Hi again. Long time, no see, huh? I wanted to get the happiness post out of the way before this one and now that that's posted ...

Here's the story. My website (firegold.net) was hosted by Jatol.com. Jatol, about a week and a half or so ago, went kaput. Most of the sites they hosted were down, then their site went down. All this with no word at all from the company. Due to budgeting constraints, I had to wait a bit before I felt comfortable with setting up new hosting (I also wanted to give them a chance to fix things). Now that I've got new hosting ready to go, I can't get the domain transferred over.

My domain was registered through Jatol. So because they're down, I can't get in to point the domain at the new hosting company.

In the spirit of my happiness post, I'm looking at this as an opportunity. I need a new domain name, so I want to find one I like and that works better than firegold.net. I've listed a few options in the poll (see below) and would like input.

Vote early and vote often! Er, something like that. ;)

Joshua

Okay. So how *do* you cultivate an attitude of happiness? Since happiness eludes so many of us, it must be difficult to do. After all, simple things like material things, money, power, etc. don't provide it. So it's got to be really, really hard. Next to impossible.

The answer is simpler than you might think. In fact, we all know the answer already, really.

Be a "cup half-full" person. Look on the bright side. Find that silver lining. Make lemonade. Count your blessings. Ask "how can I turn this to something good?" And so on.

There. That's it. Now you know the secret.

That wasn't so helpful, was it? Yet, contained in all those metaphors is a kernel of truth. (Yes, I know the last one wasn't a metaphor.) You have to make the pursuit of happiness an active process. It's not just a passive thing. Happiness won't just "find you" someday. The other bit of truth in there is ... it's all about how you look at things.

It's also harder than that simple concept would imply. It's all well and good to say you need to change how you look at things. If we could just change on a dime, we wouldn't have so many problems in this world. We'd all be able to just snap our fingers and change! to who we wanted to be.

Sadly, it doesn't work that way.

Here are some ways to change how you look at things. First, consider doing a gratitude/success journal. Take a look at Renee Stephen's blog post for an excellent example of how to do one of these: Success Journal. If you get in the habit of--every day--programming your mind with "I did *this* well today," that'll go a long way toward improving your overall attitude. Second, reprogram your automatic response to stressors from "Oh, crap. Not again!" to something along the lines of "Hmm ... what can I do with this? How can I use this?" or whatever is appropriate to think for that stressor.

Obviously, if your spouse is bugging you, "How can I use this?" might not be the best response. Perhaps being reminded of your gratitude for their uniqueness might be better. Or maybe what's bugging you is something that used to be "adorable." Wouldn't it be nice to feel that way about it again?

Or you could remind yourself of how much you really do love your spouse and all the benefits of having him/her, thinking of being 20 years from now looking back at today and wondering why you ever got so worked up ...

Another option is to change your morning routine. Sometimes being in a bad mood is simply a result of waking up on the wrong side of the bed. If you're always jerked awake by a loud and jarring alarm clock, perhaps try getting one of those gentler ones, that slowly wake you up. Or maybe you want to wait to check your email until *after* you've eaten and showered.

Maybe adding a short exercise before anything else would work for you.

Or there's a process I got from Wendi Friesen while in Miami. She had a one day workshop on addictions, and shared her process with us. Part of her process is what she calls Remove Negative Anchors. It's a fairly sweeping process that has the client imagine a few things they know have negative anchors attached to them--that easy chair, for example, or the lawn chair on the back deck--and purify it of all those old associations. Then they generalize that and get the unconscious mind in on the act, running the process on anything and everything with a negative anchor.

It's kind of like when you buy new furniture. Everything's new and it feels a bit weird to do your habitual activities for a bit. You can use the cleared state of things to install *positive* anchors where the negative ones used to be.

There are, of course, a thousand other ways to go about this, but I don't have room, time or, necessarily, knowledge of all those ways. So I'll leave it with this for now and just say this: the general rule is to get rid of habits that cause negative feelings and replace them with habits that generate positive feelings. However you do that is up to you.

Joshua

I know I promised another post on the subject of happiness, but I need to get this out of the way. I have two copies of Wendi Friesen's Do It Now program and am selling one on eBay. The auction has about six hours left, as of this blog post. I'd been hoping to get it for the Buy it Now price I had on it, but it's got one bid.

Currently it's going to sell for $10.00.

I think Wendi's products are worth a little more than that, and so I'm posting here in the hopes of reaching someone who either could use the program themselves or knows someone who could use it. You don't have much time, so don't procrastinate. ;)

So if anyone's reading this and wants to help me out, please feel free! Do it Now.

Joshua

PS. I will post about happiness again either later today or tomorrow, depending on how much time I have. I do want to finish my discussing of that.

I was catching up on my blogs and newsletters this weekend and read Adam Eason's Adam Up, which is almost always a fun read. This week's article is about happiness and the pursuit thereof. Nothing brand-spanking new; just a timely reminder of what we all know and often forget.

He found an out of print (and out of copyright) book called The Habit of Happiness and posted an excerpt from it; basically detailing the lack of ability of *things* or *circumstances* or *money* or ... to bring us happiness. Happiness is an attitude. An attitude we can cultivate in whatever situation we find ourselves in.

Happiness, in other words, is a choice.

Too often, we forget this. We meaning both our clients and ourselves in this case. It's far too easy to get caught up in the "If only I had this ... " mentality. I admit, I fall prey to it myself (just read my previous post, for example, and you can probably see signs of that thought process).

So. How do we go about choosing happiness? What's your process? I'll post later with ideas of mine on this, but if anyone's reading this blog, feel free to comment with what you do.

Joshua

Yes, I'm finally getting around to posting something in this blog. It's a bit of an introduction, more than anything else. Opinions and thoughts on techniques, theory, announcements of events and products, etc. will come later. And now down to the intro. 

My name, as you've no doubt guessed by now, is Joshua. I'm located in Washington State and have long had an interest in hypnosis and NLP. I only recently, however, completed enough training to feel comfortable with getting started as a hypnotherapist, and registered with the State last year. I don't quite have the business going yet; I'm seeing a pro bono client or two for smoking cessation, and I'm still working (very) full time at a day job. Which means I'm allowing (let's be honest) myself to not have the time.

That's changing this week, by the way.  

I'm working out of a home office, so have been reading Celeste's articles with interest. Her setup is a bit different than mine, but there's still a wealth of information in her articles. 

Most of my formal training has been in more or less Elman-influenced, but Ericksonian techniques hold a strong attraction for me. I love puns and plays on words anyway, so using them to help clients (beyond just making them laugh, though that's good, too) sounds like a great idea to me. ;)

Some people may be turned off by what I'm about to say, but it will come up at some point, so let's get it out of the way right now. Most of my training and learning has been from books and distance learning. I have had some in-person training, with practice hypnotizing and being hypnotized, however. So all's not lost. I feel I have a good understanding intellectually, and I have a good grounding in practice.

In addition, I'm a member of a hypnosis meetup group, structured vaguely along the lines of Sleepwalkers, and an HMI student and I just started up a study group for HMI students in our area. Since those people are distance learners, as well, we figured a study group was a good idea.

This is starting to get long and rambly, so I'll end it here and just say that day jobs suck. I just got home from work. Yep, laboring on Labor Day. One more nail in the coffin of "safe employment," huh?

Joshua