Whilst I feel that the government’s attempts to measure happiness and wellbeing in the UK population is well-intentioned, I’m not really sure whether something as subjective as this can be measured.

I have been thinking a lot lately on what happiness really means and I have made my own list of a few things that make me happy:

watching the coronation street omnibus

having the house to myself for a whole day

coming back from a long walk on a cold, crisp day and sitting by the wood-burner with a cup of tea

getting dressed up to go out to a really posh ‘do’

going to the seaside

making a cake

planning our next holiday

These are mine – no doubt your’s will be completely different.  The point is being aware of that feeling of warmth and joy when you experience certain things helps you to focus even more on those things.   Very often we tend to spend our lives ‘sleep-walking’, just getting through each day, and not taking notice of things that make us happy.  What I like to do is to really notice all the things in my life that give me joy (even the little things – these can be the most special) and take a little snapshot of them in my head, I can then make this image really clear and bright and it stays there to remind me of what I need to do to make myself feel good.

In NLP-speak, this is a type of ‘anchoring’, whereby good feelings are anchored in – this can be done by pressing the thumb and forefinger together at the very height of the good feeling.   To get those good feelings flooding back (in times of stress for example) you simply have to press thumb and forefinger together again.

By just spending a little time each day really noticing what makes you happy, you can have a really powerful resource at hand for the more difficult times.

For more information on NLP and hypnotherapy, contact me on 01449 780352 or 0781 7158429.