Mind & Emotions Archives - Page 23 of 25

The Limits of Our Freedom

Viktor Fankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies all our freedom.’ In the most extreme conditions of privation imaginable, Frankl discovered that he was, remarkably, free to choose his response to any situation.

I love this quote because it sums up the essence of my philosophy. I believe it is the cornerstone of a happy and effective life. A real, experiential understanding of this radical freedom is life changing, liberating and empowering. To suddenly come upon the realization that we have always been free, not in some abstract sense, but in a real, personal and imminent way, is like being let out of prison.

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Finding Happiness Within

By Alex Fayle / 17 Comments

In my last post on The Change Blog, I talked about disconnecting your happiness from others – how when you depend on others for your happiness you only make yourself (and others) more unhappy. Instead, I said, you need to find happiness within.

Easier said than done though, I know. To find happiness within, you can go to coaches, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, therapists, or any other number of happiness professionals. You can read books, blogs, or magazines, watch TV shows and DVDs or listen to the radio, podcasts or self-improvement CDs.

And yet when it comes down to it, there are only two things you need to remember if you want to be happy.

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Don’t Hang Your Happiness On Others

By Alex Fayle / 21 Comments

Where’s the line between your happiness and the happiness of others?

A lot of people blur the boundary and hang their happiness on others. Unfortunately by doing so, they pretty much guarantee unhappiness for everyone involved. No matter who is in your life, whether it’s children, spouse, friends or family members, your happiness has to come from within first. And then once you’re happy, you can help others work on their happiness in a healthy way.

But isn’t it better to give of yourself and make sure others are happy? Isn’t that the selfless thing to do?

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How to Use Fear to Find Your Passion

By Cath Duncan / 21 Comments

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Do what you love.” The idea that we can and should do what we love doing in our work, and that we should choose experiences that make us feel good in life, was a pretty unconventional idea 20 years ago. These days, however, it’s an ideal that most of us believe in and want to live by.

So then why aren’t we all doing what we love? Why aren’t we all following our passion?

Do you know what you love?

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15 Simple Ways to Get a Bit More From Life

By Ali Luke / 10 Comments

Having just started a blog with the tagline “getting more from life”, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do this myself! A lot of personal development or change advice focuses on the longer term (especially in areas like finance or career), but here I want to look at squeezing the most from the little moments and how to feel satisfied and fulfilled in the shorter term.

Some of the suggestions below are things I’m already doing, some are ones I plan to do. I’d love to hear some of yours too, so please do add to this list in the comments, if you have any favourites that I’ve missed out!

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When a Butterfly Flaps its Wings, Give Thanks

By Jodie Healy / 11 Comments

I recently celebrated my 40th birthday. It was a real challenge. Everyone tells me its just a number but I believe it is a significant milestone to reach in one’s life. Whilst being flooded with love and attention from family, friends and work colleagues, I took a few minutes out to visit my local animal shelter with food and toys to share my good fortune. I have been quietly giving thanks in this way for the past year. Very few people know that I do this, although by publishing this article I am probably about to change that. I am not looking for praise or credit for being “good”, I just want to share with you a simple little thing you can do to make a difference in your own life.

The Interconnectedness Of All Things

In early 2008 both my husband and I had a strong desire to change jobs. We were both ready for a change of career. This desire became a very strong intention for both of us. Before long we both got the new jobs we desired and started them on the same day.

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Switching to a Bold Mindset

By Armen Shirvanian / 29 Comments

The person who makes decisions quicker and more resolutely flies ahead of the person who is slow and weak in their ways. Notice that I didn’t point out that the first person was always making the “right” decisions. That point is irrelevant in the longer-term. Using simple probabilities, the person that makes more decisions in the face of pressure from others will have more options on the table, and having more options is always more advantageous than having less options. This is true because the person with more options has just as many as the one with the lesser amount, with the advantages that come with them, and also has others that can only add more in terms of value.

Preparation Is A Component Leading To Boldness

Now that this is shown to be the case, how can you become the person who makes decisions quickly and resolutely? The idea here is to see what slows you down, or stops you instantly, when decision-making time comes around. When you go to a store to buy apples, and then see the apples at the store, the decision to pick them up is nearly instant. On the other hand, if you see oranges you didn’t plan on buying, your decision of whether to buy them or not will be slower. The difference between the apples and oranges here is the preparation you made before going to the store in planning for what you would want to buy.

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3 Ways to Take More Personal Responsibility

By Alex Fayle / 15 Comments

English culture, especially North American culture, does not like the idea of personal responsibility. If I got drunk at a bar and ended up in a car accident, I could sue the bar for serving me. If I broke into your home and tripped over the dog, I could sue you for damages.

Pop psychology and daytime television have filled our heads with the idea that it’s never our fault. We can blame our parents, the system, or (more recently) our genetic makeup.

And what have we ended up with? A couple of generations of people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives, saying “but it’s not my fault” every time something bad happens.

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Does Your Life Feel Like Work Or Play?

By Ali Luke / 25 Comments

Have you ever had the experience of something that you once did for fun turning into work or a chore?

Maybe you loved knitting in the past, but recent requests from friends for specific items have left you feeling that turning out a new hat or jumper has become something you dread. Perhaps the website design skills which you were learning purely for enjoyment’s sake became tedious to keep up with once you started charging for your talents. I found that reading novels (previously something I did purely for fun) felt like work when I started studying English literature at university.

We all know what work feels like. It’s something that we:

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Loving The Life You Have, Not The One You Think You Want

By Ali Luke / 29 Comments

Do you love your life? Or do you sometimes feel dissatisfied, certain that you’d be a lot happier if you had a bigger home, better relationships, more money, exciting leisure activities, the respect of your peers…

So many of us keep striving for happiness, convincing ourselves that a new computer game or outfit, a pay rise or a vacation, will somehow bring us closer. Many of us equate happiness with success – and success with money. But plenty of rich people aren’t happy.

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Mind Power: How Your Internal Filter Can Create Peace, Happiness and Joy

By Glen Allsopp / 10 Comments

As I’m sure you’re well aware, our minds are amazing tools. In humans, we’ve been able to use our minds to understand how earth began millions of years ago, build space shuttles that can take us to the moon and understand the most complex of mathematical problems.

Without our mind we wouldn’t be able to survive. However, there are some aspects to our mind that aren’t so beneficial. As a race, our minds have led to the deaths of millions of people around the world. And many people are so depressed, and in so much pain, that they feel the only way out is suicide.

Before you think this is going to be a negative post, don’t worry. It isn’t. My aim today is to help you see how our mind is often simply a filter to how we view the world, and that we have the power to change our outlook on all situations. Hopefully, by the end of this post, you should have a better understand of how this works, and how you can use your own mind to create lasting happiness, positivity and joy inside yourself.

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