Experts Share How Can Action for Happiness Make Us Joyful, Healthier and More Successful at Work and Home
Action for happiness is a personal development and work program designed to improve your mental and emotional wellbeing. It focuses on improving your skills for happiness and success in everyday life. The authors, Richard Layard and Geoff Mulgan have a combined thirty-seven years in delivering successful executive coaching and mentoring programs. They have also worked with many leading politicians, business leaders, and celebrities. They aim to offer an alternative to the often superficial and ineffective types of counseling and therapy that many people turn to for help. They recognize that most people have a need to find effective and meaningful ways to change their lives and make them more positive.
Action for happiness is a program designed to improve your emotional and mental well-being and overall health. It incorporates concepts such as the Theory of Cognitive Psychology, which is the science of how our brains function to help us make sense of the world around us. The program identifies three key components: family, relationships, and financial security. It also highlights the need for a happy emotional state, a sense of personal achievement, and the ability to manage and change. It suggests that the key to being happy is having a clear understanding of your own emotions, the thoughts you have, and the beliefs that guide your behavior.
The book contains a number of action plans to ensure that you can become happier living a better quality of life. These include: How to be happier living with less clutter, a smaller house, fewer commitments, more time with friends, and reduced financial stress. It also includes helpful information and resources to make your life easier, such: The Power of Vision, Creating a Positive Outlook, The Power of Perseverance, and Time Management. The 10 keys to well-being and happiness incorporate these concepts into a complete action plan for improving your well-being and happiness.
The book does not include any scientific data on how to increase happiness, but it does contain suggestions and advice based on research that points to the positive effects of using these keys to attain happiness. Some interesting pointers and tips include the power of visualization, using positive words when talking to others, deliberately choosing goals that are challenging and achieving them, setting up goals for the future, and creating an optimistic future vision. It also contains the findings of a survey in which over 1200 people were asked what they felt was the most important factor for achieving happiness. A surprising majority of the people answered that personal relationships were very important to their mental health. However, other factors that came top included having financial security, being able to provide for themselves, and having a supportive partner.
As well as focusing on personal wellbeing and creating a happy home, the book also takes a critical eye on some public policies, such as compulsory sex education and views on child sexual abuse. The writers say that the benefits of introducing compulsory sex education could go far beyond increasing happiness for one's partner. They claim that it could help to prevent the transmission of unwanted habits and behaviors into adulthood. They also believe that by removing the stress and anxiety that many women face when pregnant, or leaving school, they can be happier, which in turn can have a positive effect on their mental health. In addition, many psychologists support the view that parents can have a major positive impact on children's wellbeing, by introducing them to appropriate social behavior from an early age.
One of the keys to getting happiness is making sure that we choose the right kind of life for ourselves. For psychologists, that means that it makes sense to follow the advice set out in this book. It is important to set achievable goals, think carefully about the consequences, and do everything possible to achieve them.
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