Now, I should be clear: I don’t think the time was WASTED because social media is important to my business and it’s a way that (as a home-based entrepreneur) I stay connected to the outside world. However, the time was misused because the morning is usually very productive time for me. I usually get a lot of really good work done then. And most of it was spent on social media… which is an activity that could have been spent at a different time of day.

We all have those fluctuations in productivity — those moments in the day when we are more productive and less productive. For me, the morning is a great time, as is about 2pm to 3pm and then 8pm to 10pm. I get A LOT of work done during those times. As for the other times of the day, I’m not useless but I’m certainly not at my peak.

You have rhythms like that, too, and they depend on a number of factors like how much sleep you get, what your diet is like, what your exercise routine is like, what other responsibilities you have (i.e., parenthood), and other factors. So I’m not here to tell you that a certain time of day is the best time or worst time for you.

It’s up to you to find out when you are at your most productive for certain tasks. Chances are, you have some key tasks (probably revenue-generating tasks) that require most of your focus and energy. If you can figure out when you are at your best, you can accomplish most of your key tasks during that time. Then stack up the less-essential activities for the other times — maybe emails and phone meetings, for example.

To figure out your most productive and least productive times, keep a journal for a week. Set an hourly alarm on your computer or smartphone and when the alarm chimes, write down what you accomplished and what your focus and energy levels were (i.e., high, medium, low). Keep this journal for a week or longer and watch for patterns. Don’t forget that there are other factors to account for — such as if you have a cold or if you were partying all weekend.

Once you know the productivity rhythms of your body, you can schedule your week around when you get the most work done.

Relationships that don’t go anywhere can become stagnant and vanish. But relationships that go deeper make our lives more fulfilled. Jere is a step-by-step way to instantly deepen your relationships.

STEP 1: START WITH A HANDFUL OF RELATIONSHIPS

You can’t possibly deepen all of your relationships at once. So pick a few and follow these steps. It’s good to pick a cross section of relationships — a couple of friends, a couple of family members, a couple of clients (for example) — and add value to those relationships.

STEP 2: WORK THROUGH EACH ONE

Look at each of the names you selected and think about that person. How do you know them? What makes them tick? What are their likes and dislikes?

STEP 3: ASK THIS IMPORTANT QUESTION

For each name on your list, ask yourself: “What does this person need?”

Think of a few things. It might be something you can do for them or it might be something that you can refer someone else to help them. For example, I might think of a client who has lost of few of their clients because of the economy so I might step up and do some marketing for them. Or I might think of a couple who have been really busy and overworked and I think they need someone to take a look after their kids while they get away for an evening together. Or I might think of a family member who has been out of work for a while so I call them up with an encouraging phone call.

Your ideas don’t have to be big and they don’t have to completely solve the problem. (In the 3 examples I gave above, I didn’t solve the problem; I just helped a bit). But these gestures can go a long way.

STEP 4: GO OUT AND DO IT

This seems like an obvious step but it’s easy to let the busyness of life get in the way. So once you’ve thought of a few value-adding, relationship-building things to do, schedule them in and do them!!!

HERE’S AN IDEA

Why not take a moment and post in the comments — tell us something you’re going to do for someone else (or something that someone else has done for you). You don’t have to give identifiable information about people you’ve done something for, just give other blog readers some ideas about what people can do. For example, why not write something like: “I was thinking about quitting my job and a good friend took me out for coffee and we talked about what some of my options were… and then she gave me the name of a company who was hiring.” Or “I was really sick and my girlfriend (who lived in another city) had a mutual friend make a care package send it over to me.“

When we think about how to achieve happiness, it’s easy to think about how we can increase the positive things in life. But learning to achieve true happiness also means letting go of the bad things. (I talk about to some degree in the blog posts What’s holding you back from success? and How to use Stress Signals to reduce stress).

Happiness can only be truly achieved in our lives if we learn to forgive others. However, forgiveness isn’t popular in our world. We want justice and retribution and revenge and restitution. We want people to get what they deserve. We want the wrongs in the world to be righted. That’s human nature to feel that way… and there ARE times when those responses are appropriate.

However, harboring anger/hatred/bitterness toward someone else in your life isn’t healthy. It’s like poison. It feels good at first to nurse that inner rage — perhaps waiting for the day when you can return upon the person the same problems they caused you. But that rarely happens (and when it does happen, it’s not the cathartic experience we were hoping for).

The better response is to forgive. Unfortunately, it’s hard to forgive. It’s not what our human nature wants.

But it is SO freeing.

If you want to be happy, here’s a happiness challenge for you:
Get a piece of paper and a pen and go somewhere private where you can be quiet and alone. A park is nice, if it’s quiet. Plan to spend a couple of hours there.

Spend some time — like a good 20 or 30 minutes — just assessing your life. Think about your past experiences — the good and the bad — and what you want to do with your life.

Next, direct your thoughts to the past. Think about all the people who have done you wrong. Some of those will be easy to think of. Write down those names. Keep pressing back in your mind, thinking of all the people in your life who have done something against you. Push. Push hard. Dredge up your memories. Go as far back as you can remember. Open the old dusty closets of your mind. Look for the big, obvious stuff — abuse, insults, bullying — and keep pushing into the smaller stuff. Write down even those who may have said something hurtful but didn’t mean it to be.

Keep at it. Spend a long time on this. An hour (or longer if possible). Write down every name you can think of… or something to identify them (when I did this, one of the unnamed people I wrote down was: “The guy who robbed me at gunpoint.”). Two things will happen:

• You may, at some point, become emotional. You might cry, you might not. I just felt empty. That’s a good sign.
• Around that time, you will probably run out of names.

Keep quiet for a few minutes longer, just in case other names come to mind.

Then (and this is the hardest part), go through the list and forgive each person for the specific thing they did to you. If possible, do so out loud. (If you can’t do it out loud because someone is listening then say the words in your head).

For example, “I forgive John Smith for insulting me at work the other day and making me question how good I am at my job.” or “I forgive the guy who robbed me at gunpoint for making me fearful and taking away a sense of control over my own destiny.”

Once you’ve gone through each person, destroy the list. Tear it up and throw it in the trash. Or, better yet, burn it. Let it go. As you get rid of the paper, think of all of those negative feelings and poisonous thoughts leaving with that discarded/destroyed paper.

Lastly, make sure you guard against any returning feelings that you might about that person. Watch out for them and push them back down when they appear. Say to yourself, “no, I’ve forgiven that person. I’ve freed myself from feeling these poisonous feelings.”

Happiness is achievable but the only way we’ll achieve the truest, fullest happiness is by practicing the forgotten art of forgiving others.

In the morning, we might watch the news on TV and the headlining stories tell us about something graphic.

The stresses of the day come at us left and right — perhaps bosses or customers or coworkers (or even friends and family) complain to us.

We might open the mail and get a scary-looking letter from a debt collector or the taxman.

It can be SO easy to let this stuff get us down.

When that happens, we have three options.

Option 1: Succumb to the negativity

We can let ourselves be overcome by the negativity to the point where we get negative, too. We become complainers and gripers and pessimists.

Option 2: Try to overcome with positivity

For those who do not want to succumb to negativity, the most common reaction is to overcome with positivity. That is, to smile and find the good in the situation. That sounds like a good idea but it’s hard to do that. (At least, it’s hard for ME to do that!) It’s hard to be positive when others are negativity… and you can also come across as a jerk too!

Option 3 (the useful trick): Replace negativity with PRODUCTIVITY

Positivity is like a bandaid on negativity. But a better way to replace (and ultimately destroy) negativity is with productivity. When faced with negative situations or feelings, the very best thing you can do is roll up your sleeves and work. You might not be able to work on the situation itself — sometimes that is completely out of your control — but you should work on something. (And if you CAN work on that very thing, even better).

I’ve found that negativity creates a lot of nervous energy (anxiety) and it’s easy to let it fester inside while I get even more stressed. But if I can take that situation and point it like a laser at a project or task, I can actually get a lot done.

Bad news on the radio? Good! The toilet needs fixing. Angry letter from a taxman? Great! I need to change the oil in my car.

Obviously, replacing negativity with productivity isn’t going to make the problem go away. (But that’s also the case with the other to responses, above). However, it does help you get a bunch of stuff done and it also alleviates the mind-numbing, stomach-churning stress you can feel and it can clear your head.

Love is a funny thing. We have all been wired to love — to love someone and to be loved by someone. And the feeling you get when you love someone is amazing. But that feeling is actually misguiding us: It makes us believe that love happens to us. The feeling of love makes us think that we are somehow incapable of love without Cupid’s arrow. It tricks us into believing that we are passive bystanders in love.

In reality, it’s quite the opposite. Love is a verb. It’s an action. It’s something WE do. It’s something we choose. Yes, there are automatic physical responses we experience when we’re with someone we love, but for the most part, love is a choice. It’s a decision on our part to love the other person.

It’s easy to feel that you’re being helplessly swept away in a tidal wave of love when you’re with someone early in your relationship — you both take the time to look and smell good for the other person and you’re discovering new things about them. That initial discovery phase is so much fun. It’s easy to love someone during that phase of the relationship. It’s MUCH harder to choose to love someone as the relationship deepens…

It’s a decision to love someone when you’re holding their hair while they puke their guts out.

It’s a decision to love someone when you’re on a long trip and they have to go to the bathroom and you don’t want to pull over.

It’s a decision to love someone when they have bed-head and morning breath.

It’s a decision to love someone when they say something hurtful to you.

It’s a decision to love someone when you choose to spend time with them instead of doing something else you find enjoyable.

It’s a decision to love someone when their life is shattered and they are desperately needy and can’t return the attention.

It’s a decision to love someone when you learn things about them that you wish you didn’t know.

I could go on and on and on but you get the idea.

The initial giddy feelings of love at the beginning a relationship are wonderful and seem wildly out of control. We love that feeling. But love grows from there when we choose to love someone.

The more you spend time with someone, the more you’ll see them at their best and at their worst. It’s easy to love someone at their best. But true love is measured by how much you choose to love someone when they are at their worst.

But what IS happiness?

Let’s forget the physiological/psychological answers for a moment. I’m less interested in knowing the mix of chemicals in my brain that make me happy.

If we want to be happy, we have to first define what makes us happy. Here’s a step-by-step process to do that.

1. List what makes you happy

Start by listing all of the things that you KNOW make you happy.

Spend some time on this step. List as many things from your experience that you know can make you happy. You might include people or places or things or experiences that make you happy. List as many as you can think of.

2. List the things you THINK will make you happy

Now list the things you have not yet experienced but you think would make you happy: Maybe you’re not a millionaire yet but you think it would make you happy, write it down. Maybe you’re not in love but you think it would make you happy, write it down.

Keep at it until you’ve exhausted this list.

3. Get specific

I think the first two steps are probably pretty straightforward and weren’t that hard, even if you created a big list. But now comes the part that most of us don’t get to. It’s time to get specific. Maybe something like “be rich” or “fall in love” sound great but aren’t very easy to measure. So you need to figure out what the threshold is to make you happy. Maybe being rich will make you happy. But if you get really specific, you have to admit that being debt free would be a good start. And maybe earning a six figure income would be good. You might define “rich” as having a million dollars in the bank, for example, but there are several steps between your current bank account and your future bank account and you need to figure out what level you switch from your current level of satisfaction (or dissatisaction) to happiness.

I’m not going to pull the wool over your eyes, here. This is a tough step. But it’s absolutely crucial.

Once you have this list of specific “happiness factors”, guess what you have: You have your vision of the future and a list of goals and objectives to get there. You have the exact list of things that will make you happy.

3. Put them in order

Put your list of happiness factors in order from “most immediately achievable” to “most distant in the future“. By doing this, you create a “to-do” list of steps to work toward that will make you happy.

(And in the future, if you suddenly discover some other thing that makes you happy, you can always add it in somewhere in the list, depending on its attainability).

This sounds good so far, doesn’t it!?! It’s like your own secret recipe for happiness. But we’re not done yet. Next comes the hardest step yet.

4. List all of the things that make you unhappy

I realize that you’re working on becoming happy but this list is important for one simple reason: You can achieve everything on your happiness list but if you are drowning in poisonous relationships and credit card debt and a job you hate, then you’ll never feel happy. So create a list of the things that make you unhappy. (Bonus tip: A good place to look is to look at the list of happiness factors and see if there are any circumstances in your life right now that are keeping you from achieving that particular happiness factor).

Now you’ve got a list of happiness factors and a list of unhappiness factors. One last step.. the hardest of them all!

5. Start working through the lists

Start working through your happiness list by working to attain or achieve the happiness factors you’ve outlined. Figure out how to get that thing in your life. Make sacrifices if necessary to achieve it. Cross each one off as you achieve it.

And, start working through your unhappiness list by working to eliminate the unhappiness factors you’ve outlined. This is going to be the hardest thing you do because it might mean confrontation with people who you need to stop associating with or it could mean breaking habits that are holding you back. But if you are serious about achieving happiness, you know that you need to do it. Cross each one off as you remove it from your life.

Celebrate every time you cross something off of either list.

A few additional notes

Here are a few things to remember while you’re doing this:

• After creating your happiness factor list, take a long look at it. If it’s filled with people and experiences, that’s great. If it’s filled with things (money, possessions, etc.), be careful! It’s okay to have things make you happy but don’t ever let them take the place of relationships, which are the most truly fulfilling of all.
• Not every happiness factor is going to be actionable. “Fall in love” isn’t something you can decide to do. However, you can take action to make the conditions optimal to fall in love. For example, you can learn to love yourself, you can rid yourself of baggage from previous relationships, you can invest in your health and your wardrobe, and you can get out into more social circles to  meet people… just to name a few things.
• These lists aren’t fixed; they’re fluid. As your life changes, you may choose to add or subtract things from the list. That’s okay.

So I pulled out a useful technique that I’ve found really helps me when this happens.

I went somewhere else (that’s always important to get a change of scenery!) and I started writing down all of the things that were holding me back from succeeding at my project.

My list start small with stuff like “I don’t really feel like working” and “I would rather spend time on Facebook.” (Hey, you gotta be honest if you want this to work!). Then, as I peeled back the layers of my thinking, I realized that there were other reasons, too: “I don’t feel ready to do this project because there are two other important things that need to be done first” and “this project isn’t as rewarding as I would have hoped” and so on. I kept pushing deeper and deeper until I had a list of nearly a dozen reasons that were holding me back from succeeding on that project.

When you do this exercise, what you end up with is a to-do list of “anchors” that are keeping you from moving forward. Sometimes they are easy things like “I don’t have enough information to start the project” and sometimes they are harder like “I don’t have the confidence to start the project”.

Then you address each one. One-by-one, no matter how difficult it is. By the time you’re done, you’ll have inadvertently started on your project (and perhaps be farther along than you realized!) and you’ll have eliminated many of the barriers and road blocks that would normally have arisen part way through your project.

The other day I was working out and I was struggling to reach a workout goal I had set for myself. A brief thought flashed through my mind: “This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done” (I was really pushing myself, after all).

Then I realized something. No, what I was doing in my workout was extremely hard but it WASN’T the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve faced tougher challenges in life. And, while I was working out, I remembered one particular challenge that was tougher — physically and mentally. By thinking about that other experience, I was able to redefine how challenging I thought my workout was and it helped me to realize “If I made it through a tougher challenge, I can make it through this”. Sure enough, it was the gas I needed to keep pushing.

Later, I reflected on this experience and realized how much it was like football (or any sport). It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and for that one single experience to define your reality. But the more successful people will always keep the full field in mind.

Think about your most difficult experience ever and your happiest experience ever. Make those the two goal posts in your playing field. Then, as life takes you on its complicated, circuitous, and sometimes-good-sometimes-hard journey, keep your eye on the full field.

There will be times when you experience something harder or happier than ever before — and that will redefine your field. That’s okay. Just recognize how the playing field has changed and measure everything by that new perspective.

Well, I’ve discovered a way to gain more than an hour everyday. I’m sad to say, it’s a fairly recent realization that I wish I knew about years ago.

I was recently analyzing how I spend my time and I discovered: When I sit down to do my work, I know what I want to work on but it usually takes me about 5 minutes to actually get into the work. The first 5 minutes is taken up with clicking to open documents, opening the appropriate windows in my web browser, and thinking about what I want to do on the project. It’s not that I dawdle on these parts of the project, it’s just that I’m not up to full-speed/full-production mode just yet. I’m just getting off the runway, so to speak.

It led me to wondering what would happened if I shortened the runway. How would I do that?

And after some trial and error, here’s what I’ve found: When planning the details of my day (the night before), I need to do more than just say “At 3pm I want to write a blog post for TheHappySelf“. Instead, I need to push deeper and say: “At 3pm, I want to write a blog post for TheHappySelf about the 3 challenges you face when setting health goals.” I also note mentally what documents or windows I need open on my browser. In other words, I figure out all of the things that used to take me the first 5 minutes of the project. In effect, I’m shortening the runway and getting to that point of productive critical mass sooner.

The result is an extra hour of work for me every day. At least. Here’s how the math plays out: If I start 12 projects (i.e., 12 half-hour projects over a 6 hour workday, for example, which isn’t that unusual for me), and each project used to burn the first five minutes, I have regained an hour in the day. Simple!

The cost of gaining back this hour? Maybe 10 minutes of planning the day before. That’s a great return on investment!

Of course it might vary for you — maybe you have 6 1-hour projects in your 6 hour day (and you’ll regain half an hour) or 24 half hour projects in a 12 hour day (and you’ll regain 2 hours). Whatever. If you can save five minutes on each project (and that is entirely feasible with a little advanced planning), you can win back a huge amount of time in the day.

We weren’t aware of his stress level and neither was he. Sure, he was getting frustrated by his life but he had no idea how bad it was until that one cataclysmic episode.

That’s probably true for most of us: Unless we’re practicing mindfulness every day, we aren’t truly aware of our stress level until it gets to a boiling point. And by then it’s too late.

But there is a solution, which I call “Stress Signals”…

A solution inspired by the stock market

In the stock market, investors use something called “indicators” to track stock prices. These indicators pay attention to trends, and they measure things like the price that stocks are bought for and the price that stocks are sold for (plus many other variables that influence upward or downward trends). Based on these signals, the information alerts the investor that it’s time to buy or sell more stock.

The same principle can be applied to our lives to help us address and reduce stress.

We may not always realize “Okay, I’m feeling stress right now” but there are lots of indicators in our lives that can signal the stress long before we have a meltdown.

What are the signals? I think they’re different for everyone but here’s a cross section of the signals that I think many of us might observe in ourselves:

• Hunger for junk food
• Road rage
• Frustration expressed through shouting at inanimate objects
• An increase in caffeine consumption
• Sleeplessness
• Restlessness
• Short-tempered with family and friends
• Impatient
• Teeth grinding at night
• Shortness of breath
• Dissatisfied with things that normally mean nothing to us (i.e. “There’s NOTHING on the radio today!” or “my spouse NEVER remembers to put the car keys back in the same place”)
• A desire to escape

Of course there are many more, and they are different for everyone. (And do you notice something else? These signals can also be catalysts for further stress! Our stress keeps us awake at night and then our fatigue compounds our stress level!)

How to use stress signals

First, figure out what YOUR stress signals are. Chances are, you may have recognized a few of them in the list above.

Next, choose 3 to 5 signals that show up consistently when you get stressed. You don’t have to pick more than that because those few will give you the same information as if you picked 7 or 10 signals. Also, make sure the signals you choose are easy to measure.

Then commit those signals to memory.

Simply the act of committing those signals to memory will help you to “set them” as indicators. As that particular signal starts to ping in your life, it will job your memory that it’s a stress signal.

But to further help you, take a couple of moments in your day to check your stress signals and rate them on a simple scale of 1 to 5. Perhaps do this once in the morning, once when you arrive home from work and once before bed at night. This simple 30-second exercise will keep you aware of your stress level so you can do something about it before it gets too bad.