In one of my summer readings, I came across the concept that a life of discipline leads to fullness of life (happiness). “With a life live with discipline, we become a better version of ourselves every day, able to fulfill our destiny and find happiness.” Mathew Kelly As I continue to process my acceptance of … Continue reading Dabbling versus Discipline
While it feels a bit cliché to be crafting a blog post on the topic of gratitude in November (which in the USA is our Thanksgiving holiday), the practice of gratitude has been a significant factor in achieving a feeling of happiness in my retirement. I use this practice a few different ways: Daily gratitude … Continue reading Gratitude
When I retired, I made a conscious effort to become a more positive person. During my career, I was a critical, cynical pessimist. I was the first to point out the issues in anything, including what might go wrong 3 steps down the path being taken. I even had a boss once tell me I … Continue reading Daily Gratitude for a Positive Mindset
Learned optimism is one of the most important aspects of my retirement transition. For most of my career, I was a critical-thinking pessimist. I was excellent at looking at worse case scenarios and planning to avoid pitfalls on any project or change we were doing. I had a boss once tell me “you’ll never be … Continue reading Another Tool for Putting Positive Psychology into Practice
One of the on-line classes I've audited during our time of isolation was The Science of Wellbeing, also referred to as the Psychology of Happiness. Much of our wellbeing or happiness can be controlled by our actions, habits, and thinking. However, the mind doesn't always know the best way to achieve happiness. We can be … Continue reading My Review of “The Science of Wellbeing”
Part of my retirement transition has been exploration into happiness. There are many hypotheses about what drive happiness, especially later in life, but one that seems to have conflicting messages are the concepts of be-ing and do-ing. On one hand there is the idea of finding the joy in being non-productive. Being in the moment. … Continue reading The Balance of Be-ing and Do-ing
Janis over at Retirementallychallenged published an interesting life list she had come across. (I wish I had the skill to do that last line with the appropriate link!) Her blog post made me go on-line to explore other people’s life lists to see if there were some new ideas for my own possibilities list. (There … Continue reading What’s on Your List?
When I chose the word “joy” for this year’s word, I wasn’t sure exactly what would happen. I had my new coffee mug imprinted with “Find Joy In Each Day”. I created my daily affirmation. I was not expecting that much. But I was pleasantly surprised, with this heightened awareness, how I could find the … Continue reading Word of the Year: Joy
Years ago, one of my MegaCorp annual performance evaluation tools we used was called “Start, Stop, Continue”. I’m not sure how broadly this was used, but it was better than the “accomplishments and weaknesses” of previous years. That was before the Discover Your Strengths phenomenon; I always hated the weaknesses area! But the start/stop/continue was … Continue reading Start, Stop, Continue
When I choose my word for the year to be Joy, I wanted to be happier every day. Transitions are hard, and I wanted to intentionally manage the roller coaster of feelings this huge change of entering retirement was creating in my life. Being the geeky researcher, I did a bunch of reading about emotions. … Continue reading Increasing Emotional Awareness
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