How to Be Happy and Successful

Receive encouragement to do your work of setting life, five year, and one year goals. Hear a few new ideas on the usefulness and practice of goal setting. Support the show

Get some encouragement and a few more ideas about gratitude practice. Support the show

Learn why your focus should be on developing skills that will lead you to success in the marketplace and in any aspect of life that you want to improve. Support the show

Learn how exercise makes you happy and what kind of exercise is the most useful.  Support the show

Learn how to focus on fixing what went wrong or what's not working rather than spend your time blaming your character. Support the show

Learn how treating people well will improve your own happiness. Learn underlying attitudes and perspectives on your part that help you treat people better. Then learn particular techniques for treating people well, both in communication and action. Support the show

What do you do when you don't feel like doing the work you need to do in order to get to your goals? Perhaps your initial rush of enthusiasm has faded away and now your old habits want to reassert themselves. Learn the benefits and dangers of enthusiasm, and how to create long-lasting habits that will carry you to your goals. Support the show

Learn the downsides of letting your mind spend nearly all of its time thinking about the past or future and the upsides of paying attention to what you're doing right now. Then learn how to pay attention to your thoughts and bring them back to the present. Support the show

Learn how to set and make yourself do the behaviors you need to accomplish the goals you've set. Learn the pitfalls, psychological and practical, with getting everything done that you need to. Support the show

Learn to notice and reduce the influence of the inner voices that are diminishing your happiness. Then learn how to introduce positive and fair voices. Support the show

Set life goals, five year goals, and one year goals to design your life and guide your behaviors. Rewrite your goal lists repeatedly to keep your goals present in your mind instead of forgotten most of the time. Support the show

Use gratitude lists to appreciate the large and small aspects of your life, and to become happier by diminishing the influence on your mind of  all of the negative feelings that want to run the show. Support the show

Success of course means different things to different people, and it is very important that you take time thinking about what it means to you. I'll talk about success in two ways: 1) With the straightforward, practical meaning of setting goals and achieving them. 2) With the higher meaning of designing your life and working toward your potential.  Support the show

Learn the two types of happiness that psychologists talk about, several important errors people make when they think about happiness, and key ideas to keep in mind as you do this work (like remembering that our goal is to reduce how much time we spend in the grip of unhappy emotions). Support the show

Why have I created this podcast? Where did the ideas come from? Why is it for and from the incompetent? Get answers to these questions and learn the most important rule: past failures don't determine your future. I'll discuss the goal of persistent progress as opposed to an endpoint. I'll explain what I call the mantra: you matter, this work matters, and you can do this work. Suppor...