50 Things I Love About My Life

“What would you like for your birthday?”

“Apart from a diamond necklace“, I say a little flippantly to give myself time to think seriously about the question posed by one of my delegates. I was running an icebreaker session at the beginning of a Leadership Programme – everyone has a turn in the hot seat and the other attendees ask them questions. A series of thoughts run through my head and are quickly dismissed- clothes, handbags, a new car.

Then it came to me – I wanted what I had – I’m happy and I just want it to continue!!

So how come I am so happy?

This isn’t the first time it has dawned on me how lucky I am. I’ve a wonderful husband, I love my home and sharing it with my horses and cats, I’m close to my family, I’ve amazing friends and to top it all I have the opportunity to lead a purposeful life and share my passion with others.

Before you hate me – I am telling you this as I believe we can all find happiness. Everyone’s path to happiness is different. Based on the latest research the Action for Happiness Organisation have identified 10 Keys to Happier Living that consistently tend to make life happier and more fulfilling. Together they spell “GREAT DREAM”.

• Giving
• Relating
• Exercising
• Awareness
• Trying out
• Direction
• Resilience
• Emotions
• Acceptance
• Meaning

In this blog I’d like to explore the role of emotions in creating our happiness – how changing what we pay attention to can change the way we feel.

We all know that negative emotions are essential to our survival – when we are faced with a ferocious tiger we experience fear and in doing so we trigger a series of biochemical reactions in our bodies that initiates our fight or flight response. The focus of our attention narrows and we become very solution focused mainly about how we are going to escape alive!

Recent scientific research is revealing that in the same way as negative emotions narrow our focus, positive emotions can broaden our perspective – helping us to see more, be more creative and ultimately to develop more flexibility in our behavior. Positive emotions can also make us more open to different ideas and experiences, and have us feel more connected and trusting of others. So emotions such as appreciation, joy, gratitude, etc, are not just great at the time, the research shows that regularly experiencing them creates an upward spiral over time, helping us to feel more resourceful and resilient.

I guess many of us already experienced this at some level – I was brought up on the expressions “When God closes a door, he opens a window” and “It is your choice if you see the glass as half empty or half full”. Over numerous years I have shared the value of the NLP techniques of “Reframing” and searching for the “unconscious positive intention” in any given situation.

I’m reminded of a great leadership programme I attended in my early 20s; I can still remember one of the exercises – every day for a month we were invited to record in a journal “50 things I love about my life”. I can tell you – it was tough going in the beginning and as I persevered with the exercise, I was looking for the good in everything – initially just so I could record it in my journal. At some point it became a habit and I discovered I was going about my normal routines genuinely loving my life! Nothing in the material external world has significantly changed, yet inside I feel significantly happier – purely by changing my focus.

I truly believe we get what we pay attention to.

So my invitation to you is to have a go – record 50 things you love about your life every day for month – I look forward to hearing how you get on.

And if you want a weekly boost check out my Thankful Thursday posts on social media https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisabrice/

And if you are interested in find out more about Action for Happiness, they have some amazing resources here.

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback.