1.

Why it's better to be happy

- Working on increasing your day-to-day happiness is critical to surviving. It helps to compensate for losses
you've suffered, and build your resilience, so you are ready to avail yourself of opportunities when they arise.

- Happiness is a precursor to success. [Evidence shows that happiness makes you flourish.]

- Happy people have better relationships.

- Happy people do better in work.

- Happy people are more outgoing, sociable, open and friendly with people they don’t know.

- Happy people engage in a lot of day-to-day projects, and see any activity - even routine day-today ones - as
intrinsically motivating. They like to set goals and often feel they are achieving their goals. They like finding
new ways to solve problems. As a result, they are more likely to experience themselves as personally competent,
which boosts their self-esteem and gives them a sense of mastery and control over their lives.

- When happy people encounter setbacks they actively try to see a positive side. This keeps them motivated as
they deal with the problem at hand.

- While talent and luck are factors involved in success, happiness is an important part of the mix and, crucially,
something you have control over.

- We can all learn to become happier by practising the attitude and behavior of happy people.

E.g.: - Spend more time with your friends.

- Practise trying to see the bright side of things.

- Stop comparing yourself to other people.

- Work on developing better coping strategies

- The tendency to be negative (those that are high on neuroticism) is a predisposition, not a life sentence! The
trick is to learn to manage rather than be overwhelmed by the natural disposition.

- People with this characteristic serve a vital function in human society. Their most precious gift is to human
culture - transforming their exceptional sensitivity to human suffering into great art.

- Neuroticism declines in 30s and 40s.

- Happiness increases with age, with a dip in middle age.

- While children provide a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, they do not make us happy in a day-to-
day way.

- Friends are a much bigger source of happiness than family. The number of close friends and how often you
socialize with them is strongly associated with happiness.

- Much more important than job satisfaction is whether you have a job at all.

- Listening to music, especially for music lovers, reliably raises your spirits.

- Regular aerobic exercise is particularly good for increasing happiness and reducing depression and anxiety.

- 40% of your potential for happiness lies in your hands: what you choose to attend to in your life; the way you
choose to think; the activities you engage in day to day; the goals you set for yourself and pursue.

- Major dips in our happiness due to life circumstances tend to be short-lived. We have an enormous capacity to
adapt to our circumstances.

2. Life projects
- It’s best to have a range of projects: one that relates to your work; one that relates to your family or friends;
and one that relates to a personal interest.

- Ideally the best projects: connect you more strongly to people; give you the opportunity to act independently;
and enable you to do what you are good at doing.

- Set specific goals and sub-goals that need to be achieved within certain limits (even though these time limits
may need to be adapted now and then).

- Keep a balance between life projects.

- Keep a project fresh and enjoyable by varying the level of challenge, the pace of activity, or the people you
involve.

- Vary the "weight" of each of your projects (e.g. a high-pressured project at work needs another lighter and
more fun projects at home).

3. Managing attention

- Each day we start with a limited quantum of attention.

- To maximize your available capacity of your daily units of attention, remove temptation and distractions.

- There is accumulating evidence that the brain can change, that it is more malleable than we thought. Because
of this plasticity we can retune our brain and break the power of automatic reaction patterns.

- This capacity for the brain to be rewired means we can wake up from living life on automatic by learning to
respond to what life throws up in different and more positive ways.

- If we practise new ways of responding, the old connections in the brain become weaker, and new connections
grow.

- Mindfulness means: - Observing what is going on in our minds.

- Seeing the bigger picture.

- Pausing before we act.

- Modulating our responses.

- Resisting the pull of these automatic responses.

- If you keep practising meditation consistently, the parts of the brain responsible for attention, and allowing you
to experience positive emotions, and that soothe negative emotions, will show an increase in gray matter.

- During meditation there is also a marked increase in the levels of dopamine, melatonin and serotonin. Which
play a crucial role in helping you to: become motivated, experience positive emotions, better manage and
stabilize your moods, and prevent stress and depression.

- When you meditate, the negatives in your life are not denied - rather you feel better able to cope with them and
not let them overwhelm you. You can detach yourself from the automatic firings of your brain.

- Meditation significantly increases your capacity to pay engaged attention to what you need to pat attention to,
and frees your thinking from patterns that are no longer working for you.

4. Positive purpose(s)
- Remember, when people regularly practise meditation their brains begin to function differently - even when
they are not meditating.

- You can learn to temper the urge to devote your full attention to the negative, in particular to ruminate over it.

- We can modulate a negative emotion (or even trigger a positive emotion) by changing the way we express
ourselves bodily. There is a tight, rapid feedback loop of body-feelings-thoughts. Changing even one aspect of
your physical response can be surprisingly effective in changing your feelings. (E.g. adopting the facial
expression of happiness improves mood.)

- Mentally challenge your automatic negative thoughts (look for disconfirming evidence).

- Frame challenges in an "approach" way instead of an "avoidance" way. I.e. motivate yourself by imagining the
pleasure of ahead instead of imagining what might happen if you fail.

- It gives you an immediate sense of control and a feeling that you can influence what happens and how it
happens, so you engage with the world in a more vigorous way. A sense of control becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy - it makes you feel more personally effective.

- Feeling positive induces a more open, optimistic, receptive frame of mind - all of which means you'll be more
likely to use "approach" goals.

- It also works the other way round - if you use approach goals, you are likely to feel more positive.

- The nature of approach goals is to focus your attention on opportunity and possibility, you will pay more
attention to signals and information that you are achieving your goals and less thrown by negative information.
You will persist longer and keep generating new ways to achieve your goal so you are more likely to succeed -
all of which will increase your positive feelings.

- Frame your purpose positively. E.g. "be open and positive" instead of "be less critical".

- The "doing" part of you will be concentrated on searching for positive evidence you are succeeding. The
"monitoring" part of you will be overwhelmed looking not just at thoughts and actions opposite to what you
want, but also neutral or irrelevant information. (If framed negatively your monitoring self is more focused, and
consequently more self-critical and hyper vigilant to any minor infraction.)

- Setting out positively to create a particular state of mind is much more likely to succeed than setting out to
eliminate a negative state of mind.

5. Mood

- When we are in a low mood, thinking becomes slower and more effortful. But this does not make us any more
accurate.

- Positive mood makes us better at solving problems, more open to new people and ideas, more likely to care for
others, more motivated, productive, and more likely to persist in our goals in spite of setbacks.

- When you are in a negative mood you're more likely to want to be alone and focus on your self. This self-focus
is counterproductive. Negative mood directs your attention to all the problematic features of the situation and
away from whatever opportunities there may be to deal with it.

- Positive mood has the opposite effect. You have the urge to get things done, and so you engage more
vigorously with the environment.

- Limit the frequency and intensity of unnecessary negative moods.

- When you sense yourself in a positive mood it's a good time to get things done - particularly difficult things.

- Record reasons to be grateful.

- Savor positive moods - live fully in the moment and relish it.
7. Life meaning

- The meaning of life is meaning - whatever it is, wherever it comes from. Meaning is not something that is
"given". Rather, we have to make meaning ourselves.

- Write the last chapter of your life (or 5, 10, or 20 years from the present). Don't censor your dreams too much.

- Don't let others (e.g. a parent, a boss, etc.) who insist on seeing you a certain way hold such dominant
narratives of us (e.g. "Mary will never make much of herself because she's lazy" versus "I know it's a lack of
confidence - not laziness - that is holding me back").

8. Resilience

- Openness (Big Five) is a quality associated with resilience. Open-minded people are more likely to succeed in
a crisis because they are open to trying new approaches, and more likely to be imaginative, emotionally
responsive and intellectually curious. This makes it easier for them to cope with adversity because they are more
willing to reconsider assumptions.

- Worry draws you deeper into the problem, setting up a chain of negative thoughts, each feeding off the other.

- Worry and rumination interfere with performing well in life, coming up with good solutions to a problem, and
translating solutions into effective action.

- When confronted with a threat or challenge, have both positive and negative expectations of what might
happen. This makes you more highly attuned to what is actually happening, and makes you ready to react
appropriately.

- Resilient people have the habit of paying attention to any positive feelings.

- They pay attention to the ordinary pleasures of everyday routines.

- They relish the comfort of friends and the consolation of support.

- They remind themselves to feel grateful that the crisis was not worse.

- They are inspired by how other people are coping.

- They remain interested and curious about how things are unfolding in themselves and in the situation
generally.

- They work to stay hopeful about the future.

- Positive emotions don't just give you a boost - they actually undo the damaging effects of stress.

- After a life crisis, reconstruct your narrative. I.e. instead of "I am a failure", "taking a risk always ends in
disaster", "the world is random and can't be controlled"; think "I am a strong and courageous survivor", "I have
learned a lot from this experience", "it is always worth taking a risk, as long as you know you can deal with the
consequences". This leads to a fuller appreciation of your own strengths, and a more complex understanding of
opportunities and risks.

- Is there anything about this situation that allows me to do something positive that otherwise I would not or
could not have done?

- After a traumatic experience, write down about the upsetting experience. Private thinking shows no benefit
compared with writing (or talking). Disclosure relieves the physical strain of containing emotions. Also, by
structuring your thoughts into language you link cause and effect, and gain insight into yourself and what
happened. You construct a coherent "story" and feel a growing sense of control.
9. Self-defeating behaviors

- Counterproductive strategies are made worse by being in a bad mood.

- Make implementation plans for goals and resolution; i.e. when, where, and how you will get started, and how
you will deal with anticipated distractions and temptations.

- The more specific the goal the better.

10. Optimism

- "Positive illusions" work as self-fulfilling prophecies.

- Optimists make better like choices.

- Optimists are healthier, cope better with illness, and live longer.

- Optimists see setbacks as temporary, due to specific conditions, over which they have some control.
(Pessimists see them as permanent, internal, and over which they have little control.)

- Optimism can be learned!

- Expecting the worst won't make it easier to deal with when it happens. Dread just makes things worse - the
longer we dread something, the worse its impact when it happens.

- Practise looking forward to good things.

- More freedom of choice in our big life decisions won't make us happier.

- We need to remind ourselves of our extraordinary capacity to adapt to change.