14

Session 14

How to Develop a Successful Mindset

·         First of all, you need to define successful

·         The approach I take here is expressed by the idea that:

·         Happiness= Ultimate Success

·         As expressed about 2,400 years ago by Aristotle

·         A more recent definition, formula is PERMA

·         Once you achieve Happiness you will have a

·         Successful Mindset, starting with Positive Emotions

·         Going through the next steps to arrive at Achievement

·         There are some Mantras, some Magical Recipes that we use

·         Magnificent and Otherworldly, magical because they work

·         You find your Calling, which offers the prerequisite for Optimal Experience

·         Observe the conditions for Flow and apply them at Work and Home

·         This will improve connections with family and friends and they are

·         Your Social Support, which is the Nec Plus Ultra of Happiness aka

·         Successful Mindset

·         It is not complicated

·         This is why some of the mantras, leitmotifs return in these lessons

·         Happy, positive people are more successful

·         No pain, More gain

·         Many worry that Success entails Pain and Suffering

·         No! you need to be in the Fourth, Happy quarter

·         The mentality in the education system and at home

·         Is most often wrong, implying that a

·         Successful mindset is one that presupposes

·         Delayed Gratification and Suffering

·         We embark on the Rat Race aka Hedonic Treadmill

·         At a very tender age

·         Get good grades because they will bring success at exams

·         A better school will get access at better university

·         Then a good job, with a fancy car, many material things…

·         Since we all experience Hedonic Adaptation

·         Insistence on materialism, consumerism is wrong

·         Bhutan has tested this at the scale of a whole country

·         In 1999 they introduce Television, the last country to do so

·         And the resulting increase in violence, craving for advertised goods

·         Translated into a drop in HDP, happiness levels

·         For a successful mind set we need to Enjoy both the climb

·         To the top and the arrival there

·         We need to have a balanced perspective on time

·         Without worrying about a future that may bring mostly positive events

·         Living in the present and applying the rule of Carpe Diem

·         With Eudaimonia aka Long Term Happiness in harmony with

·         Hedonia which refers to present or short term Wellbeing

·         identify and work with your  signature strengths

·         research has proved that we are better off this way

·         rather than trying permanently to rectify, correct less strong points

·         we must insist on our strengths

Pic of adversity, maybe the revolution

·         this is the page from Newsweek where I came in, during the Revolution

·         of 1989 that overthrew the dictator that had been ruling in my country

·         as a personal experience, I must say that life is not all Wine and Roses

·         To quote Horace, but it also means Facing Adversity and Trauma!!

·         Which is what people here and in other tyrannies have experienced!

·         By the way, J if there’s anything wrong, not worth a five stars rating here

·         It is not me…it was the system, the negativity…you see what I mean…

·         Having a Strategy to cope with trouble and hardship is important

·         Because I am a living proof and this whole enterprise that you can make it!

·         If people that have lived through hell can apply Happiness rules and share them

·         You can!

·         If you meet with affliction, misfortune, you could think of one way out

·         Which is forgive the one or the group responsible

·         I have read recently from a book by Tchich Nhat Hanh:

·         He gives the horrible example of an eleven year old raped by pirates

·         After that tragedy, she kills herself

·         But this Buddhist monk speaks about the way he tried to see things from the villain’s point of view:

·         An uneducated boy, living in a destitute family and neighborhood that has no idea about what he is doing…

·         Well, at least that was the process through which this figure of peace arrived at an acceptance…

·         Humor should be an important

·         And there will be a session or maybe a few- I am still working on the sequel of the existing lesson -on humor

·         The last example has both humor and an astonishingly important significance

·         The story of the Mexican Fisherman and what it teaches in terms of the

·         Ultimate currency, social support and Calling