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Collective Soul "Shine" on Bev Knox ~ How Contagious!

Personal Attraction & Sexual Attitudes

LOVE - What is This Thing Called Love?

Stages in Romantic Love Relationships

Happiness 101 & Positive Psychology

Increase Your Level of Happiness: Digested from David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness (Harper). Researchers have found that Happy People Tend to: have high self-esteem; be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable; have close friendships or a satisfying marriage; have work and leisure that engage their skills; have an active religious faith; and sleep well and exercise.

Want to Be Happier??

Your happiness, like your cholesterol level, is genetically influenced. Yet as cholesterol is also influenced by diet and exercise, so happiness is partly under your control (Nes, 2010). Here are some research-based suggestions for improving your mood and increasing your satisfaction with life:

Realize that enduring happiness may not come from financial success. We adapt to change by adjusting our expectations. Neither wealth, nor any other circumstance we long for, will guarantee happiness.
Take control of your time. Happy people feel in control of their lives. To master your use of time, set goals and break them into daily aims. This may be frustrating at first because we all tend to overestimate how much we will accomplish in any given day. The good news is that we generally underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year, given just a little progress every day.
Act Happy. People who are manipulated into a smiling expression feel better. So put on a happy face. Talk as if you feel positive self-esteem, are optimistic, and are outgoing. We can often act our way into a happier state of mind.
Seek work and leisure that engage your skills. Happy people often are in a zone called flow… absorbed in tasks that challenge by don’t overwhelm them. The most expensive forms of leisure (sitting on a yacht) often provide less flow experience than simpler forms, such as gardening, socializing, or craft work. Money also buys more happiness when spent on experiences that you can look forward to, enjoy, and remember than when spent on material stuff (Carter & Gilovich, 2010). As pundit Art Buchwald said, “The best things in life aren’t things.”
Join the “movement” movement. Aerobic exercise can relieve mild depression and anxiety and it promotes health and energy. Sound minds reside in sound bodies. Off your duffs, couch potatoes!
Give your body the sleep it wants. Happy people live active lives yet reserve time for renewing sleep and solitude. Many people suffer from sleep debt, with resulting fatigue, diminished alertness, and gloomy moods.
Give priority to close relationships. Intimate friendships can help you weather difficult times. Confiding is good for soul and body. Compared with unhappy people, happy people engage in less superficial small talk and more meaningful conversations (Mehl et al., 2010). So resolve to nurture your closest relationships by not taking your loved ones for granted. This means displaying to them the sort of kindness you displaying to others, affirming them, playing together, and sharing together.
Focus beyond self. Reach out to those in need. Happiness increases helpfulness (those who feel good do good). Bu doing good also makes one feel good.
Count your blessings and record your gratitude. Keep a gratitude journal heightens well-being. Try pausing each day to savor good moments, and to record positive events and why they occurred. Express your gratitude to others.
Nurture your spiritual self. For many people, faith provides a support community, a reason to focus beyond self, and a sense of purpose and hope. That helps explain why people active in faith communities report greater-than-average happiness and often cope well with crisis.

Featured Article: Discovering Your Destiny

In all cultures and at all times, humans have sought to make sense of their existence. Man's search for meaning is a quest as ancient as the dawn of human consciousness. It is well established that a sense of purpose is necessary for psychological health, and in turn, for human adaptation and survival (Mattiuzzi, 2014).

Destiny may be defined as: 1) something that is to happen or has happened to a particular person to thing; lot or fortune; 2) the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events; 3) the power or agency that determines the course of events; 4) (initial capital letter) this power personified or represented as a goddess; 5) the Destinies, the Fates (Dictionary.com). Again, as stated before, in order to utilize the proven system of success strategies in leading theories provided in this text, you must be specific about your life's purpose (destiny) and your definition of success.

What is my destiny is a question asked by many. Destiny is often seen as either a fixed sequence of events that is inevitable and unchangeable, or that individuals choose their own destiny by choosing different paths throughout their life (Kabalarians.com). This text encourages the reader to choose the latter. We must develop the mindset of choosing our own destiny and creating a healthy positive life vision. We must not sit stagnant and wait for life to pass us by using negative conditioned patterns of habitual thoughts and behaviors. We must choose to acquire wisdom and knowledge of proven systems leading to our own chosen destiny. The Mystery Element will assist you in your journey.

Destiny is different than fate. Destiny, as stated by psychiatrist Alexander Lowen is related to the word destination. It refers to what . . . [we become], whereas fate describes what one is. Destiny is what we do with fate, how we play the hand we're each dealt by fate. Destiny is determined not solely by fate, but by how we choose to respond to fate. We are responsible for those choices. Part of each person's fate includes a personal destiny. But whether that destiny is fulfilled or not depends in part on the person and whether he or she is willing to accept responsibility for and courageously pursue that destiny. Finding and fulfilling our destiny is a principal goal of existential depth psychology (Diamond, 2008).

Rick Warren states that the first thing you must do is recognize the gifts God has given you to use. These are the cards you are dealt in life. They include the things you can't control, your parents, your nationality, your race, your language. They also include your shape, your spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality and experiences. These are the things that make you uniquely you. In order to know your destiny, you have to know your talents and decide how to use them (Rickwarren.org).

Boni Lonnsburry suggests that you can discover your destiny in three easy steps: 1) Accept the Easy Part First. Your destiny can be divided into two parts: Overall destiny and personal destiny; 2) Follow Your Excitement. Your destiny isn’t “out there” it’s “in you.” It is what you are best suited for, what you have the ability to be absolute genius at, and what will bring you more joy (and money, should you allow it) than anything else on the planet; 3) Change the Beliefs that Keep You Stuck. It’s one thing to read these words and hope you can discover your destiny. It’s another to actually do it (Lonnsburry, 2015).

Echon Tan stated that our life's purpose or destiny is determined by 5 points: 1) It is something that expresses who we are and what we are (doing through being); 2) It is something we enjoy (something we have passion for, something that captures our soul); 3) It is our vision (something we believe we can create in this world, something we imagine to be possible); 4) It is something we can accept as our lifestyle (integrates with everything else we do and the way we live our lives); 5) It is something we believe in (something we can devote our lives to) (Tan, 2014).