I have read hundreds of books about happiness, motivation and success and written many articles, lesson plans and presentations about happiness and in all of them, I get to the same point: happiness is not absolute and does not follow the "one size fits all" rule. Therefore, I cannot teach happiness. All I can teach people is how to find it inside.

Most of my clients are very surprised when I tell them I do not have a happiness formula for them. Many people would like a formula or a pill that will fix their life and make them happy quickly and easily. When they come to coaching, they often think it is like going to the doctor and saying, "Ronit, I'm sick. Can you give me a pill to fix it?"

Every one of us is a chemist searching for the right ingredients in the right combination that defines the happiness pill
- Ronit Baras

Well, I do not. You see, happiness pills are very special. Only those who make them can enjoy the magic of their cure. Every one of us is a chemist searching for the right ingredients in the right combination that defines their own happiness pill. Each pill is unique to its creator. I happened to be studying the chemistry of happiness, success and motivation and have had the honor of studying and working with lots of successful chemists, so I can share with my clients some tips about ingredients that do not work and others that were proven to be very successful. One of the reasons my clients are so successful is that they understand I cannot prescribe them a pill, but that with my help, they do not start from scratch.

The good thing about working towards the happiness pill is that you get to test it every day of your life and always improve. On lousy days, and everyone has lousy days, they can always take a happiness pill to boost their emotional immune system and gather enough courage and motivation to start researching again the day after.

Another great thing about the happiness pill is that everyone can prescribe it for themselves at any time. You do not need to make an appointment, see a specialist and expect them to make you happy. You are the specialist and you can prescribe it to yourself. No one knows you better than you!

Also, you do not need to go to the chemist during business hours and count on your pill to be in stock. You are the chemist and you are always open for business. Your body has all the chemicals you can dream of and using it properly will produce supportive chemicals and get rid of the ingredients you do not want. Being out of stock happens only once in your life - when you die.

Find your Happy-ism

Happiness is like a religion. It gives its believers the sense of comfort, purpose, and fulfillment, a sense of certainty and connection to the world and its creator. Just like every other religion, it is very individual and requires your complete faith.

I believe that life is a search for your own "ism". I have a group of clients that know each other very well (one of them referred a friend to me, who referred another two friends, who referred others, so they all know about one another) and they talk about my religion as "Ronitism". After only a couple of sessions, all my clients know that they need to find their own "ism" and the quicker they find it, the happier they will be.

To help them find it, I share my search and my findings and help them question their thoughts and beliefs until they find solid, helpful ingredients that take them forward, with focus, that are addictive and can be easily replicated and measured. I teach them to be researchers - to compare, to rate, to document, to test and test again, to be creative, to be adventurous, to welcome like-minded researchers and learn from their successes, and you know what? Those who seek, find!

When my clients ask me about my happiness pill, I always share it with them. Some of the ingredients have been found in past experiences. Even the tough and painful experiences have included very important ingredients of success. I have learned many of my ingredients during my studies and while working. Some are tips from my parents and family members or my observations of what I like and do not like about the way others searched for their happiness pill. I have learned some things from very successful people. Some of my ingredients are just there and I do not know exactly who has given them to me or what has made me think they were good for me. I just know they work.

If you know the "make a list" series, you know that writing things down can be very helpful for our thinking process. Spend some time finding out what is the formula for you - your happiness formula. Your happy-ism. Think what the ingredients of happiness, success and excellence are and see if you have these ingredient. Knowing that courageous people are very successful is not enough. You also need to do something to develop this courage in yourself, so success and happiness will start knocking on your door.

Here are the instructions for getting the ingredients and the combination for your happiness formula:

1. Write whatever you think makes you happy. I have the list of 100 things that make me happy and I extend the list every opportunity I get. Every person has a different list and it provides the basis for your happiness pill.
2. When making a list, write the ingredients that should not be on your happiness pill's ingredient list. There is no need to research and find out again and again they do not work for you. For example, I discovered at the age of 16 that I felt sorry for myself and that was the reason I was helpless and unhappy. In my happiness formula, feeling sorry for myself does not exist and I never check again to see if it works.
3. When was the first time you discovered this ingredient? How old were you when you first discovered it? I discovered that action (as opposed to complaining) is a great ingredient in my success formula. I discovered it when I was 16 and switched from complaining to doing and it worked. Instead of complaining, I asked myself, "What can I do about it?" With good questions, you always get good answers.
4. Who has given it to you? Who was the person that was associated with this discovery? I learned money management from my dad. He taught me that a credit card is a way of renting money so I do not rent money. I have a credit card and I pay it all off by the due date so I never have to pay any interest. Over 27 years of having a credit card, I have rented money twice in my life to pay a loan with higher interest and only for a very short time. I think this is one of the reasons I am so good with money.
5. What were the circumstance that have made you think this is a very important ingredient in the happiness pill formula? One of the ingredients of my formula is "successful people fall 7 times and get up 8". No matter how hard things are, get up! One more time! That is all it takes - one more time. I learned it the hard way after I lost my two babies. I thought I could not and would not be able ever to smile again and I was wrong. Very painful and sad circumstances, great ingredients. Whenever I fail or things do not happen the way I predicted or wanted, I focus on "one more time" and it always works.
6. Do I have this ingredient? Sometimes, we see great skills and abilities, thoughts and beliefs in other people, but we do not possess them. If you examine those around you and think they have some ingredients of the happiness formula, ask yourself if you have these skills too. During my work as a life coach, I have learned that part of every coach's success is the ability not to take on the clients' feelings and to remain a facilitator of change. This was hard for me. For a while, I did not own that ingredient.
7. Where/how can I get this ingredient? What do I need to develop, do, possess and learn to own this ingredient? Luckily for me, I could coach myself to develop the skill of allowing my clients to have their own feelings and being able to support them without adopting their feelings. I have used all the tools in my tool kit to change beliefs, to come up with new rules and goals to achieve this and I have been very successful at it.

Remember, it is good to learn from others about their happiness pills, but do not be tempted to adopt them. For an ingredient to be useful and successful, it needs to be accompanied by strong belief and listening to someone else's story is not enough to make it a strong belief.

I hope you will enjoy your time in the pharmacy of life and be a dedicated and adventurous chemist. If you need help in weighing, mixing and finding your unique formula, call us at Be Happy in LIFE and I will be happy to help you.

Hugs,
Ronit

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I have done a lot in my life. Luckily, although some things were incredibly challenging, my life has been very rewarding overall. I am the kind of person who goes to work and it does not feel like a work, more like serving a purpose. I am an educator in every cell of my body. I teach parents how to be the best they can be and how to raise happy kids by being happy themselves and I have changed the lives of thousands of children. Still, the best of all my talent, I have given to my own children: Eden, Tsoof and Noff. Being their mother always seems to bring out the best in me.

All this wondering started when one of my clients had a daughter. She had given up her career and the search for a partner and with her mother's help, she had gone through the journey of having a child on her own. I saw a photo of them and it reminded me of the first day I met my daughter Eden, my happy thought. Her birth was the birth of many new feelings and since then, I have been a different person. A better one, I think.

Then, Gal was talking on Skype with a man who wanted to do business with him. I was working next to him when they had a very serious discussion about web developers. The other man talked about "them" as being a bunch of stupid people who could not see that working with him would make them part of a network similar to Facebook or the companies owned by Richard Branson. After a while, Gal felt uncomfortable with all the judgment and asked him, "Do you have kids?" The man hesitated and said, "No". Gal tried to say to him politely that when people have children, they think twice before giving their time to someone they do not know in exchange for promises. This made me think about the feeling I had when Eden was born - pure joy and happiness, hope and excitement, mixed with a heavy burden of responsibility. Kids cannot be sent back to the manufacturer for a warranty replacement! You can only truly understand this when you have your first child.

Another client of mine discussed her time management issues with me this week. She has 3 kids, a live-in maid and a cook. Her kids go to private schools, she does not work and once a month, she travels with her extended family somewhere in the world, because they are very wealthy. She asked me how I managed and I told her about all the projects I was involved in. She was shocked and asked me, "Who cooks in your house?" I said, "I do, and if I am busy, Gal does".

"We eat out 3 times a week, once a week I heat up a pre-cooked meal the maid buys at the supermarket and we never eat all together", she said, "What about you?"

"We eat together at home every day", I told her, "We do not have ready cooked meals, we eat out once every two weeks or so and never junk food".

"I don't even do the laundry. Who does the laundry in your house?" she asked and I said, "I sort the clothes and put them in the washer and everyone helps hang them to dry, take them down and fold them".

"I give my maid a list for the supermarket. Who does your shopping?" she asked. "I do most of my shopping on Saturday. Gal and I go to the market and the supermarket together".

"Who takes your kids to and from school and activities?" she kept asking. I said, "Gal and I share this. Until 6 years ago, I did it on my own, because Gal left home at 7am and came back at 5:30pm. While one child was in an afternoon activity, the others sat in the car with me and we did homework, sang and played games".

"Don't you have a family to help you with picking up, dropping off and babysitting?" she asked again. I told her that in the last 19 years, I have been very far away from my family and have had to manage on my own.

"Where do you find the time?" she asked. I told her that we both have the same 24 hours every day and that I manage it well because I have to! Sometimes, that extra help from your maids and your parents cripples you and makes you helpless. Every time a child was born, I became more efficient, more creative and better at prioritizing and managing my time. I simply had to.

Another client of mine came to coaching completely overwhelmed by being a mother. She kept saying she had not known what she was getting herself into. She loves her daughter very much, but is in total overwhelm. She is well educated, mature and in a good relationship with her partner, yet she finds being a mother the most challenging thing she has ever done. I was 24 when Eden was born. No one knows what they get themselves into with the first child. People can tell you stories about it for years, but when the time comes, it is all new. So I asked her, "If you could change it, would you?" and she said, "Never!"

Another client of mine, who has been married for 15 years, used a surrogate mother to have a child, because she could not bear the thought of her body changing. Her son is the most important thing in the world for her. It made me think of the huge scar I have after 4 cesareans.

Another client of mine celebrated her second child's first birthday this week. She had her two kids through an egg donation and IVF treatments, because as she was 40 and the doctors said she had no more eggs of her own. The treatments were expensive and were done overseas. She stopped working and dedicated every second of her life for those treatments. During her first pregnancy, she was in hospital from the 20^th week and he doctors told her every day the pregnancy would not go to term. When I asked her, "Can you keep going?" she said, "Of course I can". She reminded me of my two kids that I have lost and how when Tsoof was born, I said to myself, "He is worth every second of this torture". The whole experience has made me a better, more appreciating person.

Having all these interactions made me realize that motherhood has brought out the best in me. It has taught me things about myself I had never known. It has helped me develop skills that I would never have developed without the need to care for my children. It has made me happier and more caring. It has made me prioritize, made me time efficient, made me more creative, made me more efficient, made me a better chef, made me more friendly, flexible, grateful and loving, more courageous, more helpful, more hopeful, made me try harder, made me stronger, made me more curious, made me a role model and a leader, made me positive, made me grow, made me powerful, made me make a huge difference!

For me, motherhood is the best thing I have ever done in my life - the best job in the world.

To all the moms out there (and all the dads), congratulations on doing an amazing job!

This video says exactly what I think about being a mother. Have a tissue handy.

Be a happy mother. Happy Mother's Day!
Ronit

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Most parents, given enough time to ponder this question, agree that the answer is "Happiness". When offered the choice from success, money, love, fame and other things people desire, parents overwhelmingly choose happiness.

The problem is that most of our daily parenting ends up being about other things, like academic success, winning competitions, behaving politely, earning money and so on. Children's future happiness is only used as an assumption, as in "If you do well at school, you'll have more options in life and be happier" or "If you learn how to keep a job and save money, you'll be able to afford the things that will make you happy when you grow up" (excuse me while I catch my breath).

Focus on happiness

I believe that focusing directly on being happy changes what we choose to do for/to our kids, motivates them more and will ultimately make them (and us) happier. Rather than assuming that happiness will be the indirect result of doing homework every day, why not start with what makes (or will make) our kids happy and then tie that to things we can all do every day to accomplish that happiness?

Kinds of happiness

Current positive psychology experts distinguish 3 kinds of happiness: thrill, flow and purpose.

Thrill is very powerful, but short-lived and has no lasting effects. It starts when the theme-park ride starts moving, intensifies as it accelerates and ends when the ride stops and you have to get off and back to un-thrilling life. Other examples are using drugs and having sex.

Flow is when you lose track of time, because you are so engaged in what you are doing and you are doing it with ease and complete focus. It lasts longer, but not long enough. At some point, you have to stop and do something else that requires effort. You know you have had a good time only when you stop and become aware of your surroundings again and for a while, you have the pleasant feeling that you have used your time well. Examples of flow can be found in most hobbies - painting, singing, playing music, putting a puzzle together, etc.

Purpose is when you do things that may not be pleasant or easy, but they serve some distant goal that makes everything worthwhile. People on a mission travel to remote places, fight fatigue, hunger and sickness or give their money away, but all that time, they see themselves stepping closer and closer to their destination and to sublime fulfillment.

Happy combination

To create a winning combination for ourselves that maximizes all 3 kinds of happiness, we would begin by finding a great purpose that inspires us and that we can feel motivated every day to work towards. From that purpose, we would derive some long-term goals, then some short-term goals. We would split those into milestones and each milestone into action steps. Then, every day would be clear, out progress would be easy to track and we would live a happy life indeed.

But this would not work with kids, unfortunately, because finding a purpose at the age of 5 is far beyond what they can do. Finding that purpose for them, of course, has little chance of success and is more likely to result in daily friction than in inspiration. In fact, it would be similar to what happens today.

What we need to do for our kids as parents is to teach them how to set and achieve goals and milestones that reward them emotionally and to expose them to many different experiences in life, so that they can choose their purpose wisely. As they grow beside us, we should also pay attention to what they like and what they do well and gently direct them towards life experiences that are most likely to help them make a wise choice for themselves when the time comes.

Good goal setting

A good goal is focused on happiness. The actions taken and the results achieved are just vehicles. The true aim of setting and achieving goals is a great feeling of accomplishment and a massive boost to the self-esteem.

A good goal meets the following guidelines:

• Specific - the outcome must be clear. "I want to be popular" is no good. "I want to have 10 friends at my next birthday party" is much better. In particular, the goal should specify an end date. In reality, that date may change, but the mental deadline provides powerful motivation. The question here is "What do you want to accomplish?"
• Achievable and inspiring - the outcome must be attainable within the given timeframe. Making a new friend every day will be intimidating for a shy child, but making a couple of new friends in a few weeks should seem doable and therefore encouraging. The questions here "How much can achieve in <3 months>?" and "Is this enough, or do you want to set a longer goal and achieve more?"
• Measurable - progress should be easy to track. This can be done using steps leading up to the goal, like "I will attend every party I'm invited to", "I will invite 4 friends to go ice skating" and other steps leading up to the birthday party. It can also be done using a numeric outcome, like "I'll have 3 friends in 4 weeks, 5 friends in 3 months and 8 friends in 6 months". The question here is "What are some steps long the way?" or "How will you know you're making progress?"
• Responsible - the only person in charge is the owner of the goal. Sure, Mom can talk to other parents and organize the birthday party, but for the child to benefit, every action and change done along the way, should be done by the child. The above goal may be better written as "I will make 10 new friends, organize a birthday party, invite my friends and have lots of fun". This way, the child is responsible for making friends, organizing a party, inviting and having fun, whether the friends choose to arrive or not. The question here is "How can you do or feel everything in this goal yourself?"
• Positive - the goal statement must use only positive terms. "I don't want to be lonely" will trigger thoughts of loneliness and inhibits creativity. The image of a party with lots of friends and fun creates a positive mental state and brings out wonderful ideas. The question here is "What's the opposite of this? What do you want instead?"
• Present tense - the goal should be stated as if it is happening right now. Our mind cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality, so if we keep imagining good things, we get used to them as if they were real. The above would be best written as "It is the 31^st of May, 2012. I have invited 10 friends to my birthday party. I am playing games with them and having lots of fun".
• Emotional - remember, this is the real aim of the goal. Besides having lots of fun, you could add "I feel popular and liked and I know I'll always be able to find friends to play with". The questions here are "How will this make you feel?" and "How will you feel about yourself then?"

With coaching clients, most goals range between 3 and 6 months. Since children cannot see too far into the future, start with shorter goals with very clear outcomes and rewards and work your way up from there.

Goals provide the purpose-like happiness for as long as they last. With experience and practice, teenagers can set long-term goals for 1 or 2 years ahead and keep themselves amazingly motivated and happy.

Milestones and rewards

Working towards a goal is hard, because we always try to achieve something we have not been able to achieve so far. It takes us out of our "comfort zone", so we need to build in some resting points along the climb. To squeeze even more happiness from goal setting and achieving, each goal can be broken down into milestones.

A milestone is the combination of a result (a "deliverable") and a reward. For example, going to a party when invited is an event your child can count and the reward can be a big hug, a chance to tell everyone proudly at the table about the party, one less chore or anything of value to the child that is equivalent to the (emotional) effort.

Milestones reinforce the purpose-like motivation and provide more changes for thrills.

Action steps

Most goals and milestones are achieved in little steps. In order to make friends, the child may have to approach someone, help someone with their homework, join a game or count to 3 before raging. When something big and scary is broken down into little steps, there is no more anxiety. The child should be able to say, "Oh, that's easy. I can do that", about every one of them.

Ideally, the list of action steps should also build on the child's strengths and the things the child likes. That is where flow comes in.

If your child likes to paint, making friends at a special art camp does not seem like an effort anymore. You paint, you enjoy yourself, you make friends who like to paint too. Nothing to it.

Eden hangs out with friends who like to dance Salsa. Tsoof spends most of his time with musicians. Noff likes girls with a strong character who like to be active. Each one of them gravitated naturally towards friends and activities that most support who they are and what they enjoy. This way, when they are with their friends, they are in flow. It is effortless and fun.

I know this is rather technical, so maybe go over it again and talk with your partner about it. The challenge is making it work for your particular child, but the rewards are so great, it is well worth your time.

As a bonus for you, consider that goal setting can become an activity that connects you to your children. You learn to know them in a deep way. You win their trust through some of the most challenging times of their life. You celebrate their joys and help them overcome difficulties. And you develop a common language.

Please come back and share your story of goal setting for happiness.

Happy parenting,
Gal

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I have 3 kids of my own and they are everything a parent can dream of. They are "the full package". One of my friends told me that if she did not know them, she would think I was making them up. Almost every person who meets my kids asks us, "How did you do it?" Modestly, we say we were lucky, and we were. I am convinced that some things were just lucky, but no one wants to know about your luck, because luck is not something you can bring into your life. So these people say, "Come on, Ronit, tell us how you did it".

I think I am using this parenting blog to say how I did it. As of today, there are 911 posts (is this a sign?) explaining how 3 kids in big differences in age, each born in a different place in the world, who each went through many changes in their life, can all be their parents' bliss.

Today, I want to share with you a very easy trick to raise such kids. I call it "the mirror trick".

Eden came home one day and told us about some research she was studying in her psychology degree that tried to predict people's success based on how many books they have had at home during their childhood. This made me wonder about what possessions our family has had during the life of the kids. This was not an easy task, because we lived in different places around the world, some apartments, some houses, some rented, some owned, some buildings, some complexes, some small and some big. Over the 23 years of having kids, we have lived in over 16 homes.

I did this research, I found out that apart from having Gal, Eden and me there, we also had mirrors in all them. Big, huge mirrors.

How has having mirrors contributed to our kids being so great? Let me explain.

Mirrors are a fascinating thing for babies. I still remember the first times my kids saw themselves or them and me reflected in the mirror. It was fascinating. At first, they tried to find what was behind it. Then, they tried to touch the reflection and feel it. At one stage, they learned it was them and they loved looking at themselves.

In one of the early childhood centers where I worked as the academic director, I had a huge mirror installed in the babies' room. The littlies looked at themselves crying. Try it, when your 1-year-old cries, put them in front of the mirror and watch how their face changes as soon as they see themselves.

When my kids were toddlers, I used to play with whipped cream and shaving cream on the mirror. I had learned this during my work with autistic children and my kids loved every second of it.

When Tsoof was just 2 years old, we lived in a building and had a huge 2x4 meter mirror in the living room. The kids used to spend hours in front of it dancing, singing, acting and exercising. Whenever they had friends over, they all went to look in the mirror and make faces in front of it.

When Noff was a baby, she used to watch herself crying in the mirror and make faces. She used to stand there hours and examine her faces. She was very amused by this and she still does it at the age of 10.

Kids who live with huge mirrors at home are used to seeing themselves. They do not need others to tell them how they look, because they already know very well. Instead of forming an identity based on what others tell them, they form their own identity based on what they see in their own reflection.

Kids who grow up with a huge mirror to look at themselves before they leave home can be confident they look good just before they go out. They are not worried about the way they look, because they know exactly how they look whenever they want to.

Kids who grow up with a huge mirror and see their body over and over again, learn to love their body. They are not so worried about how their body looks in other people's eyes, because they have seen millions of self-images reflected at them and they can use those to make up their own mind about their body.

If you have ever seen a video of yourself, you know that it is a strange feeling, because you are not used to seeing yourself from that position (or hearing yourself, but that is another matter). It does not look like your reflection in the mirror. This is why many people are very self-conscious when they present in front of others. Kids who grow up in front of a large mirror get so used to this image of themselves that they are not very self-conscious about it. Children who grow up with huge mirrors and see their full figure themselves often are more confident presenting in front of others. They do not panic during "show and tell", they are not scared to read their book reports or do anything that requires them to stand and talk in front of an audience, because they use the mirror at home to practice.

Advantages of mirrors

Mirrors are very good surfaces for painting and drawing with whiteboard markers or lipstick and are easy to clean. This allows young kids to have fun on the "walls" without Mom or Dad freaking out.

Mirrors make the room look spacious, which helps everyone feel that they have more space.

Mirrors can be used as (sliding) doors, which can be good use of space that would otherwise be used for nothing.

Mirrors can be decorative features.

Mirrors can reflect a lot of light. If you have a mirror opposite a window, you can double the light that comes in through the window. You can also use them to direct light to places that would otherwise be dark. It even multiplies electric lights.

My kids gained a huge advantage from the fact that we always had a huge mirror at home. In some houses, we had even more than one.

19 years ago, when we started our world travels, I gave my mirrors to my sisters. One of these mirrors is still in use today. When my sister's first son was born 3 years ago, he spent hours looking at himself in that big mirror. When I visit him and when I talk to him on Skype, I find a very confident little boy who speaks well beyond his age and does many things 2 years "ahead of schedule". It is probably because my sister is an amazing mother who talks to him all the time, explains things to him with patience and respect, teaches him, exposes him and stimulates him continually.

And I am convinced it is also because of the big mirror.

Try it. What have you got to lose?

Happy parenting,
Ronit

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Every test in our life makes us bitter or better.
Every problem comes to make us or break us.
The choice is ours whether we become victim or victor
- Alexander Alvarez

Happiness is no doubt an art. If we think of all the happiness artists we know who are able to be happy, they all have something in common. They have some drive that others, who are depressed, do not have.

Our body is a sophisticated machine of chemicals that are working together in a very brilliant way. Even if some parts of the machine are not functioning well, the body can fix itself by sending help. The molecules and the cells function with a drive to go somewhere, to do something. If the parts of the machine stop moving for some reasons, we get sick and eventually die.

Emotionally, people are much the same - they are born with a drive that goes through inhibition. If you do not use some of your emotional functions, you lose them.

Think of babies, fascinated by life. Everything is new to them and they are in the best mindset they will ever be - they are born explorers. What we see on the outside as checking the world around them translates in their brain to many connections and the biggest physical growth of their life. They do it without understanding, without skills and without money - exploring happiness.

Babies find things that make them happy and do them over and over again. They can watch the same movie many times and laugh again and again when Mom makes the same silly sounds.

I remember when Tsoof was a baby and experienced water slides, he would slide with a horrified look on his face, yet when he reached our outstretched hands at the bottom of the water slide, he would say, even before regaining his breath, "Again".

Kids are very driven to find happiness and use it as an internal compass that directs them forward. Adults, on the other hand, after not using this compass for a while, stop believing it exists.

Life coach as a tour guide

When I ask my clients, "What do you want?" they are often a little shocked, because they do not know what they want. They have a clear understanding of where they are not going, but as their "tour guide", I cannot use this to help them design their exploration journey. If they want me to help them get to their destination, I must know where that is. If you want to find happiness, look for it and decide where your happiness resides.

When no port in mind, no wind is favorable
- Seneca

One of the challenges people have in their search is believing that happiness resides in one place, where everyone can find refuge and peace, success and joy, friends and love. Another challenge is believing that you need to deserve getting there.

Babies, on the other hand, do not search for such a place and believe they deserve every second of their joy. Happiness is a birthright. Being alive means you deserve it. There is nothing you need to do, say or have to be happy. You only need to BE happy.

We live this life as explorers moving forward towards this place when we can live in peace with the world around us. While a tour guide takes people on expeditions of new places and sights, a life coach takes the client on an exploration journey of their own mind. When people reach their destination, they are fascinated to find that they are able, successful, friendly, kind, smart, funny and happy and that "the happy place" had been there all that time, in their mind and within reach.

When Tsoof stood on the top of the water slide, doing something he was afraid to do, he was exploring how far he could go with his fears. He had a natural drive that 2-year-olds have to do the things you fear, because you know that at the end of the ride, you will discover how brave you are.

There was a chance he would get to the bottom of the slide, hit the water with his face, be unable to breathe and discover that it was not fun at all, but at least he tried.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer
- George Smith Patton

Another challenge for happiness explorers is the belief that obstacles are signs they are not on "the right path" that leads to happiness. They think life needs to be easy and without any challenges. In those situations, they avoid obstacles, challenges and problems and aim for a life in which everything is perfect, they are not worried, they succeed at everything, they love everyone and everyone loves them.

This makes them miss opportunities to explore their challenges and learn something about themselves. I always say that the main emotional function of a school is to give students the opportunity to explore the "I can" function of their brain. Discovering you can, you are strong, you are kind, you are capable, you are friendly and you are kind is way more important than what you learn in grammar or math lessons and these discoveries will bring you to your happiness faster.

This week, I had an amazing session with one of my clients. He is 40 years old and has sad, painful and dysfunctional relationships with everyone in his life - family, parents, wife, children, bosses, work colleagues and even neighbors. After lots of "I have no idea where I want to go" and "I have a vivid understanding of where I started and where I don't want to go", he learned about taking the journey inside and going down the water slide with a scary look on his face and excitement in his heart.

I told him that as a happiness explorer, you must

1. Know where you are going
2. Feel that you deserve happiness
3. Have the courage to do the things you are afraid of, because they are the best signs of growth

After six months of coaching, he said, "The first time I tried to face my fear, I was in panic. I wanted to run away. The second time, I was still scared, but it did not feel like I would faint, and now, I feel I can control that feeling and shift the intensity of the feeling at will".

If you are a happiness explorer, work on these key factors in order to get going and reach your happy destination.

1. Make a list of 100 things that make you happy to help you discover what you think your destination is
2. Make a list of 100 things that make you worthy. You deserve happiness. Everyone does
3. Make a huge list of your fears and conquer them one at a time. The easiest way to find your fears is to list all the things that are hard for you. If they are a bit hard, then you have a bit of fear. Get them out of your way. If they are extremely hard, you have an extreme fear. You can handle them gradually:
   • Stand next to the water slide for a while and watch others enjoying it. Try to learn from them strategies for sliding and watch their faces as they reach the bottom
   • Find someone or something to catch you and pick you up - a parent, a sibling, a life vest or goggles
   • Stand at the bottom of the ladder and gather enough courage just to climb
   • Climb up and watch others sliding
   • Sit down, close your eyes, take a deep breath, let go and allow life to take you on an amazing journey

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear
- Ambrose Redmoon

So free yourself and look at life as an opportunity to explore your skills, abilities, talents and gifts, which you can take with you on your life expedition to find happiness.

Happy exploring,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Emotional Summer
• From the Life Coaching Deck (5): Making Money Addiction
• Make a List: My Fears

Couples that are still together do not have fewer difficulties. They sort them out before they get out of control.

In my relationship coaching program, I hear many couples use statements that make fun of commitment, mock stability and relationships and encourage giving up the marriage as an easy, accepted and preferable thing. They have read them on the Internet, seen them in "funny" PowerPoint presentations or watched them in video clips.

One of my clients is going through a divorce over something that could be easily fixed if both partners could sit together and talk. They had an argument over money. She wanted 150K, he wanted to give her 90K and to sort this out, they have had to hire lawyers, go to court and pay the 60K the argued over in fees. So forget about it, because divorce is never easy!

If you check the beliefs of divorcées about marriage, you will find that they always have the wrong ones - those witty, mocking, sarcastic beliefs.

My suggestion is to make sure you swap them with good beliefs. To help you do it, I have gathered the best marriage quotes I could find. I hope you will find some you like and can adopt, and I hope you can make good use of them.

What I've Learned

I've learned that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.

I've learned that there are people who love you dearly,
but just don't know how to show it.

I've learned that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, it doesn't mean they don't love you all they can.

I've learned that we don't have to change friends
if we understand that friends change.

I've learned that two people can look at the exact same thing
and see something totally different.

I've learned that just because two people argue,
it doesn't mean they don't love each other.
And just because they don't argue,
it doesn't mean they do.

- Omer Washington

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years
- Simone Signoret

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person
- Mignon McLaughlin

A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers
- Ruth Bell Graham

Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry
- Tom Mullen

Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.
- Pat Conroy

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time
- Thomas Edison

Marriage, ultimately, is the practice of becoming passionate friends
- Harville Hendrix

To get divorced because love has died, is like selling your car because it's run out of gas
- Diane Sollee

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation
- Oscar Wilde

As for his secret to staying married, my wife tells me that if I ever
decide to leave, she is coming with me
- Jon Bon Jovi

They say it takes a village to raise a child. That may be the case, but the truth is that it takes a lot of solid, stable marriages to create a village
- Diane Sollee

I am convinced that if we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the family, it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.
- Stephen Covey

Divorce is like an amputation. Sometimes it's necessary but it should be avoided if at all possible because it brings about a permanent disability
- Bill Doherty

Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside
- Frank Pittman

It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better
- Goethe

I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person, but I do know that many people have a lot of wrong ideas about marriage and what it takes to make that marriage happy and successful. I'll be the first to admit that it's possible that you did marry the wrong person. However, if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. On the other hand, if you marry the right person, and treat that person wrong, you certainly will have ended up marrying the wrong person. I also know that it is far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you
- Zig Ziglar

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave
- George Eliot

The goal is to have a conversation in a way so that you can have another conversation tomorrow
- Unknown

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up
- Joseph Barth

Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved
- Peter Ustinov

For wherever you go, I will go,
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge,
Your people will be my people,
And, your God, my God
- Ruth 1:16

Love doesn't commit suicide. We have to kill it. Though, it's true that it often simply dies of our neglect
- Diane Sollee

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you
- Winnie the Pooh

The success of marriage comes not in finding the "right" person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they married
- John Fischer

Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly
understood that they are on the same side
- Zig Ziglar

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each
other but in looking outward together in the same direction
- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

A good marriage is a contest of generosity
- Diane Sawyer

Let there be spaces in your togetherness
- Khalil Gibran

Be presidents of each other's fan clubs
- Tony Heath

In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, the grounds for marriage
- Robert Anderson

If you made a list of reasons why any couple got married, and
another list of the reasons for their divorce, you'd have a lot of overlap
- Mignon McLaughlin

Choose your love, then love your choice
- Unknown

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through
every circumstance
- I Corinthians 13:7

When marrying, ask yourself this question:
Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with
this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Marriage, families, all relationships are more a process of learning
the dance rather than finding the right dancer
- Paul Pearsall

There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a
door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side
of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps
- Ronald Reagan

Marriage is our society's most pro-child institution. If you want kids to do well, then you want marriage to do well
- David Blankenhorn

The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're still alive
- Olando Battista

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother
- Theodore Hesburgh

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage
- Lao Tzu

Unfortunately, there are too many sarcastic quotes out there that plant the seed of giving up. I hope the ones I included here will change this for you. Pick the ones you like and post them where you can read them every day. If you read them over and over again, they will eventually become part of your happy marriage.

Love and friendship,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Easy Divorce
• Crazy, Stupid, Love
• How to be Faithful

I have clients who are perfectionists and they know they are perfectionists. They have been to some form of counseling or have seen psychologists and they claim that things have become worse since they discovered their perfectionism. The label "Perfectionist" has allowed them to justify their behavior and that has increased the friction in their relationships even more.

Most of them came for life coaching when they reached rock bottom in their relationship due to their high demands when their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, friends, work colleagues or even boss said, "Get lost!" and kicked them out of the relationship or left them.

In the previous post on perfectionism, I wrote about ways to assess whether you or your children are perfectionists. In this chapter, I will give you some tips to help perfectionists. If you want to use them to help a child, remember that your goal is to plant those thoughts into your child's mind or create circumstances that will help them overcome the fear that is associated with things not happening exactly the way they want them to.

1. When they finish a puzzle, a block tower, a Lego building or anything that can be reassembled, make fun of wrecking it. It helps kids learn that Mom and Dad are not mad at them for it.
2. Allow your kids to make a mess. You can have a place for mess - a sandpit outside, a table for finger painting. Let your kids play with their food. do you know how much fun it is to eat Jelly with your fingers? If you are worried, have a plastic sheet underneath the mess. Remember, everything can be wiped or washed in the dishwasher or washing machine, so is not worth fussing about it. If you cannot handle the mess, let someone else do it at first, and get involved gradually.
3. When you need to be on time at school, a meeting or an appointment, be prepared and plan your time well. Do not talk about being late as the end of the world. If you are in panic mode when you are late, that gives your kids the message they must not be late and makes them fussy about being late and demanding towards others who are late. If you are going to be late, take a deep breath, let the other party know and just be there as quickly as you can.
4. Encourage kids to be involved in activities that are not competitive and are not graded or judged. Choose activities in which they are measured on progress relative to themselves or by working in a team and achieving something together. Better yet, choose activities that are all about fun, like going to the pool, exploring nature or playing at the playground.
5. Give kids challenges without comparing them to others. If you are travelling to France and you give your child the task of finding 10 things you can do in Paris, it is a challenge, but the child cannot fail and there is nobody to compare with.
6. Avoid using the word "should" like the plague. This gives a message that there is a right and a wrong way to say, do and be, and perfectionist children (and adults) add it to their vocabulary and fear every time they say, do, think or believe in something they "shouldn't". The word "should" implies there are some external, absolute standards they must obey, when the world is really about personal preferences.
7. For the same reason, avoid using the words "have to", "need to", "ought to" and "must". Instead, use "maybe you can", "how about", "can I suggest" or "it might be better to".
8. Teach your kids to start conversations with others. Go over "conversation starters" with them. A good way to start a conversation is by asking questions like "How was your holiday?", "What did you do on the weekend?", "I watched Harry Potter 7 on the weekend. Have you seen it?", "It's so hot today", "It's freezing cold today" and even "Would you like to play?"
   The main idea is to find something you have in common with the person you start the conversation with and invite them into the conversation in a kind way. It is scary but possible.
   I gave a group of kids at a leadership camp the task to gather personal information about others in the group (that they had met for first time) or the leaders of the camp so they could use it to start conversations with them. It is amazing how quickly you can teach kids to work up the courage to do it. It was easier for me because they did it in a group, everyone knew everyone else was having the same challenge and everybody could say, "Ronit told us". It might take you longer than two days, but it is possible.
9. Change the order of the furniture in the house from time to time. Make it sound like you are exploring different ways of positioning things. Ask the perfectionist child for their opinion to make it easy to manage the change. Get them to help move things around themselves too.
10. Create monitored surprises. Perfectionists do not like surprises, so work with them on it. First, tell them you want to make them a surprise a week before the surprise day. When things work well, tell them 5 days before, and slowly reduce the time to telling them a day before and eventually, surprise them totally. Gradual adjustment is the key.
11. Play the game of "Three funny mistakes". At dinnertime, every member of the family tells the rest of the family, in turn (do not start with the perfectionist), about three mistakes they have made during the day as a funny story.
12. Share your weaknesses with your children so that they learn it is safe to have them. Most perfectionists have suffered from exposing their weaknesses and therefore choose to hide them. They need to believe this will never be used by others to humiliate them. Make sure no one in the family makes fun of them or bullies them for their weaknesses - it will only make them hide these more and prevents you from knowing there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
13. When in competition, talk to your children about the losing kid or the losing team to make them realize that the losers have feelings too. Help them see that in most competitions, there are many more losers than winners, which makes them part of the majority.
14. When your kids express expectations that are too high (of themselves or of others), help them realize that it is not realistic. Ask, "Do you know someone who gets perfect scores on all of their exams?", "Do you think it's possible to always, always, always be on time?" Emphasize the words "perfect", "all" and "always" to help them recognize they expect the impossible.
15. Put their accomplishments on display. Make a diary of accomplishments for them to use if they have doubts about their successes. Teach them to measure small achievements like making dinner, helping their siblings or meeting a challenge, successes that are self-rated or that requires kindness and not being perfect (we call them "emotional stretches").
16. Help them express their feelings or attach a feeling to their successes and challenges. Teach them to rate their emotions. When they say, "I feel like a failure", ask, "On a scale of 1-10, how much?" At first, they will say 10, but after a while, they will understand they do not really feel the same and start noticing the difference in their feeling, which will help them recognize the fear that triggers their perfectionism.
17. Agree on a signal with your child that tells them they are being perfectionists and could relax their expectations a bit.
18. Celebrate with your children 90% or 80% scores on their exams, so they will not think that you expect them to score 100%.
19. When you use behavioral management, do not use 100% as a point when they get a reward. If they need to clean the room, it does not have to be spotless for the room to be considered clean.
20. Teach your kids to enjoy the process. If they are frustrated with achievements, help them realize they have achieved a lot on the way. 3 years ago, Tsoof participated in a competition that he had spent a lot of time practicing seriously for. He and his teachers were very frustrated he did not win anything in the competition, because all of them thought he played much better than those who won. In the week following the competition, we focused on how much better he was playing the marimba after two months of practice as the real achievement, which made it easier for him to move on.

Competitions, scores and awards are stepping-stones on the long and exciting journey of life

I hope these tips will help you help your perfectionist child and if you need the help yourself, translate them into adult vocabulary and your own circumstances and make perfectionism a period in your life, not a lifestyle.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: Is your kid a perfectionist?
• More Control – Less Power
• Living in a Dress Rehearsal

As a life coach promoting happiness, I find myself talking a lot about perfectionism as an obstacle on the way to a happy life. After researching the science of happiness and seeing thousands of clients, including many parents and children, I can tell you that happiness and perfectionism cannot live in the same body. They are like the good and the bad wolves living in your body and when you feed one, the other one starves.

The problem with perfectionism is not only that perfectionists are not happy but also that those who are close to them are not happy either because of it.

Many grownup perfectionists started out as perfectionist kids. In my kids' assessments, I can tell if a child has a tendency towards perfectionism from age 3. Most people believe this cannot be helped. Some kids are born perfectionists and that is that, but I think this attitude makes our life much harder, because repeating this mantra guarantees there is nothing we can do about it.

Much like any other "disease", perfectionism can be cured and the best time to do it is during early childhood, before the child develops strong behavior patterns that are hard to change.

I also believe that the best people to cure child perfectionism are parents, because their love for their child will help them overcome the resistance.

The origin of perfectionism is fear. Perfectionists have a strong need to control life around them for some reason. Anything they, or other people, do that threatens that stability or control increases the fear and therefore increases the perfectionism.

Many parents react badly to a child who shows rigid thinking and reacts badly to changes. Unfortunately, that increases the fear and does not give a child the stability he or she is aching for. It is a cycle of bad reactions that helps nobody.

For parents to help, they need to be convinced that this behavior is going to be a huge obstacle to their child's good health and wellbeing, their relationships and their success in life.

If the parents are perfectionists themselves, they tend not to see the problem at all. Unfortunately, if this is the case, there is no cure. Perfectionist parents must first heal themselves before helping a child overcome perfectionism. After all, to cure perfectionism, there must be a desire to change.

Parents need to find if the child's behavior is a form of perfectionism, so I have compiled this list to help with that. If you want to assess yourself first, this will be very helpful for you too. To assess yourself, though, you need courage and honesty.

Please remember that for a person to be considered a perfectionist, he or she does not need to exhibit all of the behaviors on the list and does not have to exhibit them all the time, only most of them and more than once or twice.

Here is a list of perfectionist behaviors:

1. Perfectionists have high standards for themselves and others. They have high expectations, which are often unreasonable or impossible to achieve.
2. Perfectionists pay attention to details. This can be a good thing, but sometimes, after all the important things are covered, they keep focusing on little things.
3. Perfectionists have an "all or nothing" mentality. If they cannot do things perfectly, they do not see any point in doing them at all. Many times, people say they have lots of potential, which is true, but if they think they might not be able to achieve their high standard, they do not try.
4. Perfectionists procrastinate a lot, which goes together with their high expectations. If they think they will not be able to achieve something, they postpone doing it.
5. Perfectionists experience lots of anxiety. Their desire for things to follow their expectations is so high that anything that does not follow it creates anxiety.
6. Perfectionists are afraid to make mistakes, which contributes very much to their anxiety and avoidance.
7. Perfectionists have challenges with their relationships. They are very demanding, their behavior makes people avoid their company and in most of their relationships, the blame others and complain.
8. Perfectionists are highly competitive and constantly compare themselves to others. They define themselves in comparison to others. Not every competitive person is a perfectionist, so match this with other items on the list.
9. Perfectionists seem very unhappy and dissatisfied when good results, good scores and even very good achievements are not good enough. Since they are not perfect, they are no good.
10. Perfectionists are very critical.
11. Perfectionists show some compulsive behaviors, as they prefer things to be organized, predictable and stable. They need life around them to be consistent and adopt a lifestyle that consists of many routines.
12. Perfectionists do not take risks. Risks cannot be predicted by definition and they avoid doing things they cannot predict.
13. Perfectionists mainly focus on problems, difficulties and mistakes of themselves and others.
14. Perfectionists do a lot to hide their weakness. If someone knows something about a weakness they have, it is a sign for them they are not perfect, which they find hard to accept. They will hide it by having many justifications for their behavior and attitude.
15. Although perfectionists may tell others about their mistakes, they do not like it when others tell them about their mistakes and are very sensitive to criticism.
16. Perfectionists find it hard to be in the moment. Their mind is so future-oriented they find it hard to stop and enjoy the present.
17. Perfectionists are prone to depression.
18. Perfectionists consider love as conditional, so they find it hard to feel loved and often find it hard to express love.
19. Perfectionists consider their self-worth a result of their achievements. If the achievement is good, it is not enough. For them to be worthy, they need to be extremely high achievers.
20. Perfectionists consider things to be "right" or "wrong". They expect others to think the same and if they do not, they will invest a lot of energy to convince the others their way is the right way.
21. Because they have the "my way or the highway" mindset, they can often be seen as self-centered as they expect and demand those around them to fit in with their way of thinking.

Use this list as an assessment tool and measure the intensity of each behavior. Remember that the sooner you discover something, the sooner you can heal it.

Join me next time for how to help perfectionist kids.

Calm and happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: How to help perfectionist kids
• More Control – Less Power
• Living in a Dress Rehearsal

Well, the truth is that I do not see any contradiction at all between having plastic surgery and being happy. But I have to say I did not always think like that.

When I was 16, my best friend wanted to have plastic surgery. When I heard that, I used the same old techniques (those my parents always used) to tell her that "people who are happy with themselves just accept themselves the way they are" and this is when I had a great opportunity to be challenged.

Rene and I became friends about a year after her dad died. She was the youngest in her family and did not cope very well with his death. She asked to go to a boarding school, but that did not work, so she came back to our school in 10^th Grade. Rene had the most beautiful skin and lips, but her nose was huge. When I say "huge", I mean it was so wide, big and lumpy, you could think she had a tumor in it and she hated it.

At one stage, she asked her family to take her to see a plastic surgeon. He told her she was too young to have plastic surgery, so she had to wait, but the more she waited, the worse she felt. Do not get me wrong, she was smart, a good student and had good friends. She just hated her nose.

We talked about it for months and Rene helped me realize I was pumped with thoughts and ideas without really questioning them. We talked about happiness and wanting to change things in your life and in your body. She helped me realize that our life is dedicated to searching for things that will make us happy, yet some things are considered good and others are not, although they serve the same purpose.

I said to her, "Come on, Rene, you need to love yourself as you are".

"Why?" she asked me.

I did not know how to answer that.

"Do you love everything in your body?" she asked again.

"No, but I wouldn't go and change it?"

"What about your glasses. Do you accept yourself the way you are?"

"No, but I use them for a medical reason. It's dangerous to drive without glasses. I can't see! It's not the same".

"Do you change your glasses every year for medical reasons?" she asked.

"Well, no. Glasses are like your face. It's kind of boring to wear the same glasses for a long time", I told her and immediately realized what I had said. Rene looked in the mirror every day and she was more than bored to see her nose every time - she hated it. If I had to wear glasses I hated, I would probably hate looking at myself in the mirror.

"What about someone who does liposuction and gets rid of 10kg of fat? Isn't this medical?" she asked.

"No, that's cosmetic".

"Carrying 10 extra kilos on your body is like being pregnant all your life. That's a burden on your skeleton. It causes so many back problems, I think it's very medical", she said.

I stopped arguing. She had a point. People who carry on them so much weight could benefit a lot from plastic surgery that would get this load off their back and feet. I had heard my sister talking about the back pain caused by having very large breasts, so I knew she had a very valid point.

"OK, so liposuction is not only cosmetic, but you don't have any medical problem caused by your nose. You just want to look better", I said.

"What's wrong with wanting to look better? Do you know how much money is spent every week, every month, every year by people buying creams, make up, hair dyes and equipment to look better? They do it all their life, so why is that OK, even though it costs a fortune?"

I did not have an answer for it. She was right. Even I, at the age of 16, without creams and special hair products or make up (I did not have make up back then), used to spend hours fixing my hair. I had 50 bottles of nail polish that I absolutely loved and no one understood why I spent the little money I had on buying that many. She had a point!

"Well, makeup and nails aren't permanent. You can take them off or stop using them, and you don't have to cut anything in your body", I said.

"What about piercing or getting a tattoo, then? Aren't they permanent things people do in an attempt to look pretty?"

They were. I had my ears pierced when I was 10. It was painful and I suffered for a whole month, but I had never thought about it like that. Because everyone did it, I thought it was a legitimate way to want to look pretty.

"Isn't it expensive?" I asked.

"It's expensive, but feeling good is priceless", she said and I knew she was right. After her dad died, Rene and I talked a lot about living life to the fullest, because you never know when the end will come. Feeling good is priceless.

"What if you don't like the results?" I asked.

"Well, then I will have to live with it just like you live with what you have, or I will go through another surgery", she said.

"You just brought up all these things to support your desire to have plastic surgery", I said to her.

"You're right. I did it to support my desire and you brought up all your ideas to support your fear. We all do that!" she said.

That hit me really hard. We were best friends and very honest with each other. I thought about what she said. "We all do that!" I realized we hang on to our thoughts to justify our desires and fears.

"What's the worst that can happen?" she asked and answered, "I won't like it. But it will be better than it is now, so no matter how bad it is, it will be better. At least I will have done what I thought would make me happy".

Rene went through plastic surgery on her nose that year. I was with her when she came out of the hospital. Her face looked swollen and scary. Her doctor said it would take 6 months for the swelling to disappear completely. But 3 weeks later, still swollen, it looked beautiful. After that, Rene was never the center of the attention at school, but her confidence changed dramatically.

It was a great lesson for me about self-acceptance and happiness. We are all born to parents we did not choose. Our looks, our talents and our character traits are transferred from our parents or become part of us through our upbringing. Accepting ourselves does not mean that we like everything or that we are happy with everything.

I teach my clients that they have the power to change things in their life. I tell them not to compromise. If your parents divorced and that created heartache and pain, it was not your choice, but you have the power to change your feeling. If you are born with a huge nose and it creates heartache and pain, it was not your choice, but you have the power to change your feeling.

We were sitting for dinner with the other ladies. The discussion about plastic surgery was very heated. I used all of Rene's justifications, as I myself never did plastic surgery (although when I was 18, I had elective surgery to remove a polyp from my vocal cords, which is why I have the voice and the confidence to be a public speaker today). I told them about Rene and how changing her nose had made a huge change in her teen life and her attitude.

Suddenly, each of the ladies started giving examples of people they knew who had gone through plastic surgery, which had been extremely successful and had made them very happy.

Happiness is a choice without conditions, and if someone chooses to go through plastic surgery to make themselves happy, they will be happier because they have chosen to be happy! In my view, it is better than compromising and hating every time you look in the mirror.

How do you feel about this? Take part in the poll below and post your response and/or experience in a comment.

Be happy in life,
Ronit

P.S. Today, the Australian government released Bullying. No Way! The site offers information on bullying for parents, students and teachers. My friend Maria Delaney is one of the expert contributors to the site.

You may want to read

• Emotional Summer
• A Little Bit Unhappy
• Winners vs. Whiners

When Gal and I lived in Thailand and the humidity was extremely high, I never complained. I take a shower with such hot water that it is too hot for Gal. I have lived in Texas and loved it. I have lived in California (that was OK), Thailand and Singapore (loved it), and now I live in Brisbane, Australia, doing my best to forget the 3 miserable years in Melbourne, Australia, because I was so cold there.

There is a joke that says Melbourne has 4 seasons in one day, because the temperature changes dramatically every couple of hours. I found that to be true, but the only 4 temperatures I recognized were "cold", "very cold", "extremely cold" and "freezing cold". Maybe I have different temperature receptors. I just love the warmth and the heat, and it boosts my health and wellbeing.

Our emotional state is very much like the weather. Everyone has different receptors and a different optimal temperature. It is important to understand that we have different ways of reaching our optimal temperature.

In the same way we adjust our water temperature and volume in the shower, Gal and I use different ways of coping with situations in our lives. Gal prefers to talk about the situation and analyzing reasons and options, while I prefer doing things that will make me happy and distract me, at least for a while, until I calm down and consider the situation from a distance and come up with solutions. It is very important to note that both of us, although we use different methods, are trying to reach happiness within.

One-weather people

Happiness is a vague concept for many people. It strikes me as a problematic idea when people ask me if we, at Be Happy in LIFE, are always happy.

Unfortunately, some people think that constant happiness exists. I call them the "one-weather people". They are doomed to feel frustrated all their life, because having 100% of days with optimal temperatures is an unrealistic goal, like searching for a place that does not exist. Even our very sophisticated body does not have the same temperature constantly and needs mechanisms to monitor and bring the body back to the optimal temperature whenever we are sick, when it is hot or cold outside, when we are physically active, when we stand next to an oven, and the list goes on. Our body uses many functions to bring us to our optimal temperature.

We need to do the same emotionally.

Life is full of different kinds of "weather". The things that happen to us in life throw us off our optimal emotional "temperature" and we need to find ways to bounce back to a clear, sunny, warm, happy state.

Emotional winters

We often describe successful people as having the sun shining on them, leading them forward with its light and warmth. When I talk to my clients about successful people, they are convinced that successful people never experience emotional winters. I tell them that successful people do not go through more emotional summers than winters, but they know how to reserve some sunshine to keep them warm when winter comes.

Here is a partial list of examples of situations, circumstances, feelings and thoughts that can bring emotional winter to your life.

1. Loss of a loved one
2. Loss of a job
3. Jealousy
4. Uncertainty
5. Feeling of failure
6. Conflict with partner
7. Worries
8. Loneliness
9. Financial instability
10. Conflict with family member
11. Lack of income for basic needs
12. Sadness
13. Feeling ignored and unappreciated
14. Physical pain
15. Sickness
16. Rejection
17. Regrets or shame
18. Fear
19. Being under threat (of losing your job, for example)
20. Being bullied
21. Having to justify or defend yourself
22. Being bored
23. Being so tired it is hard to think and stay calm
24. Anxiety
25. Being criticized a lot
26. Having a new baby
27. Being around people who drain you from energy
28. Thinking of yourself as inferior
29. Not having enough time
30. Change

Each of the items on the list above can bring winter to your life and, like any winter, it can be drizzles, light showers, storms with hale and even heavy snow and ice. For each of these, you will have to use different mechanisms to make sure you can stay warm. For some, using an umbrella is enough, and for others, you will need gloves, long woolen underwear and a beanie to cover your head and face.

Emotional winters cannot be totally prevented, as they are mostly caused by circumstances beyond our control. Once they appear, every person needs enough skills to make sure their winter does not last too long.

Life is not about what happens to us but what we do about it
- Ronit Baras

Depression is Everlasting Winter

Everyone experiences winters. This is why in the medical world, the diagnosis of depression has a clear distinction between temporary and chronic depression. A depressed person is a person who has had too many winters over a certain period.

You are probably asking yourself, "How long is too long?" Well, a person is depressed when the sum of all their emotional summers is lower than that of all their winters.

Although the aim to have summer 365 days a year is not realistic, we can consider ourselves happy if we have managed to scare the rain and storms and to give more time and space to sunshine and heat - when we do not have to dress up with extra layers to protect ourselves and add more layers every year.

How to have an emotional summer

1. Go through self-assessment. Every day before going to bed, analyze your day and label it as a "summer day" or a "winter day". This is highly important to do with children to help them interpret their emotional state, pay attention to winters and make sure they are kept short. Once you have rated a month, aim to have one more summer day the following month.
2. Store rays of sunshine in the form of a success journal, talking about your successes, achievements, acts of kindness and everything good that has happened to you during the day. It is strange, but we tend to forget the good things. Whenever you see that winter is approaching, you can always look at your journal and scare it with some of the stored sunlight.
3. Make an effort to surround yourself with sunny people. Some people carry winter on their shoulders. As soon as they appear, it starts raining. Find the winter people - negative, complainers, victims, critics, gossips, superiors or inferiors. Find them and limit the time you spend with them.
4. Have a hobby. Hobbies bring lots of warmth into your life and every winter can be chased away by dedicating more time to your hobbies.
5. Set powerful, realistic goals and work towards achieving them. Success in achieving goals brings lots of satisfaction and a strong belief in your abilities. Every goal achieved is an amazing summer day and the memories and conviction in you ability can be stored for a rainy day. Like the story of the ant and he cricket, we need to collect grains of food on summer days to have enough during the winter. Each grain you collect helps.
6. Make sure you are in a physical contact with someone every day. Research on physical touch found out that people feel better when they have lots of physical touch, especially from those they love. Remember the rule: 12 hugs a day keeps the winter away".
7. At dinnertime, when you share your day with your family, count your blessings. Tell everyone how many good things happened to you today and what you appreciate in yourself and in others. Going to bed 3-4 hours later, you are more likely to mark the day as a "summer day".
8. Practice pride therapy. Remember, being proud is not boasting. You do not have to make anyone feel bad when you are proud of your achievements. If you have kids, that is easy - you can always tell them how much you are proud of them. Every pride has some self-pride in it, which adds to your feeling of summer.
9. Be kind to others. This is a great way to bring the sun. Research on kindness and volunteering discovered that giving is a wonderful way to receive and that people who help others are happier and more content than those who do not. Aim to be kind to someone once a day. Do not mix what you have to do with what you can choose to do from the kindness of your heart. Making dinner for your children or your partner is not a form of kindness, but making a special dinner with their favorite food is, especially when they really need it.
10. Make a list of 100 things that make you happy and use your list every day. Share your list with loved ones and they will help you. I call this list a bucket of sunshine. If you work this list every day, you can scare away even long, hard winters. No two lists ever look the same. Your list is a way for you to get to your optimal temperature your way.

Everyone has emotional winters. We differ by the methods we use to overcome them with the sunshine of our summers.

Life coaches are traders in sunshine. If you need help in bringing summer to your life, you can contact us at Be Happy in LIFE.

Until next time, I wish you many summers!
Ronit

You may want to read

• From the Life Coaching Deck (5): Making Money Addiction
• Exploring Happiness
• A Little Bit Unhappy