In a joint effort by Chi Netherlands, Partners-InC and the Haring institUte of Happiness (HUH?), first Dutch symposium on Happiness: Bring on Happiness 2007 is organized.

The symposium features key-note speakers like Peter Milovic (The Secret), Ruut Veenhoven (Happiness professor) and Sander Mulder (founder of YPPAH).

For more information on the symposium, please check Partners-InC.

Being one of the Partners-InC, I'm very excited about this first Dutch symposium. This will definately put happiness on the map in Holland, and it will be great to be around all those "experts"!

Quite recently, my situation changed a little bit. I'm currently writing my masterthesis, and until last friday I was doing that at a 9-to-5 internship at a large company. As my internship ended, I now have to write my thesis at home. The good thing about this is, I can get up now at the time I please and don't have to show-up anywhere! I was looking forward to this moment for quite some time during the last month, but now it's there... I know the whole "getting up when you want to" brings about some other issues.

As I don't have any pre-determined schedule to show-up anywhere, I have to plan my day myself now. It now comes down to some qualities that have not been my strength in the recent past: planning and discipline. But yesterday, sitting in the sun, it hit me: I've read about these things while doing some Partners-InC research!

I figured there are three rules / thoughts that could help me out:

1. There is nothing but the present moment


2. Creating a habit takes about 30 days


3. Fake it 'til you make it!
   

1. There is nothing but the present moment.
When I was thinking about the next day, I though "I really hope I'll be more devoted and disciplined tomorrow, but as the last couple of days have proved me.. it's going to be tough :(" The problem here is that I linked my current, and future behaviour to my behaviour in the past. While you often repeat your past behaviour in current situations (they're called patterns), this is only true because you make it so. If you think of it, you have absolutely no obligation to keep behaving in the same way as you did before. So if you've had a lack of discipline in the past and you want to change that behaviour, you can. You can't change how you behaved, but you can change your behaviour your displaying right now!

2. Creating a habit takes about 30 days.
As we described earlier on Partners-InC, it takes 30 days to create a new habit. If step 1, gave you a clear picture of what you want your new patter/habit to look like, you have to implement it daily for the next 30 days to make it a habit. There is a small problem with this one: What if your problem is a lack of discipline.. how can you implement that for 30 days if you lack... discipline? The answer to this could be in step no.3.

A little side note to step 2: As you might have noticed, we never followed up on our 30 day challenge. The truth is, we never made it through the 30 days of speed-reading training! So you might object to take step no.2 seriously, and so could we. But at the second you don't take step no.2 seriously, you should go back and re-read step no.1! I admint the first trial of the 30 day rule didn't work out the way it should, but I have absolutely no commitment to my failing in the past! The only thing that matters is that I learned from that, and that it does not withhold me from jumping for the banana again!

3. Fake it until you make it.
You might have difficulties to take your behaviour from step no.1 and execute it the way you want it, immediately. The key here is to "fake it 'till you make it". For example, if you want to be more organized, buy an agenda and start writing some appointments in it (if you don't have any, start calling some people to make some!). Then, when you brush you teeth at night, put your agenda with your toothbrush. The next morning before you grab your toothbrush, pick-up you agenda first and browse trough it (even if you know you don't have an appointment that day!). Although you are not yet organized, you are "faking" the behaviour. If you keep up faking that behaviour long enough (30 days), it will change into a habit.

In step no.2, I mentioned discipline as a possible problem in keeping it up for 30-days. The key with building discipline is to think of it as weight-training. You do need the bare minimum to lift the initial weight, but after that it's a matter of training. Just as weight-training, it's no use to start with lots of weights, as you can't lift it and will give-up. You should use your (little) discipline, to fake some behaviour for a (short) period during the day, and try to expand that period.
Steve Pavlina made a podcast describing the weight-training principle, only he did it with overcomming fear as the main topic. You might find it interesting, and you can listen to it here.

Back to my own problem, I have to make some changes to make the time to become a pleasant, and productive one!

-= If you like my writing, please check Partners-InC.nl for more! =-

Yesterday I had a good talk with my girlfriend on her topic of interest: Psychology. While going through the day, we got talking about a method of therapy which in Dutch is called "de 4 (of 5) g's" and which is essentially Rational Emotive Behavoir Therapy(REBT) (Albert Ellis). The 5 g's stand for "gebeurtenis, gedachte, gevoel, gedrag en gevolg" freely translated as: event, rationale, emotion, behaviour and consequence. One thing missing in the REBT in my point of view is the attitude that preceeds the rationale. Your attitude in this is thinking of a glass of half full, or half empty. What spiked my interest is how this is related to the introduction at our Happy Action of the Day section.


The introduction on the Happy Action page is inspired by a reading of Sogyal Rinpochewhich I once attended (and on which a post is in the pipeline for quite a while :P). It is deeply rooted in Buddhism that your happiness comes from both your attitude and your actionsMy little exercise yesterday with the REBT confirmed my believe in this, and provided a very practical method to reflect on it. I'll lineout the very basics of what I did yesterday so you might give it a shot yourself.


 The first thing you do is make five collumns on a piece of paper, with the 5 g's (or the English equivalents) in the headers.
 Then, you write down an event that occured today.
 The following step is to write down what your thoughts were when the event occured.
 The third thing to do is to write down how you felt when you had that thought.
Then you write down what you did, and the in the last collumn write down the consequence of your action.
 This last collumn is also the input of the next row as being a new event.

If you continue this exercise you get to see how one event triggered a whole series of events, and what is even more usefull, you get to see your part in the whole. You can then realize that things could have gone totally different if something in that chain of event changed. This is where Buddha meets Ellis.

For now just imagine what could happen if you could change your attitude...

A change in attitude could result in more positive, constructive thoughts, and more positive feelings. But as important in changing the attitude is to set-up the following event in the chain of life: the positive action!!!
Judging the current happy actions listed in the <Happy Actions of the Day section, I am pretty sure that those actions did set-up a positive chain of events, in both the performer and the receiver of the action!