Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Happy feeling...

I really need it right now..

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How to Feel Good

Here's a big question for you: what is life all about? You could probably ponder this question for hours, but for the sake of this brief article I am going to suggest a simple, powerful answer: Life is about feeling good!

If that answer seems too shallow for you, think about it a little deeper for a moment. Ask yourself a couple of questions:

- Why you do the things you do?
- Why do you have a family and friends?
- Why do you go to work or build your own business?
- Why do you exercise or eat healthily?

Eventually, each of these actions lead us back to a feeling. Each of these actions make us feel good about ourselves and our lives. In short, we do what we do so that we can feel good.

In professional sales, there is an axiom: ¿people make emotional decisions, but give rational reasons? What this means is that we always buy a product or service because we want to feel good, yet we rationalise our purchase because of the quality, price, value, etc.

You go through exactly the same process in your everyday life: you will make your choices based upon what will make you feel the best, even though you may explain it for rational reasons.

Think through your life and test this out for yourself can you think of anything you do that doesn¿t eventually lead to you feeling good? Even going to work, and paying your taxes makes you feel good, because it enables you to live in a nice country with a high quality of life.

So now that you know this - what does it mean for you? It means that there are a great deal of things you can do more of to help you feel good about yourself and the life you lead.

Invest in Yourself

The first thing to do to make yourself feel good is to invest time and energy into yourself. Human beings are able to improve the quality of lives dramatically by working on themselves. This is sometimes called the ¿Inside Out¿ principle: the more you work on yourself inside, the better your life becomes on the outside.

Reading personal development articles or books and listening to audio programs, or working one-on-one with a coach can give you tools to improve yourself and your life. By reading this article, you are already one of the rare people who realises the value of personal development; and you are actively doing it.

Improve Your Relationships

The second way you can help yourself to feel good is in your personal relationships. Communication and conversation skills are key to fulfilling your intrinsic needs for love, friendship and connection. Each of us needs other people to share our experiences with and to synergize with.

A great place to start improving your relationships is with your attitude: open your mind and your senses to people in the world around you. Become open to the possibility of meeting people and improving your communication skills.

If you are aware of this, and focus on improving your communication and relationships, you will begin to feel great about yourself. A person with good communication skills will move swiftly towards their goals and dreams.

Practice Integrity

The third way to improve your general level of happiness is to have a high level of personal integrity.

What is integrity? Simply, it means that your beliefs, values and convictions match your actions; in everything you do, you are truly being yourself. Your actions and the way you present yourself to the world are congruent with your deepest feelings and beliefs.

If you choose to act against your own beliefs can only hurt yourself. No matter what your action, it is always you who will who suffer the pain of not living with integrity. And the only way to stop hurting yourself is to start living with integrity.

Is there a way you could have more integrity? Is there something you could be more honest about with yourself or someone else? The more you are the same person inside and outside, the better you will feel.

Focus on What you Have

The fourth way you can feel good about yourself is to focus on the things you already have in your life. Its so easy to fall into the achievement or comparison trap where you are constantly focussing on the next step in your life. It can often feel like no mater how much success, love, control or power you have you always want more. Ultimately, this type of thinking can only make you miserable.

By focussing on what you have, you generate a feeling of abundance and gratitude within yourself. If you train yourself to always look at what you have, you¿ll find your overall happiness levels will rise. You¿ll also find that you tend to attract more and more great things into your life.


Enjoy Your Challenges

The fifth way to increase your overall happiness in life is to look upon your problems as an enjoyable challenge. Most people tend to let their day-to-day struggles wear them down. Whether it is a heavy workload, problems with family, or struggles with finances, most people often feel that the world is conspiring to hold them back.

In reality, every single person has a constant supply of problems and challenges to overcome. The only people who don¿t have problems are resting in a cemetery! So if you¿re alive, then it¿s likely that you¿ll have a steady supply of problems to contend with.

So what can you do about it? The best strategy is to realise that life is meant to be a challenge. Realise that nothing worth doing ever comes without struggle and hard lessons. If you think about the best times of your life, they were usually preceded by a long period of struggle and growth.

If you take the attitude that life is a challenge that you are worthy to face, then you¿ll find your general level of happiness is higher each day. You will join that rare group of people who actually enjoy their life and their work!