How to Bloom This Spring

At long last, the third and final installment of a blog series on happiness from Andy Cope, happiness expert and co-author of The Little Book of Emotional Intelligence: How to Flourish in a Crazy World. (Check out the first part of our series here and the second part of our series here.) When this series started it was the dead of Winter. Now Spring is budding. Don’t rely on the good weather to do all your heavy emotional lifting. Take charge and put these tips into practice!

15 | Most people have an internal voice that is very critical. Challenge it. When your inner voice is telling you you’re an idiot, firmly disagree. Find a positive inner voice.
16 | Spend less time on electronic friends and more time with real flesh and blood ones.
17 | Practice the 4-minute rule; that is, be your best self for the first 4 minutes of arriving at work, being in a meeting, getting home, etc. Your brilliance is infectious.
18 | Lose the word “try”. Instead of setting a resolution of “I’m going to try and lose some weight” or “I’m going to try and get a bit fitter”, go with “I’m going to lose some weight” or “I’m going to get fitter”. Yoda was spot on when he said, “Do or do not, there is no ‘try’.”
19 | Appreciate that your happiness is bigger than you. It has a ripple effect and infects people 3 degrees removed from you.
20 | Read a bedtime story to your kids like it was the most exciting book in the world.
21 | Reframe situations. For example, a leaking gutter means you have a house; paying tax means you have some income; your teenage son spending hours on his X-Box means he’s not wandering the streets, etc.
22 | Be genuinely interested in other people. Ask loads of questions about them. In a bizarre twist of quantum psychology, people will find you insanely interesting.
23 | Make sure that you use more positive than negative language. The ratio needs to be about 5 positives for every negative, so catch people doing things well and tell them.

Check out artofbrilliance.co.uk for more information on Andy’s work!