Come On Get Happy

We all know people who are glass half full, half empty and those that approach the world as if all of the water has spilled from the glass and there is little hope. What makes the half-full group positive and seemingly happier? And what is their secret sauce that you can use to improve your daily happiness? According to University of Texas professor and author Art Markham, the happiest people have approaches to life that are easily emulated.

First, set the right goals, explains Markham. These include goals that you use to connect with other people. In your showroom, this connection is seen when your team understands and believes that they simply do not design kitchens or baths. Rather, they play a pivotal role in improving the lives and happiness of their clients and members of their community. They understand that improving the quality of their clients’ lives is a higher and noble purpose that produces an abundance of personal and professional satisfaction. When team members are satisfied with their careers, they are generally happier than those who come to work primarily to collect a paycheck.

Markham claims that the happiest people set cooperative goals versus comparative goals. A comparative goal is one where there is a winner and a loser. “A comparative goal is one where you want to see yourself do better and the people you compare yourself to do worse,” Markham writes. Cooperative goals result in everyone benefiting, enabling peopling to celebrate not only their own accomplishments, but the successes of others around them.

Accentuating the positive is the second habit of the happiest people. Focusing on the positive accentuates the desirable aspects of an experience as opposed to the negatives. When you focus on positives and recall the experience later, you remember the enjoyment more than the pain and that contributes to being happier.

The ability and willingness to forgive is the third habit of the happiest people. A reason that forgiveness increases happiness is that it enables you to forget the reason why someone upset you. As a result, you don’t recall the negatives when you think or talk about them in the future. Markham acknowledges that it’s not easy to forgive someone who has lied, cheated, angered, frustrated, embarrassed or shamed you. Forgiving them does not mean that you continue to trust them. However, forgiving them can help you to get over the damage that was caused without harboring negative feelings that can be real downers and affect your overall satisfaction.

Take advantage of the habits of the happiest people by setting the right goals, focusing on the positive and forgiving those whose actions have hurt you.