The Shift to Lasting Happiness
We are going to share key factors to assist you in building a new framework in your mind for what it takes to be happy. This is likely going to require a dynamic paradigm shift in your consciousness. It will contradict much of what is believed to be true about the path to happiness. But trust us when we say this paradigm shift breathes a breath of fresh air into your journey. This is the best of what research (so far) is discovering about the road to lasting happiness. As you point yourself in the right direction you gain momentum towards feeling better every day.
Three Paradigm Shifts
- Focus on The Solution
- You can’t truly resolve an issue at the level of the problem. As you focus on the problem to solve the problem you engage neural pathways associated with more of the same problem vs. the solution.
- Apply Long Term Strategies
- The current methods for decreasing stress or unhappiness tend to lead to short relief, immediate gratification seeking and long term disappointment. They actually perpetuate vs. relieve the cycle of stress.
- Go for Achieving Optimal vs. Average
- Achieving average is not true happiness. Current strategies are based on the study of averages not true potential.
Why talking about it is not enough
Talk is Cheap…and simply not effective. This is such an important topic that we would like to expand on this further. The #1 approach to increasing happiness is to decrease unhappiness by talking about how unhappy you are. It is neuro-biologically illogical to talk your way through your feelings. You can’t talk your way out of stress, unhealthy patterns or anxiety as much as you can’t talk your way through a broken bone or burst appendix. You have to take specific steps to get through this discomfort. You may momentarily feel some relief with a positive thought however the residue from the stress response lingers. If talking about it were enough then rates of depression, anxiety and stress would not be increasing every year. Fortunately awareness of the mind-body relationship is also increasing. It is now well understood that daily stress impacts physical, emotional and mental well-being as validated by the fact that it is a primary cause of the six major degenerative diseases. In the years to come, the importance of the mind-body relationship will have a significant impact on strategies for happiness and well-being.
There is another way
With a small amount of effort however you can disengage the stress response and guide your body and emotions back to feeling secure and grounded. Now you are ready to realize the power of your positive thinking. The long term health and well-being benefits to this approach are enormous when you consider how detrimental a pervasive undercurrent of stress is on physical and emotional body.
Coaching and Counseling
Hilary Stokes Ph.D. and Kim Ward Ph.D. have been a team for 20 years, specializing in mind, body, spirit psychology. They are the authors of the bestselling books The Happy Map: Your roadmap to the habit of happiness and Manifesting Mindset: The 6-step formula for attracting your goals and dreams and founders of Authenticity Associates Coaching and Counseling. They are passionate about combining the best of holistic and traditional approaches to health and happiness. If you are interested in learning the answers to the most frequently asked questions on how to decrease stress and increase happiness sign up for their free video series.
