Showing posts with label communication skills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication skills. Show all posts

The Best Tricks To Keep Our Annual Resolutions ?

Ah the good resolutions, great ideas, even better plans, too often lost in a sea of good intentions! How often can you keep them longer than a month? 2 months maybe? 4 at best? If you are able to stick to them for the whole 12 months ahead of us, this article is probably not for you. You likely have your own secret, and you know how to make it work.
If not, read the next 3 paragraphs.
1. Looking for more happiness in your life, start with a short questionnaire to evaluate your Authentic Happiness score. With 15 questions, it will give you a first indication of how well you lead your life, shape your habits and design a lifestyle to maximize happiness. For each of your sub-optimal areas, you will get customized recommendations to find out more about these specific areas and if required, take a more thorough test.
2. What comes next is to define what makes a good annual resolution:
  • Distinguish between what is important -and less important-, versus urgent -and less urgent. This is the essence of the Eisenhower method (see the “Manage you time” learning module in www.Authentic-Happiness.com)
  • Use words to visualize your objectives: the Vision Board is a very effective tool to sort out your thoughts (find out more with the "Develop Your Life Vision" or "Get Active" learning modules).
  • Make sure that your resolutions are meaningful connected to your personal vision and objectives. Check out the “Life Meaningfully” learning module.
3. Finally, now that you are done with developing your annual resolutions, how do you make sure that you will stay on track?
A sure way to stay involved is to use mobile technology. Some examples:
  • Mobile application such as fitbit counts your daily steps to keep you in check. Competing with yourself month after month will help you stay fit & healthy.
  • Another example is the “Way of Life” app: by investing less than a minute daily to track, identify and change your habits with Way of Life's unique red/green colour system, you will get daily help to reshape your “good” habits and forget the “bad” ones.
  • Other applications like Lift makes you feel as if you have a personal coach in your phone: 24x7 and for 365 days. This will give you free guidance, motivation, and tracking for 100,000 different goals.
  • Do you want to discover more apps to track your resolustions, visit www.Authentic-Happiness.com, “Track Your Progress” page.
In summary: To give long life to your resolutions, make sure that they will fully contribute to shaping a better life and that they are meaningfully connected to your goals and vision. Finally, search for the right apps, test them and select the ones that will help you stay on track for “the whole nine yards”.

What Is Your Authentic-Happiness Score?


Is Your score? 15 15

Congratulations, you must be a very happy person !

If not, you will receive customized recommendations to shape your life. Apply them, develop new habits and behaviors and take the test again.

The Authentic Happiness score reflects how well you shape your lifestyle, habits and behaviors to maximize happiness.

Try it, it is free on www.Authentic-Happiness.com


Wishing you a healthy, productive and meaningful New Year in 2014,




Is Positive Psychology the new secret recipe for a long and happy life?

It is true that a meta-analysis of 35 studies conducted by Yoichi Chida and Andrew Steptoe concluded that “Positive Psychology well being was associated with reduced mortality in both healthy and disease population (Psychomatic Medicine, Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, July-August 2013). This being said, the key learning from positive psychology practice are often advertised as a “secret recipe” instead of what they really are, a set of science-based observations, models, techniques and tools to make our life more fulfilling.

Personal development studies over the past decades  and centuries have already analyzed and reanalyzed this same subject.
What do they have in common with the more recent field of Positive Psychology? There are five recurrent themes at the intersection of these theories and models: let’s called them the “five pillars of happiness”:

  • www.authentic-happiness.com
    PILLAR #1 STAY FIT & HEALTHY: sleep well, switch to a healthy lifestyle and nutrition, boost your immune system, …
  • PILLAR #2 EXPERIENCE POSITIVE EMOTIONS: monitor your stress level, meditate, build up your self esteem, unleash the power of gratitude, …
  • PILLAR #3 DEVELOP YOUR TALENTS & STRENGTHS: manage your time effectively, "Flow" through the week, mentor your peers, …
  • PILLAR #4 IMPROVE YOUR SOCIAL & COMMUNICATION SKILLS: tell your story, develop your personal brand, communicate with style
  • PILLAR #5 LEAD A PASSIONATE & MEANINGFUL LIFE: learn from positive psychology and improve your well-being?, define your vision of a meaningful life

This all makes sense and seems so easy, but where to start? Life is an adventure, get at it one step at a time. Start by clicking on www.authentic-happiness.com, evaluate your strengths in each pillar (free questionnaire), learn every day from the free 10 minute modules and build your personal action plan to fill your life with authentic happiness, one step at a time. Yes, it is that simple!


Clara Novy is a active blog contributor and founder of the non-for-profit web platform www.authentic-happiness.com.

www.authentic-happiness.com is a free learning and personal development platform dedicated to help you fill your life with Authentic Happiness by discovering your strengths & exploring how to 1. Stay healthy & in shape, 2. Live a positive life, 3. Develop your talents, 4. Improve your social skills and 5. Lead a meaningful life.