Project Happiness Articles — achieve

“We want to reclaim the word ‘manic.’  The vagina monologues has done an incredible amount of work de-stigmatising female sexuality and we wanted to do the same thing with mental illness.”  Zack and Elisa started off soliciting stories from Facebook and Sanford communities and put together 15 stories of mental illness, from sad and heartbreaking, to hilarious, uplifting and, powerful.  Manic Monologues ran three sold out shows in May 2019 at Stanford and will run at UCLA in February 2020.

It all starts in the head. Mindset is number one. Without a clear mindset, you cannot even take the first step toward what you would like to accomplish. It’s that famous quote by Henry Ford, “whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” It has always been one of my favorite quotes because it’s true. You have to trust yourself before you can trust a new environment. You have to trust your intuition and your instinct. This comes from practice. Trusting yourself can be saying “yes” before you’re ready. This is where the majority of my greatest opportunities have come from.

There's a lot to consider when we're passionate people feeling strongly about ten different things at once - motivation, resources, priorities, time management, etc. I know for me, I find it challenging to balance what's most important, what is calling me loudest and give it sufficient attention, without worrying about what's going to the wayside in the meantime. So lately, I've been thinking seriously about what exactly it is that I want to do. What is it that I want to be working on right now to be where I want to be.

There's a common misconception that you can excel at work or at family life – not both. We tend to think of those people who seem to have it all together as some rare breed of a magical unicorn. We can’t possibly hold ourselves to those standards, can we? It’s an interesting question because it holds both the problem and solution: Standards.

I used to be what you’d call extrinsically motivated. Meaning, when things went my way I was happy and when they didn’t, well, I was a pill. I didn’t get that allowing external circumstances (more often than not, beyond my control) to dictate my happiness was actually making unhappy...

Dreams…I get that warm, fuzzy feeling just thinking about this. The space, the creativity, the opportunity to DREAM! To think of the kind of life, career or business you’d love to create for yourself. It’s one of my favourite things to do. But sometimes the map to achieving our dreams is not nearly as fun, or inspiring. Sometimes it’s hard. Really, really hard.

Everyone wants balance.  It’s the hottest commodity.  If it were a stock on Wall Street, there would be a run on the market.  If it were a novel, it would be #1 on the best sellers list. We talk about it, look for it, strive to get it, we grab, opt in, opt out, make lists, and struggle to capture this elusive animal we call balance.  So, if balance is a universal desire, and we as human beings are so intelligent, why haven’t we discovered the formula for attainment?

The biggest challenge I have found since becoming a health coach has been getting people to take a step back. Mental, physical, and emotional change come only after we learn to take care of ourselves. Learning to take care of ourselves comes only after we can break down our everyday lives and how actions we take without even thinking about them shape how happy we are.

We all know that when we feel great emotionally life seems to be so easy. Remember when you fell in love and everything felt so great or when your child was born and your emotions were spontaneously happy and you felt such joy. Conversely, when we feel down, or even depressed, its like we are walking through treacle and everything seems to be fighting against us and life is very tough going. Well, there are five definitive steps you can take to get you to such emotional wellness and with it physical wellness too.

Happiness seems out of reach, but we believe we have a way you can use the knowledge in your pocket to make you a happier person. In this article we discuss the link between happiness and learning, and some great ways you can go about learning something new to get happy.