Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had conversations with executive leadership teams, parents, soccer coaches, and midlevel managers that have focused on how to help others succeed. To a person, they were struggling with how to know when to be hands on and when to be hands off. At one of those meetings, an executive said that they use the what, what and how, and how continuum—which looks like this: When deciding how hands on to be, a good…
You may look at the title of today’s post and think to yourself, “Of course people matter! Why would they write about that?” And, while we know that you know that people matter, it’s not often we see evidence of it in a compelling way. So when we saw this snippet of video from the Olympics, we thought to ourselves: This is what it means to say people matter. As you will see when you watch the video, a pack…
We were recently in a meeting talking about some of the work by Roger Fisher and William Ury on the Harvard Negotiating team. Many of you will know them from their 1991 book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. In that groundbreaking book, the authors introduced a new way to think about negotiations and difficulties. Where we once thought of winners and losers, they proposed identifying options for mutual gain, separating the people from the problems, and…
Thank you all for your wonderful stories and comments during our five-week Choosing Happiness series! They were truly touching and we love that you shared your stories with us. Many of you wrote and told us that you personally are working on choosing happiness, but have a close friend or loved one who can’t quite get there. No matter what you do or say, you can’t seem to make that person happy, and you’re frustrated. Some of you feel a…
This is our final post in our series on Choosing Happiness. If you haven’t had an opportunity to read the last few posts, please do! They can, in fact, help you to choose happiness. We began with an overview of the research, taught you to Notice Your Life, explored two core practices, Gratitude and Forgiveness, spent some time helping you get to Know What You Want and last week we talked about the power of Kindness and Service. This week we want…
This month we’re focusing on Choosing Happiness. We began with an overview of the research that shows what the happiest people do in their lives, then we worked through some key ways you can increase your happiness. We started by teaching you to Notice Your Life, then focused on two core practices, Gratitude and Forgiveness, and last week we offered you an exercise to help you Know What You Want. Interestingly, doing this series on Choosing Happiness has brought a lot of…
Three weeks ago, we began our focus on Choosing Happiness. We began with an overview of what the research shows that the happiest people do in their lives. Then we started by teaching you a simple and powerful way to Notice Your Life. Last week we focused on two core practices to support you choosing happiness, Gratitude and Forgiveness. We have heard from a lot of you during this series and clearly gratitude and forgiveness struck a meaningful chord with…
Two weeks ago, we began our focus on Choosing Happiness. Last week we started our series by teaching you a simple and powerful way to Notice Your Life. Thank you for your thoughts and comments on this series. Supporting you in creating success in your world is our passion and hearing that we have hit the mark is truly inspiring. This week we want to talk about Gratitude and Forgiveness, two important keys to happiness. We will start with Gratitude…
Last week we began our focus on Choosing Happiness. We summarized some of the things that people who are the happiest do regularly in their lives. The rest of this month, we’re going to focus on the core practices that can add to or deepen your own sense of happiness, starting with Mindfulness. There’s a lot of talk about mindfulness in the media, and the research about its benefits is inspiring. Research shows that becoming more mindful throughout your life…
People often talk about wanting to be happy as if it’s something that happens to them. And, while there are external things that happen to us that can increase our happiness, our sadness, and our stress; generally people who describe themselves as happy choose happiness over and over and over again—often without even noticing it. Think about the prayer that has come to be known as The Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot…
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