Author: Senia

Shake well and buy often

Posted on by Senia

Remember when it was a big marketing idea when (I think it was Snapple) changed the “expires by” date to the “enjoy by” date! Just a small change of perspective.

Shake Well and Buy Often Today, I read on my Silk soy milk container: “SHAKE WELL & BUY OFTEN.”

I don’t at all get upset by over-the-top, in-your-face advertising, like the cute phrase “BUY OFTEN.” It actually makes me smile.

But what does bother me is when you’re not expecting to be sold to, and it’s a roundabout sale – that makes my stomach churn. Like a person who goes up to you on the street, and you think he or she may need help with directions, so you wait for the directions question, and after, “Hi, how are you?” you might get some bid, like, “I work for the pizza store over there. You should stop by,” and a brochure handed to you. NOT COOL.

“BUY OFTEN” makes me smile.
“How are you doing?” follow by “Have you tried this?” makes me queasy.

Maybe what I should try saying to someone who walks up to me on the street is … “SHAKE WELL” before I walk away.
“Have you tried—-?”
“Thanks, I haven’t. SHAKE WELL!” :)

Little mouse stories: Little Book of Self-Discipline

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Here’s the entire Little Book of Self-Discipline:

Page 1:

Little mouse Jonathan wakes up and wants to play, play, play.
He wants to find his friends, and just play.

Page 2:
He goes to play with his fun mouse friends Sally and Joe and Melanie and Siobhan and Markus. They run around and they chase balls of yarn, and they play hide-and-seek around tree trunks!

Page 3:
Then Sally says, “I’m going home to help my sister do the laundry.”
Joe says, “I’ll be back. I’m going to help my mom make lunch.”
Melanie says, “I promised my brother that I would help him with arithmetic.”
Siobhan says, “I told myself that I would finish twenty more pages of my great book.”
Markus whispers, “Oh, my whiskers, my whiskers! I want to keep them nice and short!”

Page 4:

All of Jonathan’s mouse friends run off to do the things they needed to do. So Jonathan lies on his back and he thinks. Then he gets a little bored. So he walks and he walks and he walks. Then he thinks, “I can go help my sister with the laundry! I can help my mom make lunch! I can learn arithmetic and help my little sister later! I can finish more of the super book I read at night. I can go cut my whiskers!”

Page 5:
Little mouse Jonathan runs home to help his mother, his sister, and to do some things for himself.

Page 6:

In the evening, when little mouse Jonathan goes to bed, he is very very very happy.

Little story book POP-QUIZ: Why is Jonathan mouse content and happy when he goes to bed?

Hint.
Today is Story Tuesday. Enjoy!

The One who Self-Regulates Wins!

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Think of any Entrepreneur. Think of any business person, doctor, writer, actor. You’re likely thinking of a successful business person, doctor, writer, actor. That person that you’re thinking of got there partly – maybe mainly! – because of self-regulation.

“Self-regu-what?” you might be asking. I know – long word, simple meaning. Self-regulation. Self-regulation is the personality process to exert control over your thoughts, feelings, and actions. In short, self-regulation is you restraining yourself, putting good constraints on yourself.

Self-regulation is:

  • Self-discipline: telling yourself to do something at some time
  • Focus: telling yourself to alert your mind to one project or one goal
  • Self-control: creating good constraints for yourself

Self-regulation is what anyone who’s ever gotten anywhere in the long run uses.

  1. You need to get better at your game and expertise is trainable. You need to put in that 10,000 hours of practice to get yourself there.
  2. You need to get more well-known at your game and you need to put in that 10 years of persistence to get you there.
  3. And, finally, you need to make a lot of the self-regulation in your life into automatic behavior (like Jen says in this comment) because then you can free your mind to focus on reaching those things you really want to accomplish. As we know, self-regulation works like a muscle: the more you work it, the easier it becomes to do more and more of it – in more and more areas of your life!

Think of that person who is successful. That person self-regulates in a major way. The one who self-regulates wins!

Do you LOVE this site?! :)

Posted on by Senia

Here is a new way to show that you LOVE this site! Please do click on it!



THANK YOU! :)

———-
New website Damiga allows you to make a button and put it on your website, in your blog, anywhere – that allows people to express a particular emotion for you! Damiga (meaning: “d’amiga” is “of the friend”) is a really fun site to play with – enjoy it! Damiga!

And please let me know ONCE YOU MAKE YOUR OWN BUTTONS so that I can go and click on them!!!

Thanks!
Senia
seniacom@senia.com

Keywords: positive psychology, coaching, entrepreneurship, button, damiga, new, senia.com, happiness

What are your newest GOOD Constraints?

Posted on by Senia

Hello, welcome to Question Friday!
What are some of your recent, newest GOOD Constraints?

* What are you doing that’s great for yourself?
* Are you keeping to an exercise schedule?
* Are you keeping to a sleep schedule? (The single most important thing to a healthy life, IMHO)
* Have you set a new rule for yourself recently?

Q: What are some of your recent, newest GOOD Constraints?

My answers are in the comments. Look forward to reading yours also!

Technorati keywords: habit, goals, new year’s resolutions, resolutions.

Conscious Decision to Do Something

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“[S]atisfaction can arise only by the conscious decision to do something.”
Greogory Berns, Satisfaction

Excerpt from fuller sentence, “While you might find pleasure by happenstance–winning the lottery, possessing the genes for a sunny temperament, or having the luck not to live in poverty–satisfaction can arise only by the conscious decision to do something. And this makes all the difference in the world, because it is only your own actions for which you may take responsibility and credit,” as quoted in this Scientific American article (March 2007).

Furthermore, Gregory Burns says, “satisfaction comes less from the attainment of a goal and more in what you must do to get there.” (From Publishers Review quoted here.)

Gregory Berns’ attitude speaks to me a lot about expertise being trainable and about goals.

Positive Psychology in the news – Feb 28, 2007

Posted on by Senia

Positive Psychology has been in the news recently (full summary here at Positive Psychology News Daily).

  • EU citizens report themselves as 87% happy! From this Reuters news, the Eurobarometer survey asked social questions to nearly 27,000 people in the EU during Nov and Dec 06. While 87% of people on average considered themselves happy, Denmark led with 97% and Bulgaria (which joined the EU in January) was the lowest with 45%.
    FYI, Map of the EU here. FULL RESULTS of the Eurobarometer survey here.

    Conclusion? What’s the point then of happiness research – if it turns out people are pretty happy already? Depends – if you’re happy, do you still want to know how to get happier, more successful, and more productive? Or is generally happy the goal, and no higher? Maslow says self-actualization is one of the main needs of people – always becoming better at who we are. Is he right? I think so.

  • Scientific American writer calls for more historical-based research of happiness. I disagree. I don’t like historical research when your goal is to find out how a person feels or thinks. FYI, historical research consists of looking at old documents, diaries, newspaper clippings to try to evaluate the person’s mindset. A person could be very crotchety on the outside – sayings to friends, even diary – but could be wonderfully content and happy on the inside.

    I believe one of the VERY BEST THINGS ABOUT POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY is that it BELIEVES IN THE PERSON. Positive Psychology believes that a person knows best about himself or herself. There is no “objective measure” of happiness. In fact, the Ed Diener-created SWB (subjective well-being measure) is explicitly a measure of how the person believes he is.

    I do agree with the author that happiness can be time- and context-dependant. But I think the way to make positive psychology and happiness research more universal is not by going backwards, but by going forwards. George Vaillant has made a research life of studying the longitudinal Adult Grant Study. This is a study of people that were generally healthy people at ages 20, and what happens to them over their lives. He studies alcoholism, mature emotional defenses, happiness, success, and all because he had regular interviews and interesting follow-ups with the same people. (For more information, I recommend the immensely interesting read Aging Well.)

    Conclusion? We will get stronger and more interesting conclusions from positive psychology when we study it both in short-term studies and in logitudinal studies.

  • Dissertation of the Year is on Positive Psychology. Very interesting dissertation of the year. Kudos to Virigina Ambler! FULL TEXT of dissertation here, and summary here.

    Conclusions? 1) It’s a very interesting dissertation, and 2) while there so far only one Ph.D. program in Positive Psychology and only one Master’s program, there will likely be more universities offering both Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in the near future since there is an interest in further research in these fields.