If you type, "how to make my dreams come true" in a Google search, you will receive almost FIVE MILLION results!
While the answer might be different in each result, the message is the same: there is a way to make your dreams come true. But how?
Well, you can grant your own wishes. By taking three fairly obvious and very simple steps, you can have the life you’ve dreamt about.
Step 1: Be happy no matter what.
If you believe that you’re never going to get a better job or a nicer home or a happier marriage, you won’t. If you focus on how bad you feel about your lot in life, you won’t be happy. You won’t see the possibilities that are in front of you. You won’t hear opportunity knocking if you’re too busy listening to sulking. Decide to be happy no matter what life has given you or sends your way.
Step 2: Have a vision for your dreams
Once you are committed to being happy, your brain will start believing that good things can happen. You will start seeing where you want to be, and how it is possible to have your wishes come true. You will have a clear picture of what you want, and you will have something concrete to go after. Part of making your wishes come true is knowing what you wish for.
If you’re struggling to create a clear vision of what you want in life, try using the Social Construction of Reality theory. This concept, created by Berger and Luckman in 1966, suggests that our entire human experience is shaped by seven categories of existence.
·Socialization (the people around us)
·Institutions (the organizations we associate with)
·Language (the type of speech we use)
·Knowledge (the things we know)
·Habits (the things we regularly do)
·Reification (the objects we surround ourselves with)
·Legitimation (the principles we use to validate ourselves)
You can create a vision for your dreams by answering questions that help you evaluate these essential areas of your life. Ask yourself:
·Who am I socializing with when my wishes become reality?
·What institutions am I a part of when my dreams have come true?
·What is the language I am using? What words and sentences am saying when my dreams have come true?
·What is the knowledge I have when I have achieved my dreams?
·What habits am I employing when my dreams have come true?
·What are the "things" around me when my dreams come true?
·How do I really know to trust that this is my dream and that it is coming true?
Once you are able to answer those questions, you will have a roadmap of how to grant your own wishes and can move on to step 3.
Step 3: Bring your vision to the present.
After you’ve got a clear vision of what you want to do, be, see, feel, have, put your energy toward bringing it to the present. If you want to find Prince Charming, open your eyes and start looking for him in this moment. If you want to go back to school, get the admissions materials right now. Start turning your wish from something in your mind to something you can grasp.
You are your own genie in the bottle, your own fairy godmother. You know what you want and you are in control of making your wishes come true.
Dr. Aymee Coget, a widely-known happiness expert, has more than 15 years of experience in positive psychology. Through the Happiness Makeover™, a program developed by Coget, she teaches people how to achieve happiness and handle life's challenges. She also serves as CEO and founder of the American Happiness Association, a science-backed nonprofit designed to educate individuals and organizations about how to be happier, and was nominated for CNN Hero of the Year in 2011.
One of the most basic human needs is companionship. We are people people, social creatures, and we need to feel accepted by others. The same desire that left you with baited breath during elementary school kick ball, when captains were picking teams, is still with you as an adult. It is a deep part of your psyche, and something that will be with you forever. But having the desire to belong doesn’t necessarily get you acceptance.
The only prerequisite to a sense of belonging is accepting yourself entirely. If we don’t accept ourselves, we won’t be able to recognize what it feels like to be accepted by others. Find out if you are accepting yourself with these evaluations.
1.Assess negative self-talk.
Pay attention to what you say to yourself when you make a mistake. Watch your tone of the voice. Is it condescending? Do you say things like:
·"How many times do you have to make that mistake?"
·"You are so stupid!"
·"You can’t do anything right!"
A lot of us share a tendency to be hard on ourselves in this way, but we all have the ability to get a handle on this inner critic and find self-acceptance.
2.Keep a positive self-talk journal.
To convert your harsh inner critic into something positive, try keeping a positive self-talk journal. Invest in a small spiral notebook bound at the side, and any time you have a negative thought about yourself, write it down on the left hand page. The left side is dedicated to the inner critic.
Then convert what the inner critic says into the opposite and write it down on the right hand page. This positive inner voice is what I call the inner colleague.
Keeping a positive self-talk journal requires persistence, diligence and commitment. Bring that memo pad everywhere you go and convert negative thoughts as they arise. Immediately, on the spot, write it down and convert it right there.
3.Every night, review what your inner colleague had to say.
At the end of the day, read through the right hand side of your notebook. Listen to your inner colleague and her affirmations in your mind as you drift off to sleep and let your subconscious build her presence.
If you diligently study your inner monologue for three months, your inner critic will disappear and be replaced with your inner colleague. You will feel love, respect and appreciation for yourself, and that will allow others to feel love, respect and appreciation for you. Acceptance starts with you.
Like the tools listed above to build Aspirational Acceptance?
Visit my Self-Help Store for more tools to make your life full of HAPPINESS!
Dr. Aymee Coget, a widely-known happiness expert, has more than 15 years of experience in positive psychology. Through the Happiness Makeover™, a program developed by Coget, she teaches people how to achieve happiness and handle life's challenges. She also serves as CEO and founder of the American Happiness Association, a science-backed nonprofit designed to educate individuals and organizations about how to be happier, and was nominated for CNN Hero of the Year in 2011.
Do you want someone to love you unconditionally? Do you give yourself 100% self love?
More people than you can imagine, do not love themselves entirely. 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 you 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.
The fifth step is to take the VIA strengths survey 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.
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 do 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 do nothing right!"
Actually you are not a lone, 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 – Read to yourself before bed all of the lovely things the inner colleague said to you.
If you do this diligently for three months, you will find your inner critic will disappear or at the very least become a distant voice in the background you can laugh at. This exercise will aid in your self-acceptance and therefore increase your happiness. If you want, you can view this 1 minute video I where I discuss the inner critic.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -- United States Declaration of Independence
When our country’s founding fathers decided to write a letter declaring their autonomy, they demonstrably stated that human beings are entitled to three things: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Life and liberty we all understand, but the pursuit of happiness, as a universal right of human beings, is not something we give enough attention to. We are, in some regards, mandated to pursue our own happiness. We have an ethical responsibility, a national duty, a birthright, to be happy.
Everyone wants us to be happy – our parents, our friends, our co-workers, even our founding fathers. Sometimes we turn to money to make us happy, sometimes we turn to people or relationships. We chase our tail trying to find something that will fulfill our manifest destiny and make us happy, but all the while the opportunity to be happy – and the responsibility for it – rests squarely within each one of us.
Try thinking about your happiness from the perspective of other people. Do they feel a responsibility for your happiness? No. Do they have a perfect understanding of what will make you happy in this moment or the next? No. They have no idea what truly makes you happy, so it’s not fair to put the responsibility of your lasting happiness on them.
Our circumstances are not always in our control, and even if we arrange our lives in a way that will "make us happy," – BAM! – something happens. We get a divorce, we get fired, our parent dies, we are diagnosed with cancer, life just happens to us. So what can we depend on to make us happy if our circumstances are outside of our control? Ourselves. That is it. You are ethically responsible for your sustainable happiness.
Empower yourself to be happy. Start down the path to lasting happiness by asking yourself:
Am I speaking my truth and listening to my heart?
Am I using my strengths?
Am I feeling a sense of meaning and purpose?
Taking it upon yourself to be happy, accepting responsibility for your own happiness, is your duty. So go on, pursue sustainable happiness!
"I believe most depressions are the consequence, to varying degrees, of the way we think about ourselves and the world, and the strategies we have developed for coping with life. For this type of depression, I believe it is possible that programs such as yours, which are directed at non-pharmacological interventions, if conscientiously practiced and applied, could be just as effective as medications."
- Walter Jacobson, MD
Diplomat of the American Psychiatric Association
Northridge, CA
I am not asking you to ignore your problems or be happy about them while being a blind optimist. I am offering a method of being happy in the face of adversity so you can handle the situation like the cool calm firefighter in the mist of the fire.
FACTS:
Treatments for depression are often ineffective. In fact, according to the National Institute of Health most people who are depressed seek 3 to 5 different types of treatment to help themselves.
Lost productive time among U.S. workers due to depression is estimated to be in excess of $44 billion per year.
The Center for Disease Control states that antidepressants are one of the 3 most frequently prescribed therapeutic drug classes in the United States.
In the last dozen years, there has been more research and new knowledge about happiness and how to develop it.
The American Psychology Association adopted this new branch in 1998 founded by former President of the APA, Dr. Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania.
Latest Research:
We can create an upward spiral (instead of a downward spiral) if we have a 3 to 1 positive/negative emotional experience.
Your happiness is spread through the theory of emotional contagion up to 3 degrees of separation of every single person you look at, email with and talk to.
Your happiness is in your own hands, and positive psychology can teach you different techniques that will enhance your levels of well-being.
Problem: If it is so great? How come it is not offered anywhere besides, Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, and Claremont University? Why have I never heard of it? I am still suffering from depression.
Solution:Positive Psychology is being taught openly on the internet for everyone to have access to the very solution of how depression can be treated once and for all.
Because you have taken the time to read this blog entry, and you have an obvious interest in feeling better or addressing your depression in a new way, I will give you the 5 steps that I have found to be the most effective in teaching others how to be sustainably happy regardless of where they are in on the happiness scale.
Before I go ahead and give you the secrets you have been waiting for, I want to commiserate with you.
Depression is not your fault.
You were taught no other way than to be dependent on external situations for your well-being.
The United States says follow the pursuit of happiness! Find the right person, place, thing and circumstance in your life, and then you will be happy. Achieve your goals, and then you will be happy. Popular messages of happiness are leading people into these ideas that compromise self responsibility when it comes to feeling good.
Once I have a lovable spouse, then I’ll be happy.
Once I am financially secure, then I’ll be happy.
Once I am recognized as a leader in my community, I will be happy.
Once I have children to love me back, I will be happy.
Once I go on vacation, I will be happy.
Once I obtain my advanced degree, I will be happy.
Once I have a well paying job, I will be happy.
This is a paradigm shift.
In fact, most people hold everything to make them happy!
If no one or nothing else can create a frequent positive mood, deep inner contentment, or achieve states of bliss and joy inside of you, you have to count on yourself to do the work and learn the science just like you learned how to tie your shoes or learned 2 + 2. Everyday you tie your shoes and everyday you use 2 + 2 (just in a more advanced way, of course).
We have come to a point where science truly can teach us how to be happier. Can someone please start by teaching happiness to depressed people for a fraction on what is spent on depression disability annually, which is an excess of $44 billion dollars?!
Problem: If positive psychology is everything it says it is, (which I for one, someone who has direct experience in teaching it, agree) then why is it unavailable to most people?
Solution: Positive Psychology is available to everyone in the world via my channel, How to be Happy with Dr. Aymee, on Spreecast.com, my channel, Happy Aymee, on youtube.com, and though my Mp3 audio lessons and e-courses through my online store.
Most people are surprised when I tell them, we can eliminate depression, anxiety, ADHD, and stress. I am inviting you to experience happiness science. Then you can determine if you have eliminated your depression, anxiety, ADHD and stress for yourself.
Until then I am sure you will sit in disbelief and resistance to something that really may be “too good to be true”.
What do you have to lose if you adopt happiness science in your daily practice?
I can teach you how to take charge of your own happiness, create a positive mood whenever you want, be resilient, foster deep inner contentment/fulfillment, and even achieve states of bliss and joy!
Would it be nice to have that experience?
Would it be nice to have the total freedom, which comes with the fact that you can now create a positive emotional experience for yourself? The freedom of knowing no one else or nothing else can take your happiness away from you.
Below is an endorsement by Walter Jacobson, M.D., Psychiatrist, and Diplomat of the American Psychiatry Association who experienced my Happiness Makeover training program. In this endorsement, he agrees that putting the practice exercises of positive psychology on a daily basis does in fact create sustainable happiness.
Walter E. Jacobson, MD
Diplomat, American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology
I want to formally congratulate you on putting together a sustainable life improvement program, your "Happiness Makeover," that is extremely effective.
It is the transformative regimen that you teach and coach in the consultation sessions that gives people cognitive-behavioral tools and mind-body-spirit routines which, if they practice consistently, daily, will take them on a path of self-discovery and growth, the by-products of which are sustainable happiness and inner peace.
Your curriculum is, indeed, an excellent one. During the three months of my own Happiness Makeover, I found myself truly becoming happier. I felt more energized and motivated to pursue my life goals.
More valuable than that, the experience helped me to clarify my life goals, in the sense that your program encourages people to look at core strengths and values, and it encourages people to discover their authenticity, to become the fullness of who they are.
I find myself now, after a month out of the program, continuing to enjoy the benefits of the program. My attitude about life, work, and people, has improved. I see my life as an adventure unfolding, which is exciting, especially compared to my previous feeling about my life which was "It's pretty good, could be better, getting through it."
As you can see, I am an extremely satisfied customer. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Walter E. Jacobson, MD
P.S.
In one of our collegial conversations you posed a question as to whether I believed a program like yours could take the place of an antidepressant. To best answer that I first need to clarify my position about depression.
There are many different types. One type is the result of a pure chemical imbalance in the brain that has nothing to do with the way people think, the way people perceive themselves and the world, or the circumstances that happen to them. In this type of depression it comes down to the brain having a chemical/physiological disorder which a medication can correct.
I would not make the case with this type of depression that a Happiness Makeover, a CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy) program, or any non-pharmacological program, would deliver the results that psychotropic medications would.
However, this scenario, in my opinion, makes up the smallest category of depression. I believe most depressions are a consequence, to varying degrees, of the way we think about ourselves and the world, and the strategies we have developed for coping with life.
For this type of depression, I believe it is possible that programs such as yours, which are directed at non-pharmacological interventions, if conscientiously practiced and applied, could be just as effective as medications.
Walter E Jacobson, MD
I will briefly provide you with the 5 steps to sustainable happiness and offer you a video with a deeper explanation....
Five steps to sustainable happiness
1. Happiness Decision
2. Happiness boosters
3. Happiness Challenges
4. Heart based maps
5. Faith
All in all, I am compassionate for the suffering you have endured from your depression. I understand that depression is a specific, personal, and multifaceted, condition. The video above is only a beginning into the process of the hard work it takes to feel better using happiness science. I would like to inspire you to be open to the possibility that you can end your suffering from depression.
One bird says to the other, “I have to go now, I am meeting my other bird friend at 3 00pm.”
Of course we have to acknowledge time is a man made phenomenon. It provides structure to our days so we remain in the ‘productivity’ role of our mind. However, this notion of time, causes great suffering for those who are dead line driven or constantly needing to check off the never ending to do list.
Dr. Aymee Coget, Sustainable Happiness Expert, founder of The Happiness Makeover™ Training Program offers services and products on how to be happy. More goodies on www.howtobehappystore.com . Ask questions and visit her on FB or twitter @draymee or her blog www.draymee.blogspot.com
