Destination Happiness: 12 Simple Principles that will Change Your Life: Change your habits, change your life, #3
By Marc Reklau
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About this ebook
You deserve happiness!
What is happiness and how is it measured? Is happiness really a destination? Or is it rather a lifelong quest? Or maybe an ongoing learning process?
In his new book, the author of the international #1 Bestseller "30 Days - Change your habits, change your life" examines the scientific side of happiness and shows that it is much more than the opposite of sadness. More than 200 studies confirm that happiness and positivity lead to success in almost all areas of life.
And the best of all is that you can learn to be happy. Neuroscience has shown that our brain is not unalterable: it really can be changed. It is possible to achieve success and happiness in life through a series of habits that will support us on the path to this goal. We will need discipline, patience, and perseverance - but it's possible.
The author exposes the 12 principles that lead to happiness in a direct and clear manner and instructs on the best way to put them into practice so we manage to get them settled in our day-to-day.
Marc Reklau
Author of seven books including the international #1 Bestseller 30 DAYS - Change your habits, change your life. Writing and speaking about habits, happiness, and productivity. Helping people to change their habits to improve their happiness, multiply their productivity and become the best version of themselves at work and at home. My books have been translated into Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish and several other languages. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram @MarcReklau or drop me an email to [email protected]
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Change your habits, change your life
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Destination Happiness - Marc Reklau
DESTINATION HAPPINESS. Copyright © 2017 by Marc Reklau
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Disclaimer
This book is designed to provide information and motivation to our readers. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged to render any type of psychological, legal, or any other kind of professional advice. The instructions and advice in this book are not intended as a substitute for counseling. The content of each chapter is the sole expression and opinion of its author. No warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied by the author’s and publisher’s choice to include any of the content in this volume. Neither the publisher nor the individual author shall be liable for any physical, psychological, emotional, financial, or commercial damages, including, but not limited to, special, incidental, consequential or other damages. Our views and rights are the same:
You must test everything for yourself according to your own situation talents and aspirations
You are responsible for your own decisions, choices, actions, and results.
Marc Reklau
Visit my website at www.marcreklau.com
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1- The Basics
Applying the science
Believing that change is possible
The Power of One
Which factors influence our happiness
Accepting our emotions
Making ‘Happiness’ the ultimate goal
2 - The Power of Belief
Beliefs create reality
Creating a positive situation
Believe in yourself
Changing your performance by changing your beliefs
Being an optimist helps
The 3 keys to success
3 -The Power of Focus
Health benefits
Why aren’t we all optimists?
The Power of Gratitude
Focus on the positive
Are some people just lucky?
Train your brain to focus on the positive
4 - The Power of Choice
Choose your thoughts
Choose your emotions
Choose to take responsibility for your life
More choices...
Do you have to or do you choose to?
Stop these toxic habits
Take control
Feeling in control is good for your health
5 - Change is Possible
Face your fears and do it anyway
Be the change
Step out of the comfort zone
How does change work? The Power of Habit.
Why is change so difficult?
Changing emotions
Changing behavior
Self-discipline is overrated
How to create habits?
6 - The Power of Goal-setting
Why set goals?
Goals and focusing on the present
Learn to enjoy the progress
Write down your goals
Examine your values
Find your purpose
Find your purpose at the workplace
7 - The Ugly Twins - Perfectionism and Failure
Learn to fail or fail to learn
The characteristics of perfectionism
The consequences of perfectionism
The sources of perfectionism
How to overcome perfectionism
Can we help other people to overcome perfectionism?
How to deal with perfectionism
8 - Overcoming the Silent Killer
Overcoming stress
Stop multitasking!
Procrastination
9 - Raising Your Self-esteem
Definitions of self-esteem
The benefits of self-esteem
Critics
How to cultivate self-esteem
The Importance of independent self-esteem
How to enhance your self-esteem
10. Habits to Boost Your Self-esteem
Stop being so hard on yourself
Raise your standards
Self-love is #1
Live your own life
Become a receiver
Invest in yourself
Be authentic
Honor past achievements
Listen to great music (Yes, it’s important)!
Celebrate your wins!
Have a highlight every day
Pamper yourself
Forgive everyone
––––––––
11. The #1 Predictor of Happiness: Relationships
Know yourself
How can we create relationships that thrive?
How do we sustain love?
The importance of asking the right questions and open communication
Relationships at work
12. The Power of the Mind-body Connection
The Magic of physical exercise
The Power Meditation
Mindfulness: be here now
Breath right and conquer
The importance of Sleep
The importance of Touch
Smile like your life depends on it
13 - What now?
About the Author
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Natalia Montolio, my partner in life and business, for her constant support, and for brightening my days with her smiles and always-cheerful mood.
Thanks to my family; my mother, Heidi; grandmother, Hilde; my uncle Dieter; and my cousin, Alex and his wife Yvonne (our joint vacations in the beautiful city of Naples, Florida, always inspire me).
Olaf, Paola, Sophie and Adrian for you hospitality in FTL. It’s always a pleasure to visit.
My friends Claudio, Christian, Pol, Inma, Oscar and all the new people who came into my life in this amazing last two years.
Stefan Ludwig, my mentor and sounding board for over 15 years.
Big shout out to Jaime Avargues, the first publisher who discovered my first book, ‘30 DAYS’, took a chance and bought the Spanish rights for Latin America even before the book became a bestseller.
Pilar Zaragoza de Pedro, who had the brilliant idea to write a book together, which led to the birth of our own publishing label.
Pilar Cortés García-Moreno, my editor from Planeta. Thank you for believing in me and this new book, and for making my dream of being published by a major publisher come true. It was a long road full of rejections until we met. I’m indeed deeply grateful.
I also want to thank David H. Morgan for his valuable inputs and feedback over the years.
Dr. Steve Mallon, Carlos Moreno Gonzalez, and Lisa Williams for giving me the chance to teach happiness at the Geneva Business school. Also, thanks to Paloma Garcia from GBS and my fabulous bachelor students.
Thank you to my German teacher from high school, Mrs. Gabriele Krohm for believing in me, while your colleague Mr. Scheuthle strongly advised me to not major in German and take Biology instead. Also, thank you to you Mr. Scheuthle for your honesty.
Thank you Angel Miro for applying the Pygmalion Effect with me and making me a better student.
Thanks to everybody who continuously supported me and for believed in me when not a lot of people did.
I also want to thank the people I parted ways with. You were very important to me at one point of time. Things just didn’t work out. I appreciate your presence in my life once, and wish you all the best.
But above all, thank you to the following people whose work has had a huge influence on my own work in the last few years, and which, in a lot of ways, made this book possible.
Thanks to Martin Seligman for starting a revolution in Psychology and changing the questions.
To Tal Ben Shahar, for teaching the Happiness Class
at Harvard University and opening doors for hundreds (or even thousands) of other teachers teaching the subject all over the world.
Shawn Achor, for translating the fantastic studies from the field of Positive Psychology into everyday language that we all can understand.
A huge thank you also goes out to the researchers of the hundreds of studies that provide us with fantastic insights about the power of our mind
And last, but not the least, a HUGE thank you to you, dear readers. Without YOU, this book wouldn't exist. Your e-mails and comments encourage me to continue writing and give me strength in moments of doubts and darkness.
Thank you!
Introduction
I’ve believed in all the things that I’ve written about since I was 16 years old. When I started getting into self-help and personal development, most of the things that were taught like Your Beliefs create your reality
or You attract what you concentrate on
were mere philosophical concepts that you could believe, or not. There was no scientific basis for it.
However, I still believed.
When I found the science that supports most of the concepts that are introduced in my first book 30 Days– Change your habits, change your life
I became immensely happy, because I knew that thanks to science, I can now even convince the skeptics, at least most of them.
I felt like I was given a superpower, because now – apart from showing that the exercises work by doing them – we have science as proof. This, hopefully, will motivate more people to give it a shot. We are quickly running out of the excuses that keep us from doing them.
While 30 Days is primarily a practical book, this book looks more at the scientific side of happiness and the huge impact it has on our life and our potential – at home as well as at work.
The book stems from the classes I taught at the Barcelona Campus of Geneva Business School, which was in most parts, based on my book 30 Days– Change your habits, change your life
and the works of Martin Seligman, Tal Ben Shahar, and Shawn Achor among others. These three men made hundreds of studies in the field of Positive Psychology accessible by translating
them into a language that everybody could easily understand.
The fact that Tal Ben Shahar taught the Happiness-class
(Positive Psychology) at Harvard University – which went on to become the most-demanded class at Harvard with over 1,400 students – helped me and hundreds (or even thousands) of other teachers to make this subject an integral part in universities, business schools, and even workplaces– something quite unthinkable till a little over a decade ago.
Why teach happiness at Harvard?
, one may ask. Well, in 2004, the Harvard Crimson Poll found out that 4 in 5 Harvard students suffer from depression at least once during the school year, and nearly half of all students suffer from continuous depression so debilitating that they can’t function. Fast-forward to a couple of years later, these numbers were confirmed by a nationwide study of universities in the U.S.
This book looks at the base question of all questions: How can I become happier?
You will learn how to cultivate the habits and mindset that have been scientifically proven to fuel greater success and fulfillment.
The original formula that my generation and the ones before were taught was the following:
Study hard, get a job, work hard, become successful, and once you are successful, you will be happy. So tell me, my friend, how did that work out for you? For me, it didn’t, and when we look around us, we have to admit that this formula obviously doesn’t work for most of us.
After more than a decade of research in the fields of Positive Psychology and neuroscience, today we can say that it’s actually the other way round: We become more successful when we are happier and optimistic.
Another false concept we were taught was that reaching certain goals fuel happiness. That once when we have the perfect body; once we have a great job; a promotion; a new car; a great house in the most-affluent locality in town; once we have the fattest bank balance; and the worst – once we find the perfect partner – then, we will be happy.
But did that work for you? Well, I have good news for you– this too was proven wrong, but worry not, as science also gives the solution of how to find real happiness.
Once again it’s not about the information and theory of how to live a happier life.
I want you to use the scientific basis as an additional motivation to apply the material and do the exercises.
But first... why happiness?
Nobody ever teaches us how to find meaning and happiness, and that’s why there’s lots of trouble in Happiness-Land:
Divorce rates are at 50-60%, and that doesn’t mean that the other 40-50% of marriages are just peachy. Because it doesn’t include the number of marriages that are intact due to habit, a sense of duty, or due to the fear of change.
Depression rates are ten times higher than it was in the 1960s, and the average onset age of the first depression has dropped from 29.5 years to 14.5 years!
Suicide rates are rising.
Turn on the news and all you see is corruption, murder, terrorism, accidents, war, and abuse. What’s worse is that this constant focus on the negative tricks our brain into believing that reality actually looks like this – that most part of life is negative.
Unfortunately, looking at traditional Psychology as late as in the year 1998, the ratio didn't look much better. For every one study on happiness, there were 17 studies on depression and disorder.
And then – thank god – came Martin Seligman, the President of the American Psychological Association, who officially launched the field of Positive Psychology, or the scientific study of optimal human functioning, in 1998.
Seligman concluded that instead of studying what’s broken, we have to study what works.
We have to look at what makes some people thrive and succeed even in the most difficult of circumstances. What are successful people doing differently from the others?
We have to focus on what works by looking at the questions we ask because what we focus on creates our reality. So we better start focusing on and cultivating the positive.
And that changed everything...
Being happy is much more than the absence of sadness. Today, thanks to over 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide, we know that happiness leads to success in nearly every domain of our lives. Being happy improves our health, our marriage, our friendships, our social life, and especially our jobs, careers, and businesses.
It starts with making changes within ourselves. Later on, we can bring the benefits of happiness to our complete environment, such as in our teams, our organizations, and in everyone around us.
The examples and studies shown in this book will bring you proof that happiness and optimism enhance your performance and achievement, providing you with the competitive edge.
Martin Seligman, for example, found out that optimistic salespeople sell a whopping 56% more than their pessimistic counterparts. Further studies show optimism can make CEOs 15% more productive and not only that, they also have healthier teams that perform better. Happy and optimistic managers can improve customer satisfaction by 42%.
And, happy workers have higher levels