satisfaction. Each of us must find ways to extract more meaning and fulfillment from the “daily grind.”

This article provides suggestions on how to make work more like play.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 800-word article and Article Nuggets*, suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete article includes these important concepts:

•  Finding Flow
• Action Steps
• Lifelong Learning
• Making Work More Like Play

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Given the results of procrastination – hurried work, mistakes, stress, missed deadlines – it’s a wonder why anyone would put off what can be done right away. And yet who doesn’t let projects slide, especially ones we don’t like doing?

If you find yourself procrastinating on a task, try thinking of it in very specific and concrete terms to encourage you to complete it sooner.

It’s important to not let your mind wander by trying to analyze why you’re stuck and why you’re putting it off. Instead, focus on breaking the project up into small, manageable parts.

This helps get the ball rolling and reduces the size of the task (and the accompanying emotional baggage) so it immediately becomes more doable. Start with something small and then move on to the next step.

This requires that you ignore six things:

1. Your mind
2. Your emotions
3. The clock and the calendar
4. Your stress
5. Distractions
6. Your excuses

This article presents practical steps for finding motivation, focus and concentration to bust out of procrastination.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 950-word personal development article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. ~ W. Clement Stone

Does your life have a clear sense of purpose?

Most people have a fundamental need to seek and find their calling in life, be it through work, hobbies or volunteer activities. While philosophers have long weighed in on the subject, it has recently come under scrutiny by researchers who seek to understand the science behind human happiness and success.

Psychologist Michael Steger and his colleagues at Colorado State University created the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) to measure the presence of meaning in our lives, as well as how much we seek to further our understanding of life’s purpose.

This article presents the MLQ, a five-minute test that will prompt you to think about these important topics, and it can serve as the foundation for discussions with your significant relationships, mentor or coach.
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This is a brief synopsis of a 750-word article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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What good are positive emotions in the workplace?

As scientists study the brain and learn more about how we achieve optimal functioning, the term positivity has finally captured business leaders’ interests.

One study of CEOs showed that training to be more positive could boost their productivity by 15 percent, and managers improved customer satisfaction by 42 percent. Despite such training’s amazing results, many leaders remain completely unfamiliar with the concept.

Being positive isn’t simply about being nice and giving in, nor does it mean suppressing negative information and emotions. Both are critical for optimal performance. Apparently, however, a 3:1 positivity-to-negativity ratio is the tipping point for individuals and business teams to go from average to flourishing.

In business, positive emotions yield:

• Better decisions. Researchers at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business studied how positive moods affect managers. Managers who were more positive were more accurate and careful in making decisions, and were more effective interpersonally.

• Better team work. Managers with positive emotions infect their work groups with similar feelings and show improved team coordination, while reporting less effort to accomplish more.

• Better negotiating. At Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, researchers learned that when people negotiate complex bargains, being positive surfaces as a contributing factor for success. Negotiators who strategically display positivity are more likely to gain concessions, close deals and incorporate future business relationships into the contracts they seal.

This article examines how positivity benefits business and how you can raise your positivity-to-negativity ratio and flourish.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 1700 & 1000-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1700 word article includes these important concepts:

• Emotions’ Role in Business
• The Broaden-and-Build Model of Positive Emotions
• Positivity and High Performance
• The Tipping Point: 3:1 Positivity Ratio
• Improve Your Ratio
• Raise Your Positivity

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The Business Case for Positivity – 1700-word article, reprint rights

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As a society, we’re achieving more yet feeling worse. Even when well paid, we’re dissatisfied. Most of us accomplish plenty but lack feelings of well-being.

While every metric of society is improving worldwide, our happiness levels are declining — and the more we have and achieve, the less successful we feel. This phenomenon is known as the “progress paradox.”

• In a worldwide survey of happiness, the United States ranked a dismal 23rd.
• Between 1972 and 2004, Americans’ real buying power doubled, yet our feelings of financial security dropped by 34%.
• The number of people who felt very happy with their lives dropped by 31% during that time. (Shawn Achor, One Day University Presents: Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness)

What does make us feel good about ourselves?

1. The ability to manage energy and stress in positive ways
2. A strong social support network
3. Most importantly, believing that what we do matters

This article reveals the latest psychological research that challenges some of our most commonly held beliefs about satisfaction and well-being and suggests action steps you can take right now to increase your feelings of happiness.
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This is a brief synopsis of a 800-word article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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“The most important story you will ever tell about yourself is the story you tell to yourself.” ~ Jim Loehr, The Power of Story, Free Press, 2007

Stories that don’t work happen to everybody. Each of us operates with a variety of organizing principles, or “stories,” that swirl around our brains. They often prompt us to work harder and faster, even though we’re not getting any closer to achieving the life we want.

Even the most successful people, with brilliant professional histories, carry old stories in their minds.

One of the most commonly shared (and seriously flawed) beliefs is that simply spending time on something will generate positive results. If you buy into this premise, then you’re probably rushed much of the time.

High-quality, focused energy is necessary to achieving results. As performance psychologist Jim Loehr writes in The Power of Story (Free Press, 2007), “…the key to almost all of our problems, more fundamental even than poor energy management, is faulty storytelling, because it’s storytelling that drives the way we gather and spend our energy.”

Indeed, energy is the most precious resource we possess—the heart of the solutions to our most pressing problems and needs. The stories we tell ourselves, however, cause us to lose valuable energy, leaving us too tired or stressed to perform at optimum levels.

Find a Faulty Story

To generate the energy you need to fulfill your greatest desires and goals, you must identify your faulty stories—the erroneous old chestnuts that you tell yourself over and over again. We rarely examine them or question their usefulness. We simply go about our workdays and lives, telling ourselves these familiar tales to convince ourselves that we’re OK.
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This article suggests 3 steps to rewrite your faulty stories, to inspire more energy and to create the life you want.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 1000-word article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1,000 word article includes the following concepts:

• Find a Faulty Story
• Stories Create Our Reality
• Consequences of Negative Stories
• 5 Kinds of Stories
• 3 Steps to Rewrite Your Story

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Why are some people happy, and others not?

Is happiness associated with a better life, greater luck or fewer worries and upsets?

Or, is it a question of character?

People who are highly satisfied with their lives are less likely to have psychological or social problems, less likely to get sick or be stressed out, and more likely to do well at work.

Luck and problems happen to everyone, so is it possible that some individuals are genetically wired to be happy?

Hardwired for Happiness

Current research reveals that mood and temperament do have a large genetic component. In a 1996 study, University of Minnesota psychologists David Lykken and Auke Tellegen surveyed 732 pairs of identical twins and found them closely matched for adult happiness, regardless of whether they’d grown up together or apart.

Such findings suggest that while we all experience ups and downs, our moods revolve around the emotional baselines, or “set points,” with which we’re born.

Even if we have an inherited range of happiness, tools are available to help us become happier and more satisfied with life. And while some research indicates 40% of our capacity for happiness may be genetically predisposed, more than 60% depends on our own motivations, goals and behaviors.

This article examines the research that suggests 3 steps will improve our levels of happiness.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 1000-word article suitable for coach newsletters. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1,000 word article includes these five types of gossipers and important concepts tips for handling each situation.

• Hardwired for Happiness
• The Little Things That Count
• The Control Factor
• Intervention 1: The Gratitude Visit
• Intervention 2: Three Good Things
• Intervention 3: Top Strengths
• Coaching for Happiness
• Resources on Happiness

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Click HERE:

How to Be Happier – 3 Proven Steps

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