Getting Happy with Dr. Aymee

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Q: How can I be happy when I feel constant time pressure?

A: Imagine two birds in a tree.

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.

Stress, Anxiety, Compulsion, Distraction, Confusion, Overwhelm, Desperation, Anger

These are all negative experiences time constraints can provide for us.

I invite you to look above time for now....

Take a deep breath, rise above your relationship to time…and take a good hard look at it.

What is your experience with time? What does it mean to you? Is it stressing you out?

Well... Now, go ahead and imagine your upward spiral of life.

Do you see freedom from time? Enjoying your time? Accomplishing your goals with flow and ease?

What is the trick to turn the downward stressed based experience of time into the magic and rainbows of life?

LIVE IN THE MOMENT!

For a lesson on living in the moment you can purchase this audio for $11.99

http://shop.howtobehappyhappinessmakeover.com/DAYTIME-ROUTINE-Live-in-the-Moment-liveinmoment.htm

Watch this free video!

Dr. Aymee

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

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