Where is your feeling of happiness coming from?
There’s a difference between the kind of happiness that depends on what happens to us in a day (external), and a sense of wellbeing that comes from within (internal). The first can easily take a dive whenever there’s adversity – and in this time of cost-of-living crisis, unrest and war, the impact on your well-being can be significant.
Being ‘intrinsically happy’ offers a sort of inoculation against these external ups and downs, the best being that YOU are in control of YOU, whereas most of the time, the negative external events we experience, we have no control over.
A shift in our perception and what we concentrate on in our lives can change things dramatically for the better in a short amount of time. Wellbeing can be cultivated by working on 4 core things:
Awareness
Awareness is knowing what’s happening in your own mind, or “meta-awareness”. As you build up awareness, you’ll begin to notice your thoughts, emotions, and impulses more clearly. This will help you improve your inner balance and truly be present at work and in your relationships. Research at Harvard found that people’s minds are wandering almost 50% of the time. Meta-awareness lets us notice when our mind is wandering and bring it back to what’s important right now. You may have heard it described as ‘being in the moment’ and once mastered it’s a quick and simple way of reducing stress and anxiety due to overthinking and catastrophising.
Connection
Connection is basically having positive and nourishing relationships. Cultivating qualities like appreciation and kindness strengthens your positive connections with other people. This increases your resilience and boosts well-being. Loneliness is pandemic these days. Our own kindness and empathy helps build relationships that nourish us.
Insight
Insight, or being aware of and understanding the voice in our heads. This is that stream of thought that’s going on from the moment we wake up to the minute we fall asleep. The ones that get us down are negative self-talk, like the belief “I’m no good at anything,” or “no one loves me.” Those lead to depression. More positive beliefs lead to good health, both mental and physical. We can train this voice in our head to focus on positive self-talk. As you get more and more curious about how your mind works, you’ll see how your thoughts and emotions influence the way you see the world. This can help you turn challenges and adversity into opportunities for growth and understanding.
Purpose
Purpose is being motivated by a sense of meaning that’s larger than mere self-interest. Purpose involves fortifying your ability to keep your most deeply held values front and centre in your life, relationships, and at work. These values can get easily lost in the fast paced, hectic everyday. A sense of purpose is what helps you see the bigger picture–and stay genuinely motivated. If we find purpose in helping people it gives us a sense of wellbeing no matter what else may happen. Personally, swopping my corporate management career for one that I get personal joy and fulfilment from (interacting with and supporting others) changed my wellbeing massively for the better and I have never looked back.
I will expand on each of these bullet points in further posts, but should you have any questions or want to explore how you can start to work on boosting your happiness and positive wellbeing, please do not hesitate to contact me for a free 30 minute call where we can start to personalise these tools to the issues that you are experiencing.
Have a good rest of the day 😊
Jayne x
