Positive Psychology : The Science and Steps to Happiness

While reading the church advertisement, I saw add about happiness.  Hmmm...interesting so I just check it out.  It was a 2,5 hour seminar on Saturday, I thought mind as well attend it as to sleeping all day long.  And so I did.

No expectations just wanted to know what is this "positive psychology" is all about and what is got to do with happiness.

To my surprise being happy was not that difficult - if we really want to do it and really dedicate time for it. 

The lecturer is the head and senior consultant , dept of psychological medicine in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.  Dr Christopher Cheok. The lesson that he taught was not something new and he is humble enough to show all the materials was coming from book and the internet.  You can see he is very happy on giving the presentation he dedicate his time to help and to promote mental health in Singapore together with the Clarity organization. 

Not new material does not mean it is not effective. 
Just simply try some of the exercises and I feel good already.

Exercise as simply as gratitude to all the things that we have right now.
By remembering 3 good things that happen to us on daily basis.
Watch funny movie.  Or create a gratitude letter.

Just to take some of my own exercise on 3 good things.
1. I thankful that I can wake up early on Saturday well and vibrant
2. I thankful for my wife
3. I thankful that I can walk and take MRT without a problem

Nothing much ,right?  Wrong.  The gratitude for all the little things are the fuel to achieve the best results in live.  How can somebody be enough if he never feel satisfied to what have been given?
So starts small. 

And I made my gratitude letter as well, the good thing about gratitude letter is that it does not have to be given to the person yet you can feel the difference.

All are very simple yet effective.

Thank you Dr. Christopher Cheok for spending the time to remind us all the little things that we can do to be happy.

He quoted a couple of references :
1. www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu
2. Flourish by Martin Seligman
3. Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman

Email one of the time killer around

It is easy to be trapped in the multimedia environment.  I never knew how much time and energy was drained just reading email from my mobile.  It is what I called mixing important and urgent at its best.  So I started to calculate how much time I spent writing one email on my laptop and writing the same more less email in my mobile, to my suprise it took 30 minutes for a 10 minutes time email. Which mean although I feel better (for just a moment)  where I can see no more pending tray on my cellphone at the same time I have absorb 3 times the time needed.

It is very very important to pick battle in order to win a war.  Either you shut your mobile and let it be tomorrow's problem or you would select email based on person's name (you don't want to ignore your boss do you) and base on the subject but then again subject can fool us. There are too many urgent is put on the subject  which hard to separate with the important ones.

Aside from the time spent , energy is spent also because you would be doing that on your rest time after going home from office, we are not meant to be working or constantly in the aware state at all time, it's like a caveman being alert at all time for any wild animals to come, they decided to live in a cave and takes turn to watch the surroundings.  We should do like the caveman take a rest conserve your energy and be back vibrant on the next day.  Cherish your time and energy , honor your own body.

A body that has been disrespected in few years may bite you at the end.  Instead of asking what can you do for the company perhaps it is about time to ask why are you doing what you are doing.  Why is it important for you to answer that email?  The question is important not why is it urgent to answer that email? 

Being a know everything is not helping either, sometimes you just want to help just because you know doesn't mean you have to answer it.  Is it selfish?  well again time is the essence here we only have 24 hours a day.  If every questions from any directions had to be answered we may end up exhausting ourselves.  So what to do then?  One thing for sure to have many FAQ or ready answered questions made hence the same repetitive questions can be avoided.  Find pattern for the questions that keep coming to you.

Experts doesnt mean that you would share your knowledge all the time, there will be time when you have to choose which battle you want to win for the day.  So it's about prioritization as well.
Create focus focus focus.

Personally I would go with coming in early have a clear mind and start replying my email.  Oh one more thing don't start reading all incoming email after work on your cellphone, at the end you will read it twice in the office anyway, not worth the time.  We read email once per email.  We may read the attachment one or twice depends on the complexity of the attachment but not the email.

You can be easily overloaded just by reading emails.  Oh one more thing please please do not reply all when you don't have to.  And those thank you word , perhaps we can hold it I think we can sufficiently work without a one liner thank you reply - a bit harsh but seeing 100 emails with 10 of them are a one liner thank you messages - you probably in a very kind loving company...