Getting Happy with Dr. Aymee: August 2011

Monday, August 15, 2011

Q: How can I be happy when I am unlovable and unworthy of happiness?

A: Awww....

This is a great question! You know how many people are in your shoes? Probably all of my clients over the years have felt this at some point.

I am about to demystify this for you.

First of all, YOU ARE LOVABLE and you ARE WORTHY of happiness!

Something probably happened to you between the ages of 0-6 where you thought maybe this was true.

Perhaps, your parents left you with a baby sitter, perhaps you had a younger sibling born, perhaps you were not chosen for the neighborhood kickball team?

Who knows?

So this incident has scarred your subconscious and you have been telling yourself this your whole life!

See, if you take a deeper look at this, is it really true that you are not lovable or don’t deserve to be happy?

Come on! Of course you are!!!

Simply by being born and breathing you are lovable and worthy of happiness.

I call this the rider and elephant phenomenon.

Your elephant is what is developed as your subconscious from ages 0-6.

Your rider is you conscious who is reading this blog post right now, however your elephant is in the room.

You rider has to steer your elephant toward the thought direction that will lead you into your upward spiral.

You are old enough to choose your beliefs right?

So in psychology we operate with a belief-thought-emotion- behavior model.

If your thought is I am unlovable, go ahead and ask your heart, what is the root belief behind this thought and wait for a response.

When your heart reveals your core root belief under this thought, challenge it!

Ask, “Is this really true?”

I am willing to bet anything that the belief that surfaces is a flat out lie!

So your elephant has been operating on false beliefs for how long?

Times need to change, you need to consciously choose a belief that kickstarts your upward spiral, leads to a thought that is supportive of your happiness, which therefore is going to make you feel happy and consequently you may be smiling.

We have totally changed your psychological understanding of the idea that you are not lovable and don’t deserve happiness.

You can consciously choose your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors so they lead to you feeling good in your life.

I call this exercise, weeding out your garden of happiness of negative beliefs.

Happiness is work, just like everything, so you may as well start by weeding out your garden of happiness of negative beliefs right now!

Dr. Aymee

Dr. Aymee Coget, Sustainable Happiness Expert, founder of The Happiness Makeover™ Training Program offers services and products on how to become happier at www.howtobehappystore.com . Ask questions and visit her on FB or twitter @draymee or her blog www.draymee.blogspot.com

Q: How can I be happy if my to do list haunts me?

A: Well.... you are not alone!
Do you know how many people tie their happiness to their to do list?

I would even venture to say most Americans suffer from the to do list syndrome... moping around... because they never crossed off enough things from their list on any given day....

We for some reason, feel happier when we are more productive, yet we are also more stressed out, discontent and unfulfilled by the same concept of the to do list.

If I were to ask your to do list, “Are you responsible for <fill in your name>’s happiness?”

What do you think the to do list would say?

Actually, your to do list is an inanimate object and would not know what the heck I was talking about!

So next time when you are fretting over the lack of ‘significant’ accomplishment on your to do list, think about who is really responsible for your happiness.

YOU!

and this starts with you choosing happiness right now!

This means you can no longer blame your to do list for your unhappiness.

You have only one choice and that is to choose to take responsibility for your happiness and that starts with making the happiness decision.

Go ahead, walk over to a mirror, put your hand on your heart and look at yourself deep in the eyes!

Recite,

I <fill in your name>,
Do solemnly decide
to adopt the happiness decision
by being happy now!

Rather than react to my problems
I will use happiness to respond to them
forsaking all negative thoughts.

Regardless of circumstances,
in all ways, I will
choose happiness
for the rest of my sweet life!

*note, thanks to Lionel Ketchian et al of The Happiness Club for the happiness decision declaration.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Now that you have made the happiness decision, you can choose happiness no matter how many items are on your to do list.

and, research shows that happy people are more productive so you will probably even get more things done than the other way of looking at your to do list...

So, instead of your levels of accomplishment dictate your happiness or lack of...

My proposal to you is first choose happiness and perhaps you will surprise yourself with your levels of accomplishment.

Dr. Aymee

Dr. Aymee Coget is an expert of happiness at work. For more information about products and services including a workbook on how to create your happy profession, visit her website at www.happinessmakeover.com and connect to her on fb, twitter and youtube.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Q: How do I help myself feel better when my mood is low?

A: Whenever you feel down, here are three practices you can do to instantly lift your mood, whenever you want!

Smile

Smiling increases the level of Serotonin, a happy chemical in our brain. This makes smiling an important practice for increasing our mood whenever we want, instantly!

Express gratitude

The trick to a successful gratitude practice is to never repeat. Focus on the heart based wisdom things, experiences, and people who contribute to your life. This allows you to deepen your feeling of gratitude in your daily gratitude practice. Example: "I am grateful for my dog" vs "I am grateful for the unconditional love and companionship my dog adds to my life."

Be optimistic

We have an optimism center of our brain that when used, increases our mood!

Dr. Aymee

Dr. Aymee Coget, Sustainable Happiness Expert, founder of The Happiness Makeover™ Training Program offers services and products on how to become happier at her website www.happinessmakeover.com . Ask questions and visit her on FB or twitter @draymee or her blog www.draymee.blogspot.com

Q: How can I be happy if the people around me are unhappy?

A: This is one of the top questions I receive from people. Before we admit our unhappiness to ourselves, we see it in others. It is easy to spot if someone is unhappy because it feels different than when you are around a happy person. This is because of the emotional contagion theory, which means we have a direct relationship between how we feel and how we impact the people around us.

This is why it is great to take leadership and become the happiness activist wherever you go. At this point learning happiness science is a needle in a haystack of life. So more than likely you have to depend on yourself to be the one to ‘bring the happiness’ to the party.

So the best way to influence someone’s mood to help them feel better is by using the AAA. The AAA is:

Admiration

Appreciation

Affection

I admire how you go to work everyday to support our family. I appreciate everything you do to ensure security for us and I want to give you a big hug right now!

You have to use the AAA all together. One right after the other. Go ahead and think about who you want to help feel better and communicate with them through the AAA asap.

For fun, you can practice below in the comments. I would love for you to devote a AAA comment to someone who you would like to help feel better.

Dr. Aymee

Monday, August 1, 2011

Q: What is sustainable happiness?

A: The typical sense of happiness that most of us have – called hedonic happiness – is based on the notion that if we get what we want we will be happy. We are brought up to believe that if we get the things that we think will make us happy and create the circumstances that will make us happy, then we will be happy all of the time.

Unfortunately life blows this sense of happiness to smithereens. If only we could keep our boss from firing us, our spouse divorcing us, and the car accident from happening... The truth is hedonic happiness is unsustainable.

While you may feel initial happiness if you find a way to keep your job or your wife, studies have shown that this hedonic circumstantial happiness will not last more than three months.

What does that leave us with?
A chance to be completely, sustainably happy, that’s what!

Since you can’t guarantee circumstantial happiness, you shouldn’t rely on it. I have been through and live with some pretty poor circumstances – being overweight, ugly, poor, divorced and chronic pain – but I still manage to be happy every single day because I don’t depend on hedonic happiness.

In October 2007, Shankar Vedantam did an article for the Washington Post about a man who was left paralyzed from a horrific bike accident. Despite his terrible circumstance, this man was happy and outliving all of the death predictions made by his doctors. His state of mind was the only thing he had going for him, and it was enough to keep him going.

To think that you can adopt a mindset and achieve lasting happiness is empowering. If it’s all in your head, then you have control over it!

Positive psychology as a field is still in its infancy, but already there are three principles that are key to sustainable happiness.

1. Listen to the truth in your heart.
2. Know and use your strengths.
3. Have a sense of meaning and purpose in your life.

Empower yourself, take responsibility for your sustainable happiness, make the decision and begin your journey to lasting happiness. It’s only three steps away.

Dr. Aymee

Q: What is a way to attract love in your life?

A: More people than you can imagine, do not love themselves entirely.

Do you want someone to love you unconditionally?

Do you give yourself 100% self love?

Think about how that influenced your experience in life. If we are really 'all one' and we expect others to love us unconditionally then we need to love ourselves first.

It is easy to point the finger at our significant other and say all of the things that are wrong with them. It is harder to point our fingers at ourselves and ask, "Why is this my experience?" and look at our past and present to see why we are experiencing this lack of self-love.

Unfortunately our society's educational system does not give us the education we need to build this sense of self love for ourselves. There is no "How to" manual. Our family is the only structure that offers us a hint of this 100% unconditional love and if we were raised in a semi-dysfunctional or extremely dysfunctional family, then we have the odds against us.

At some point in our lives we have to come to the decision to love ourselves before we can truly love someone else and receive true love from them, In fact we will attract someone who does not love themselves if you do love yourself. This will manifest into an unhappy relationship because each person will expect the other one to love them unconditionally and each person will not be able to do it because their own self love comes first.

So the first step is to ACKNOWLEDGE that you have to love yourself first unconditionally.

The second step is to ACCEPT your self love is only going to come from you.

The third step is to TURN YOUR ARROWS AROUND & POINT TO YOURSELF and stop looking to others for love.

The fourth step is START NURTURING YOURSELF like you were a baby. Treat yourself to dinner by yourself, go to the spa, tell yourself you are beautiful.

Take the VIA strengths survey http://www.authentichappiness.com/ that will tell you WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF. Build your life in accordance with your strengths.

If you follow this quick and easy guide to building self-love for yourself, I imagine you will attract the love in your life that you were missing before.

Dr. Aymee

Q: How can I deal with a break up?

A: Breaking up is hard to do, and, unfortunately, it’s something practically everyone has to do at some point in their life. But break ups, even though they are painful, aren’t bad. In fact, if you’re breaking up, it’s probably because something wasn’t working and getting out of it is going to be good for you.

To keep you from feeling split apart during a split, I have come up with a “Break Up Formula” to help you move through these hard times quickly and to come out on the other side happy as a clam.

Step 1: Acknowledge the break up.

You have to say to yourself, “Yes, this is happening. I’m no longer resisting it. I’m no longer fighting it.” Once you’ve acknowledged the break up you can move into step two.

Step 2: Accept the break up.

You have to come to terms with the fact that not only are you breaking up, but that it’s a good thing and that you’re ready to move forward. Accepting the break up allows you to move on to step three.

Step 3: Identify lessons learned.

Every single person is brought into your life to teach you something. They may teach you something about yourself as an individual or about how you are in a relationship, but you will be a different person after you’ve had a relationship with them. Identify the ways that the relationship has shaped your character and appreciate what you have learned from the experience with your former partner.

This step may take a little longer than the first two. It’s not going to come to you in five minutes, and it may take a few days of serious reflection. Keep a living list and add to it as things come to you. When you feel like the list is complete, you can move into the next step.

Step 4: Be grateful for the lessons you learned.

You have undoubtedly had some personal growth courtesy of your experience with your former partner. Give gratitude for that growth. You may want to write a letter to your former partner and burn it, you may want to send an e-mail, or you may want to meet over dinner to express gratitude. You have to express your gratitude in some way before you can complete the process.

Step 5: Let go.

Once you move out of your head, you have to purge all the “negative” feelings from your body. Try to feel all of the hurt, anger, frustration, depression, and sadness in every single cell, and then place your hands over your head and take a deep breath. As you exhale, move your hands down your body like a French coffee press. Press all of the feelings you have brought to the surface into the ground and let go of them.

If you never let go of the person you were in a relationship with, you won’t have space for a new person to come in.

You can use the “Break-Up Formula” when you are faced with a partner who has chosen to break it off with you or when you are the one who initiated the break-up.

Dr. Aymee

Q: How can I feel beautiful?

A: "Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.”
-- John Ray (English naturalist and botanist, 1627-1705)

Beauty and power. These are two words that are not discussed explicitly in our society but that still define it more than anything else. Think of any magazine cover, any runway show, any television commercial. We are conditioned to believe that beauty is something to aspire to and power is its great reward. In reality, though, falling for society’s beauty mandate may actually be robbing you of the power you already have.

We are not born with this idea of being powerful, nor are we born with the sense of feeling beautiful. Power and beauty are concepts we learn, and as much as we give attention to where we are lacking in them, we should also give attention to where we are excelling in them. We have to cultivate our power and our sense of beauty, but we can only do so if we give ourselves permission to love who we are.

We all know beauty is on the inside, but what does that mean? Beauty consists of happiness, confidence, kindness, love, compassion, gratitude, optimism, good health, self-esteem, self-respect, and self care. All of these characteristics lead to personal power and allow you to feel good, vital and full of zest.

For a minute, close your eyes and concentrate on how kind you are, how much love you share, the compassion you feel for others. Acknowledge your good health, your positive attitude, your willingness to share a smile. Honoring those aspects of beauty within you will help you realize your beautiful impact on the rest of the world.

Feeling beautiful starts with a decision to be beautiful, no matter how you look.

Empower yourself! Go to the mirror right now, look deeply into your eyes and put your hand on your heart. When you can feel your heartbeat, tell yourself how truly beautiful you look right now and how beautiful you have always been and always will be. Let yourself really feel that sense of beauty inside.

Then, go outside and use your power for good.

Dr. Aymee

Q: How can I deal with others not accepting me?

A: One of the most basic needs of being human is the feeling of being accepted by others in the group. No one wants to be the last one picked like in your elementary school gym class so to speak. Now that we know at a deep root of our psyche we have the desire to 'belong' and be accepted by others. What may the first step be to achieving that?

Well you can start by accepting yourself entirely. That feeling of being accepted by the group starts with your feeling inside of whether you accept yourself. If we can not accept ourselves, we d not recognize what it feels like to be accepted by others therefore we do not comprehend the experience when we are indeed in the group environment.

One way to identify if you are experiences negative self-talk would be to notice what you say to yourself when you make a mistake. Watch the tone of the voice. Is it condescending?

"How many times do you have to make that mistake?"
"You are so stupid!"
"You can't do anything right!"

Actually you are not alone, a lot of us do this. In fact, I have invented a very practical way to convert this voice into a positive experience. Every single one of my clients experiences negative self talk. If you do this exercise for yourself, I guaranteed that this negative self talk would either disappear entirely or at the very least, lesson its reigns on your un acceptance of yourself and general unhappiness.

If you were to write down a piece of paper all of the negative things you say to yourself and read them aloud, it will lead you straight to unhappiness. If you wanted to feel better about yourself write down the opposite of that negative talk.

In my coaching practice, I have my clients purchase a small notebook and whenever that negative talk comes up, I have them write it down on the left side of the pad. I call this negative self talk, the inner critic.

The next step is to convert what the inner critic says into the opposite and write it down on the right hand side of the page. This positive inner voice is what I would call the inner colleague

This is not rocket science of course, yet it requires general persistence, diligence, and commitment. At night you can read to yourself the inner colleague, which builds its presence in your subconscious while you drift off to sleep.

The most important element to this INNER CRITIC CONVERSION is to bring that memo pad everywhere you go and convert it as it arises. Immediately, on the spot, write it down and convert it right there.
Here are the clear steps so you can begin to accept yourself a lot more than you do now and in fact become happier as a result!

1 – Purchase a small notepad that you can take anywhere. The spiral bound must be on the side.
2 – Make a commitment to yourself to start this inner critic conversion.
3 – Every time the inner critic says something to you write it down immediately
4 – Convert it into the inner colleague on the spot
5 – Before bed, read to yourself all of the lovely things the inner colleague told you.

Dr. Aymee