Learning Happiness Each Tuesday, I'm reflecting on how aspects of our lives and society relate to happiness and how we can increase our happiness. This week, I'm looking at the happiness equation and how our set point, life circumstances and intentional activity influence our happiness. I keep saying happiness is a learnable skill. And it is. Some people are born happy with personality traits (e.g. arousability, extraversion and negative affect) that support happiness. But if you are not born...
10 days ago • 1 min read
Anger Each Tuesday, I'm reflecting on how aspects of our lives and society relate to happiness and how we can increase our happiness. This week, I'm looking at our defence mechanism, anger. In this newsletter, I am exploring how to reduce anger in important relationships - in my case, with my kids. I have been taking a good look at anger recently. It's so energy-intensive. When I get angry, I spend a lot of time on it. I decided that I'd rather spend more time on other things. It's not that I...
17 days ago • 2 min read
Achievement and Happiness Each Tuesday, I'm reflecting on how aspects of our lives and society relate to happiness and how we can increase our happiness. This week, I'm looking at the urge to achieve, how it is a human drive, how achieving alone makes us almost unhappy and what to do about that. Since I'm going to get started with my happiness coaching business soon, I've been trialling around with friends. Yesterday, I had another trial which was a great talk. Apparently, my friend took away...
24 days ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, During marking uni assignments, I went into sugar overload. One day, I bought some biscuits so I could 'have one or two for tea'. They disappeared so quickly that I wasn't even sure what happened. So, let's talk sugar! Sugar and happiness Well, don't we often think sugar is happiness? I mean the first bite into a sweet warm baked good or the first licks of an delicious ice cream. Heaven - right? And don't even get me started on chocolate... yeah, yeah, I know it's not really good...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, Let's talk happiness - why the hell should you care? The other day, I talked to a friend and she was like "yeah, happiness is nice but that's really not my priority". When I asked her why she does things, she said it's to gain freedom. What she described to me sounded a lot like happiness. So let's have a look at happiness first (yes, yes, again). What is happiness? Of course I have a definition and I've shared it here. But I understand that it doesn't help if you're not all in...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, Ok, let's talk sleep. Sleep and happiness go really hand-in-hand, so we NEED to talk about it. Sleep struggles I struggle with sleep. There were great times where I slept deeply and a lot. That was awesome. But since cancer prevention has catapulted me into sudden menopause AND eczema is waking me up to get a good bit of scratching done, it's hard. For some time, I was awake 2 hrs each night. Wide awake. It became a matter of staying in bed long enough to get 8 hours. Not ideal...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, Yes, yes, yes. It's been a while. Marking, my brother and family visiting, school holidays, life... what can I tell you? But here we go: another newsletter and it's about me (after all, this is my newsletter ;-)). So, I've been earning survival income from running university tutorials and marking assignments for 5 terms now. It's enough to pay for my room and a bit of life. After sledge-hammering my life foundations, I'm feeling like building up now. Though I love my room, the...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Dear Reader, Do you sometimes wonder if you are happy and how you would know if you are? I used to think, 'so, it's all going fairly well. Does that mean I'm happy? Is that it?'. Can you relate? If you can relate, you might want to take my Happiness Audit, which I created based on all my research. Ask yourself these questions: Do you take responsibility for your happiness? Can you let go of stuff, feelings & bad experiences? Do you sleep around 8 hours per night? Do you feel like you can stop...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, I discovered a meditation centre close to my house and finally went there for the weekly 30-minute meditation session. It was about happiness - so, it's appropriate to reflect on the session in this newsletter. Let's go: Happiness from another source In times in which we, in the Western world, have access to food and nutrients, safe accommodation and all kinds of comfort, we are not happier than before. We are possibly even unhappier, although that's hard to say. Most of us see...
3 months ago • 2 min read