More Happiness

More Happiness

Happiness, the quality or state of being happy; experiencing pleasure, contentment or joy. Happiness is a relative concept to describe a state of being. It is something that is generated internally through the interaction between our various senses and our multiple brains (head brain, heart brain and gut brain).

My philosophy underpinning calmer (centrally aligning life manifests exceptional results) coaching is to empower each individual to fulfil their potential through insightful awareness to establish greater happiness and wellbeing.

We can manifest the exceptional through adopting a calmer existence whilst focus ultimately on who we are, what we want to achieve in life, what we value and what adds value in each moment of our existence. Through understanding the relationship between cause and effect, understanding and embracing the power of all of our three brains to effect a balanced flow in life, fulfilling each moment of life with experiences that allow us to flourish whilst accepting more readily that much in life just is rather than stressing over issues which, in the moment we cannot control and that over time will become less and less relevant to our overall journey, our memories and our ultimate existence, we achieve much more with much less.

We are designed with a capacity and capability to generate happiness. Through embracing opportunities to explore, learn and grow we can expand our awareness of the magic of not only how we work, how our brains can achieve amazing feats whilst also acknowledging that they also have quite a non-logic way of working that needs to be factored in to ensure we are able to navigate the memories and strategies that we have developed, retain those that add value whilst re-evaluating those that may limit us. We all have unlimited potential. We all have the ability to achieve awesome. Scientific research is pointing more and more to the importance of nurture rather than nature and through living a life of nurturing awesomeness will deliver the most amazing opportunities and the greatest happiness.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a guru in the field of optimising performance, claims that “the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” His book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” draws on scientific research to demonstrate that when we are in “flow”, we experience a motivation and enthusiasm, a deep enjoyment and sense of creativity, that engages all our senses to such an extent that we achieve a state of fulfilment. We can effect this state through deepening our understanding of “what makes us” tick and once we have this understanding we can then shape each and every day of our lives to achieve fulfilment.

Happiness leads to success and success leads to happiness. This was the conclusion of Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Diener. They found that “numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple domains, including friendship, income, work performance and health.” Happy people are more likely to experience enjoyable relationships, are more likely to thrive in their work and also likely to experience longer and more fulfiling lives.

And what about being rich? Daniel Kahneman and colleagues found that there was little connection between wealth and happiness. They concluded that whilst people with above-average income were relatively satisfied with their lives, they are not happier than those who live a day to day existence. They also suggested that the effect of income on life satisfaction was not as strong as might be expected. They found that some people felt more depressed having attained wealth than they did working towards it. Thus the desire for material wealth does not necessarily provide the answers to everything. Possessions are merely that, possessions. To truly enjoy happiness, we should usefully enquire, does having this item make me happy? By looking at life through the lens of experience and enjoyment, we can connect with an existence with greater meaning and greater fulfilment. We can lead a more fulfilling life.

The most successful people are lifelong learners; they constantly ask questions and continuously explore the world in which they live. By constantly seeking our knowledge, we build our knowledge, skills and experience. We add to our toolkit for life. Moreover, the more we build our toolkit, the more we do to contribute to the toolkit of others. By helping others, we help ourselves. This is how we are wired. Offering happiness and meaning to others results in happiness and meaning for ourselves.

Our perception of time is also key to our happiness. Our happiness is influenced by how we relate to time. By maintaining a focus on the present moment, whilst having an awareness of the overall journey and the outcomes we are seeking to achieve during that journey, we can become more accepting of what is happening around us and engage only in what adds value and provides us happiness. The rest we can leave to one side. Being overwhelmed, being stressed are self-induced patterns of behaviour or strategies we employ to achieve goals that might not add value nor be of overall significance in the bigger scheme of life. By reframing our perspective, by focusing primarily on our happiness and prioritising our efforts on adding most value within the time available, we can experience a happier life.

Abraham Maslow, one of the early pioneers of human achievement, noted that someone “cannot choose wisely for a life unless ‘he’ dares to listen to himself, ‘his’ own self, at each moment in life.” Maslow introduced the concept of “self-actualisation”, the achievement of fulfilling potential in a lifetime. By listening to the messages that arise from our listening, not just to our head brains, but our heart brains and most importantly to our gut brains, we can truly identify the extent to which our life has meaning, is pleasurable  and enables our creativity to be explored to its optimum. If we are truly listening to all the messages we receive and are able to fully align and optimise the overall message, then we can enjoy a happy life.

Ultimately, if what you have read above connects with you in some way, please get in touch to explore more about the calmercoaching philosophy and what benefits it could bring to your daily life.