Introduction… Get Organised… Choose to be Happy… Healthy Body… Mind Control… Money Matters… Route Planning… Half-way Assessment… Appreciate Yourself… Richer Relationships… Social Work… Drop the Blame… Write Away… Smell the Roses.

My Wonderful Life is our refreshing new brand of sensible, simple, scientifically supported self-help. We – Lucy McCarraher, expert in work-life balance and stress management, and social psychologist Annabel Shaw – have devised a light-touch but innovative programme to boost personal happiness and fulfillment. It combines our professional expertise and personal experience with cutting edge neuroscience, current research in Positive Psychology, and classic coaching methods.

Each of the twelve succinct sections focuses on enhancing or gaining control of a critical aspect of life; combined, they allow you to completely re-evaluate your values, attitudes, goals, finances, relationships, friendships and more. Each easy-to-read session opens with an encouraging introduction and concludes with several simple but effective exercises, all interspersed with a sprinkling of uplifting quotes, tips and reminders.

A word about habits before we begin. Habits can be incredibly difficult to change - we all know that. Research has also shown that it can take up to three weeks to establish a new habit, longer if the new habit is designed to replace an old bad habit. What happens during three weeks, or more, of repetition and focus on the new activity or thought process, is that you change it from being a “conscious” behaviour to embedding it as a “subconscious” or automatic one.

As you work your way through the various exercises of My Wonderful Life you will find us asking you to adopt new ways of thinking about things, and new ways of doing things in the different areas of your life. These are habits we want you to adopt so that they become second nature to you. All these habits have been chosen because of the importance they play in the new, Wonderful Life you are in the process of creating.

We have organised My Wonderful Life into twelve sections, but it may be useful to think of these as months, to correspond with the time we believe it will take you to establish the patterns of thought and behaviour that each part deals with. Of course you may already have some of these habits well established and will therefore take less time. Some habits may take longer to embed. The important point is to keep working at all the exercises until they have become so well established that you no longer have to think about them.

It takes time to change the habits of a lifetime – and motivation. If, when you’ve read the summary of the sections below, you decide you want to work through some or all of them, we wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up if you lapse, just keep trying. We’d like you to be strict with yourself, but also be forgiving. Wake up each morning and remind yourself of the exciting project you have embarked upon, a project which will bring you the Wonderful Life you want. Later you will feel very proud of what you have achieved.
 

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up
through the common.
This is to be my symphony.”
– William Henry Channing (1810-1884)
 

INTRODUCTION (free with all sections)

What My Wonderful Life can do for you, and how.

The brain is more complex, more powerful, and offering vastly greater potential than the biggest computer yet invented. Like the PC on your desk, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how it works as long as you know how to use it to get the results you want. And, like any well designed piece of machinery, the intricate workings of your brain can be operated and modified by a surprisingly straightforward set of controls. Those living the Wonderful Life know that happiness is not dependent on unmanageable outside forces, but a controllable state of mind which draws together people, ideas, energy and action in an incredible flow of synchronicity.
 

Section One: GET ORGANISED

How to begin Your Wonderful Life by reorganising your personal and/or professional life from the basics up.

Most of us get by with our own internal schedule for basic domestic jobs and social interactions, but it’s often a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach and involves the regular stress of almost or actually forgetting quite crucial tasks or events. Being organised and in control of the many daily tasks we all have to deal with does not only make us more effective; being organised also helps us to feel more in control and therefore feel more effective. Research shows that people who regard themselves as highly effective act, think, and feel differently from those who perceive themselves as ineffective. They produce their own future, rather than simply foretell it.

How to: create a simple life-filing system; use a diary to plan a structured life from housework to worrying.
 

Section Two: CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY

Happiness is a choice: success doesn’t make you happy, rather happy people achieve success in every aspect of life. How to become one of them.

Yes, you can choose to be happy – and optimistic, and resilient – even in the worst situations. Learning how to be happy now, rather than looking towards happiness only in the future, is the next step in Your Wonderful Life. Finding pleasure in the smallest details of a life that might not that seem that great, coupled with enthusiasm and excitement for how much better it can become, opens the way to Your Wonderful Life.

Exercises: Four easy exercises to make happiness your first good habit.
 

Section Three: HEALTHY BODY

Healthy body, healthy mind – and here’s a simple way to start achieving both. Clear-cut ways to put your mind to giving your body what it really wants.

As the science of neurobiology progresses and our knowledge of the nervous system and its functions become more complete, the assumption that mind and body can be separated has become less and less tenable. Medical journals are reporting a growing number of studies documenting a correlation between patients' psychiatric, emotional well-being and their physical health. In other words, what we do with our bodies affects the state of our minds and visa versa. This month we want to concentrate on diet and physical exercise – on our bodies.

For one month: Follow our sensible guide and change the way you eat and exercise in four weeks
 

Section Four: MIND CONTROL

Fight or Flight? We don’t need either, and this section shows you how to breathe, relax and meditate your way out of stress – and broaden your mind as well.

Feeling in control has been defined as one of the main characteristics of happiness. One of the least wonderful emotions in life is the sense of not being in control. When you feel out of control, you feel anxiety, insecurity and fear. Fear is the enemy of happiness, optimism and Your Wonderful Life. By using simple mind techniques you can learn to override the primitive brain function which often leads us into fear-based, and therefore debilitating, responses to life's challenges. And by stretching your mind to be more flexible about your own and other people's attitudes, you can feel more informed, empathetic and therefore more in control of your response to outside events.

Exercises: Breathing, Conscious Relaxation, Simple Meditation; Mind Stretching.
 

Section Five: MONEY MATTERS

Money matters even more in these credit crunch times. You can get on top of your personal and business finances – and stay on top of them with our easy MWL plan.

The importance of money to our emotional and physical well-being is not in contention. We all need money in order to meet basic needs. However, whilst we need food for survival we may also want to eat at an expensive restaurant. Whilst we all need clothes for warmth and protection we also seem to want designer fashion. Therein lies the difference – the difference between needs and desires. We would like you to go on a money diet. Where you once counted calories you will now be asked to count pennies and pounds. Even if money is the least of your worries we still ask that you follow the diet for the month. Saving money is not all we are doing here – we are more interested in helping you establish control over your finances.

For one month: How to go on a money diet to save pounds and end up with the trimmed figures you can keep control of.
 

Section Six: ROUTE PLANNING

Tell us what you want, what you really want – and then start to make it happen by setting your goals and planning your route to achieving them.

When you think about Your Wonderful Life in all its perfection, how do you see it panning out; what do you want it to be? Setting and achieving goals has a powerful influence on creating well-being in our daily lives. Research shows that the steps involved in goal-directed activity – motivation, goal-seeking, successful outcome and feelings of pleasure – are wired into the brain's structure. All achievement starts with motivation; motivation leads to a decision that triggers behaviour aimed at satisfying the aim; and achieving the goal produces positive feelings, releasing neurotransmitters like dopamine, which reinforces rewards, and acetylcholine, which helps the brain “tune in” and embed memories of success.

Exercises:  How to create your Wonderful Life future using SMART and positive goals.
 

HALF-WAY ASSESSMENT

How are you doing? Remember what we’ve worked through so far – you can already see the difference and it hasn’t been so hard, has it? Let’s keep going.
 

Section Seven: APPRECIATE YOURSELF

All those negative things that other people have said and you’ve thought about yourself: we’ll get rid of them and replace them with the wonderful, positive truth.

Our core attitudes and values are simply learned thought patterns that we have developed since childhood. Thoughts are neurological pathways in our brain and the more frequently we think them, the deeper we cut the pathways. “Right” or “wrong” is an inappropriate way to assess them. It is more the case that whilst many of our thought patterns continue to work well for us, others are working against us because we ourselves, our conditions or environment, have changed; they are dysfunctional and sabotage our ability to live a Wonderful Life and achieve what we want.

Exercises:  Four ways of changing the way you think and feel about yourself.
 

Section Eight: RICHER RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships with your nearest and dearest at home and at work are vital to Your Wonderful Life. We show you one effective way to improve them all.

Our intimate relationships are said by most of us to be the most important aspect of our lives. Long term studies show that our ongoing happiness is closely tied to the quality of our family relationships – and only loosely related to our income. We all have a tendency to believe that our close relationships have a life of their own, or that the other person is in charge of them, so that when things start to become stale, strained or antagonistic we often keep acting in the same way, reprising the same role, and are then surprised when things go from bad to worse. The fact is, relationships can be managed.

Empathic Listening: How to use Empathic Listening and learn Negotiating Skills
 

Section Nine: SOCIAL WORK

Five good friends – that’s what it takes to have a happy, fulfilling social life. This is the time to quality control check your friendships and expand your social circle.

Beyond our family circle, we all live with and among other people. These other people can frustrate us, enchant us, hurt us, love us, loathe us, support us, undermine us, or just plain ignore us – but there is no getting away from them. Junk friends, like junk foods, are fine occasionally, but you really shouldn't indulge yourself too often. You need good friends because good friends will enhance your self-esteem and self-worth, much as a healthy diet will improve your physical and emotional well being.

Tasks: Increase your social circle, Maintain friendships, Ditch junk friends.
 

Section Ten: DROP THE BLAME

People hurt each other – we hurt others, they hurt us. The only way to move on is to forgive, ourselves and others. This is how to lose the burden of blame and guilt.

One step is to recognise the detrimental effects of sustained anger or guilt on our well being. Another is to recognise the benefits – to ourselves – of forgiveness. In the end we need to stop being the victim of the original hurt and release its power over us. Feeling guilty for something that we have done or feeling resentment about what some one else has done to us can sometimes be an excuse for all that is wrong in our lives. There is a real danger that we end up wallowing in our own self-pity. So we need to forgive.

Exercises:  Finally, you can learn how to forgive yourself and others, and move on.
 

Section Eleven: WRITE AWAY

Bad experience – pain, grief even trauma – is part of life. If we don’t deal with it, we can be consumed by destructive emotions. An incredibly effective way to process problems.

We all have issues which we find hard to move on from. They circulate endlessly in our minds, invade our dreams and hijack headspace we don’t want to waste on them. Writing is an immensely effective way of processing these episodes and our reactions to them, freeing us from associated negative emotions and allowing the events themselves to pass quietly into history. Putting feelings into words produces therapeutic effects in the brain.

Exercises: Four famous therapeutic writing exercises to Write the Wrong.
 

Section Twelve: SMELL THE ROSES

To help Your Wonderful Life quietly take shape around you, you need to appreciate your blessings and learn the art of gratitude – it more than doubles the pleasure.

While bringing the various aspects of your life under your own control, you will have experienced some remarkable flashes of inspiration and insight, enjoyed new and long awaited pleasures, achieved some important aspirations. But on the whole, Your Wonderful Life will have made its presence felt delicately, quietly; tentatively, gradually. Counting your blessings – or consciously feeling appreciation, thankfulness or wonder – has been scientifically proven to raise levels of happiness in a wide range of psychological research projects. To help Your Wonderful Life quietly take shape around you, you need to appreciate your blessings and learn the art of gratitude – it more than doubles the pleasure. To consolidate your work, here are your last set of tasks, which are all about ensuring you appreciate and make the most of your continuing Wonderful Life.

Exercises: Tried and tested ways to expand appreciation and enjoy You Wonderful Life even more.
 

Please contact Annabel or Lucy on the email contact details above for further details. Or you can leave a comment on our blog – www.wonderfullifetalk.wordpress.com – and we will reply to you there.