What causes the Dismal Downers and what can we do to defeat or deter them?

Photographs showing differences in brain activity when people are depressed – like this from  the Mayo Clinic – may be familiar.

Reduced Brian Activity Is Associated With Depression. One of the keys to raising our spirits and defeating depression is to find ways to stimulate our brain activity.

Exercise -  Many research studies show that regular rigorous exercise improves brain function and brightens people’s moods. This may be tied to improvements in the supply of blood flow to the brain.

Our brains represent about 2% of our body mass, but they consume about 25% of our body’s supply of oxygen. Brain function declines when brain blood flow declines.  (Source: Massachusetts General Hospital “Mind, Mood & Memory” August, 2011)

Neural activity also stimulates blood flow to specific parts of the brain, but one’s heart and circulatory system must be strong enough to support the necessary increased flows.

Music - Many people also find music helps brighten their moods – the music stimulates their brains and their bodies into greater activity.

Stimulants - Other types of stimulants like alcohol, drugs or caffeine may produce the same effects but with negative consequences. They briefly raise blood pressure, alertness and mental activity but they also set us up for a reactive downer when the effects of the stimulants pass.

We can achieve many of the same things naturally without these negative consequences. This is why a brisk walk can do so much to brighten our mood and increase our mental  alertness.

We can avoid overeating and dairy products and starches that make many people sleepy and slow.

We can choose to stimulate our own minds with lots of challenging, interesting thoughts. People who continually love to learn or acquire new skills or languages are found to retain their mental acuity into old age.

Habitually Happy people continually stimulate their minds with a constant stream of interesting, exciting, creative thoughts and mental activity. They think boredom is an inability to entertain ourselves when our environmental stimulation is low.

The Best Stimulation of All Is Happiness, Fun and a Good Time. Habitually Happy People Try To Have A Good Time All of The Time. 

Why Not Try It, It’s A Great, Fun Way To Brighten Your Mood, Defeat The Dismal Downers and Sharpen Your Mind!

Copyright 1999- , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Explore HappinessHabit.com and Creating-Happiness.com for more happiness quotes. Our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.

Links to some of our most popular quotes for creating a happy life:

Dealing Distress & Despair:  Don’t Beat Yourself Up! · Bouncing Back Quickly, Powerfully ·  Feeling Overwhelmed? ·  Dealing With Dangerous, Deranged Thoughts  ·   Detach From Distress and Despair ·  Avoid The Fault Finding Feel Goods · Defeating the Dismal Downers  ·   NEW – Happiness Habits For Veterans

Creating Happiness: Have A Good Time All The Time ·  YOUR Best ·   Savor, Enjoy, Appreciate ·  Forgiveness And Happiness ·  Fight With Finesse · What Are Habitually Happy People? ·  Can You Really Be Happy All of the Time? ·  Happiness Lessons From The Godfather · Love Powers Happiness ·  Happiness And Greatness ·  Happiness Without Hardness ·  Happiness And Pride ·  Happiness & Mastering The Art Of Living · Happiness And “Work”

The Happiness Blog is being hacked – it’s been seeded with typos, links are being broken, sentences rearranged or garbled so they don’t make sense.  We’re fixing these problems as fast as we find them. If you come across anything weird, please Tweet us or Comment to alert us so we can fix it. MANY THANKS!

Stuart Smalley - Saturday Night Live (Al Franken)

Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smalley comes to mind whenever I hear the word Affirmations.  Silly, nonsensical, comic.

Focus On What You Want To Achieve And The Steps You Must Take To Attain It is a key Happiness Habit.

We think it is critical to focus on your goals AND what you need to do to achieve them.

Repeating Positive affirmations over and over again, saying and pretending that you have already achieved your goals is delusional and counterproductive. This does not emphasize what you actually need to do to attain your goals.

Positive affirmations are very much part of our “The Secret” driven culture. They do everyone a serious disservice.

If you wander around pretending you already have achieved something you have not worked for, it’s easy to get lost in lies.

Here’s a paraphrased example of affirmations from a self help book I recently saw:

• There are two things you must know to reach a goal. First it must be clearly identified and quantified.  Second, goals should be written and affirmed as if they already existed.
• To affirm something, you write and / or state it repeatedly, sincerely believing it has already been accomplished.
• Your affirmation might sound something like this:  “I have sold five units as of January 30, 2011. Gross income from these sales is $500,000 and net profit is $80,000. I am respected and lead my field in sales production.”
• By expressing your desired outcome in the present tense, you condition your subconscious mind to accept it as fact. This method is taught by most success motivators.
• Write your affirmations several times each morning and evening. Post them on your bathroom mirror, refrigerator, your computer or car dashboard. Refer to them often and repeat them out loud. Believe them!
• By planting this seed of positive expectancy you condition yourself to move toward your goal swiftly and unswervingly.

Does this sound familiar? No where does it describe what you actually must do, or do differently to achieve these goals!

Wishing doesn’t make things real. Repeating affirmations over and over again detaches you from reality. If you truly believe it when you have not achieved it, it is delusional.

So focus on what you what to achieve and the steps you must take to attain it.

Positive affirmations do help you to step into the right mind set to perform and present yourself at your best. A successful salesman I know always says: “Cool, confident, successful and savvy” to himself before he walks into any room to remind himself of how he wants to think of himself and what we wants to project.

This helps him connect with a clear image of the person he wants to be – but it is very different from pretending and telling himself he has already done something he hasn’t worked to attain.

Use affirmations to help you to connect with your best self and then:

Focus On What You Want To Achieve And The Steps You Must Take To Attain It to achieve your dreams.

Copyright 1999- , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Explore HappinessHabit.com and Creating-Happiness.com for more happiness quotes. Our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.

Our Aim Determines Our Achievements

If you want to be happy or happier, make happiness and enjoying life your goals.

Whatever you have to do, try to enjoy it!  Find ways to make ALL your activities enjoyable, rewarding and meaningful.

Make Doing Well AND Feeling Well Your Top Personal Priorities

Expect to enjoy everything you do and then find ways to make everything you do enjoyable, meaningful and rewarding – for everyone involved.

Propel Your Life and Your Work With Fun! Continually create your own happiness.

Try To Have A Good Time ALL of The Time!

Sound simple?  It is!

Learn how happiness works and start building happiness in your life.

Many people want to be happy but they expect happiness to magically descend on them, like a dove from heaven.  They don’t know how to create happiness in their lives or for the people around them.

They don’t realize happiness is right there at their finger tips, waiting for them to reach out and enjoy it.

If you don’t make happiness a personal priority, happiness often only appears by accident or as an afterthought.  Life is too short for that.

To Be Happy or Happier, Aim For Happiness.  Make Happiness Your Goal and Work To Achieve It.

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Explore HappinessHabit.com and Creating-Happiness.com. Our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.

When you are feeling overwhelmed and over powered by all the things you have to do, how can you stay sane, focused, balanced, confident, effective and happy?

Break Important Tasks Down Into Small, Specific Steps or Sections That Are Easy To Visualize And Achieve During A Short, Definite Period of Time.

Work As Hard As You Can, Complete That Step. Stop And Celebrate Success.

Assess your progress in terms of your larger goals and the time you have to attain them.  Decide what to do next and how long you will spend on it.

Work as hard as you can, complete that step, stop, celebrate success, assess your progress and plan your next steps.

Great Achievements Are Built Through A Series of Very Small, Specific, Successful Steps. 

If You Still Feel Overwhelmed, Break The Step Down Into Even Smaller, Shorter, Easy To Visualize And Achieve Steps or Actions.

Working Hard Is Energizing And Empowering – It Incites A Delight And Drive To Get Things Done. Urgency creates energy, determination, drive, decisiveness and focus.  See work as an exciting series of successful achievements leading to valued goals, not a dreadful burden.

If You Can’t Face Getting Up And Moving - Take a couple of long, slow deep breaths.  With each deep breath, feel energy coming into your body and radiating outward with each exhale.  Smile confidently.  Swing your legs around, take another deep, energizing breath, stand up confidently and smile.

Ask yourself, What Are You Going To Explore, Enjoy & Experience?  What Are You Going To Appreciate & Achieve?  What Are You Going To Accomplish So You Feel Good At The End Of The Day?

Priorities Are Key.  Identify What Is Truly Most Important And Work On That Task. Don’t get distracted by busy work that allows you to avoid addressing important goals.

Planning Previews Success – Think carefully about what you want to achieve and the time and resources you have to accomplish it. Planning is a preview of your success. 

Make Planning Previews Part Of Your Project’s Process.

Avoid The Fault Finding Feel Goods, Turn Negative Judgments Into Positive Actions and Avoid All UnNecessary, NonProductive Negativity.

You Will Feel Much Better And More Confident.

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Links to our website and pages are welcomed! Please note our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.  Explore HappinessHabit.com for more happiness quotes and insights.

Focus on Fixes – Ask yourself, what can you do to correct the problem, ensure it doesn’t happen again, gain from your pain, learn, grow, strengthen your skills and power to build happiness and future success?

Don’t Beat Yourself Up, Blame, Complain or Criticize! Focusing on where you are now and what’s wrong keeps you stuck in the problem and misery.  Focusing on what you want to do differently and where you want to go in the future helps you to grow and achieve it.

We don’t feel better by blaming, beating ourselves up or by focusing on problems. Beating ourselves up reinforces errors we want to avoid.  It focuses time and attention on what’s wrong, not on building new skills and strategies that bring happiness and future success.

We Bounce Back by embracing our goals, our Best Selves and by focusing on what we want to achieve and do differently and then working hard to attain it.

Turn Anguish Into Achievement – Turn anger, regret and anguish into positive actions that improve the situation and help you to be happy and more effective in the future.

Worrying about problems is very different from solving or resolving problems.  Regret and remorse do not always cause reform. Desire and Determination To Do Things Differently Bring Positive Change.

Ask yourself, Is being upset helping me to fix the problem or to be more effective in the future?  How long do I want to be upset?  How miserable do I want to be and for how long?

Rebounding Rapidly:  Think about how will you feel when the problem is behind you, when you have successfully rebounded.  Visualize yourself successfully recovered from the problem.  Feel those powerful positive feelings, embrace and project them.  Practice feeling and being in rebound mode until it becomes habit.

We Can Rebound More Quickly By Focusing On How We Will Feel When We Have Rebounded From The Difficulty And Then Consciously Taking On Those Attitudes And Perspectives.  Bad things happen but they don’t have to make you miserable for long.

Our Best: We are truly at our best and able to perform our best when we are UP, confident, energized, focused and happy.  Don’t tear yourself down, distract or distress yourself.   Don’t detract from your ability to excel and do well.

See Yourself At Your Best, Feel Those Powerful, Confident Feelings And Project Them. They Will Become Genuinely Yours.  More Bouncing Back

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Links to our website and pages are welcomed! Please note our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.  Explore HappinessHabit.com and HappinessBlog.com for more happiness insights.

Don’t Beat Yourself UP!

You Have To Be At Your Best To Perform Your Best.

Tearing Yourself Down Is Distracting, It Destroys Your Confidence And Detracts From Your Ability To Do Well. 

Beating Yourself Up is very counterproductive.

You’re spending all your time, energy and attention focusing on what went wrong and how terrible it is and then you are burning it into your memory with lots of negative energy.

No time or attention is spent on identifying, learning and strengthening skills and strategies that will help you avoid the error in the future and build success and happiness.

Why do we Beat Ourselves Up?

When we were little, parents and authority figures may have punished us to protect us from the dangers of wrongdoing.

If we ran into a busy street without looking, we may have received a spank on the rump to discourage us from doing it again.

Punishment Causes Pain And Pain Prompts Avoidance.

What we really need to learn is to recognize there is danger, stop, look carefully both ways before we cross a busy street.  Beating yourself up doesn’t teach the skills we need to survive and be safe and successful in the future.

On some level we also may have learned the wrong lesson, that beating ourselves up is the way to improve our performance and make ourselves better – so we do it to ourselves.

By focusing on where we are and what’s we did wrong we stay stuck.  We reinforce our errors by rehearsing and reliving them in our minds

Beating Yourself Up Reinforces Errors You Want To Avoid.

Remorse and Regret do not necessarily bring Reform.

By focusing on where we want to go and what we want to do differently in the future, we grow.

Channel Anger And Anguish Over Errors And Mistakes Toward Fixing Problems And Identifying And Practicing Skills That Will Make You Successful And Happy In The Future.

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Links to our website and pages are welcomed! Please note our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.  Explore HappinessHabit.com for more happiness quotes and insights.

Dangerous, deranged thoughts can drive us crazy and do us great harm if we do not deal with them quickly, dramatically and effectively.

The Key to Happiness and Spiritual Success Is to Immediately RECOGNIZE  Dangerous, Deranged Thoughts for What They Really Are, RAPIDLY REJECT  Them and Immediately REDIRECT ATTENTION To Positive Thoughts, Actions and Objectives.

Don’t give dangerous, deranged thoughts time and attention to take hold. It’s always easier to step out of a shallow spot than having to climb out of a deep hole.

The Happiness Habit  “Practice Being The Person You Want To Be” Is a Powerful, Positive Protector.

When you encounter bad, dangerous deranged thinking, immediately reject it and redirect your attention to answering the question, “How would the person I want to be think, act and feel, what would they do?”

Visualize yourself as the person you want to be, take on their perspectives and persona and “Practice Being The Person You Want To Be.” It’s that simple!

What are dangerous and deranged thoughts? Thoughts that are illegal, harmful or detrimental to your health and well-being or hurtful to others.

This illustrates The Three Fundamental Truths that are the Foundation of the Happiness Habit:

1) The most important decision we make on a moment to moment basis is where we focus our time and attention. The sum of these decisions is our life.

2) Whatever we focus our minds upon expands in our consciousness. Whatever we give time and attention to grows in our reality.

3) Thoughts have consequences just like actions have consequences. Beware of the Consequences of Your Thoughts is just an important warning as Beware of the Consequences of Your Actions!

Try it the next time you are hit with a dangerous, deranged thought.

Recognize and Reject Dangerous, Deranged Thoughts and Redirect Your Attention To Positive Activities and Objectives.

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Links to our website and pages are welcomed! Please note our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors.  Explore HappinessHabit.com and HappinessBlog.com for more happiness insights.

The Light of a Single Candle
Is Not Diminished By
Lighting a Thousand More.

This is also true of happiness.
Happiness is not diminished by sharing it.

If we decide to summon up a genuine sense of joy and honest appreciation and then continually project it, we can’t help but take on a more positive mood ourselves.

Our Focus Determines Our Feelings.  It’s the First Law of Happiness. By focusing our time and attention on projecting good things we feel good.  We may easily brighten someone else’s day as well.

We’re not trying to manipulate people’s moods or make people happy.

We’re simply trying to touch the people we meet with a positive spirit, an honest, enthusiastic smile and genuine appreciation…

A smile and a warm “Good morning” or an unexpected “Enjoy a beautiful evening.”

A heartfelt hello and smile for the lady who hands you coffee in the morning, the bus driver, the toll taker, the men on the sanitation trucks. Everyone you meet.

Imagine what would happen if we all decided to end our aloof, reserved indifference by radiating a genuine sense of warmth? If strangers smiled and acknowledged us as we greeted them the same way?

A single second of shared joy and appreciation to warm our moment as we pass by to enjoy our day.

What would happen if everyone decided to do it?  Even for just a day?  Would we keep it going and make it a habit?

Some people will scowl and shrink away and that’s okay.  We have already brightened our own moment and we’re not allowing them to darken our day. They are the people who need a bright smile and a warm greeting the most.

What would happen if we all decided to do it even for just a day?

We would be much happier, our day much warmer, the world more joyful.  We wouldn’t want to stop.

When shall we try it?

Copyright 1999-     , Michele Moore. All Rights Reserved. Links to our website and pages are welcomed! Please note our materials may NOT be published, broadcast, redistributed or rewritten without written permission from the authors. Explore HappinessHabit.com and HappinessBlog.com for more happiness insights.