Erik's Blog​

This is a seventh entry in a series about happiness. Start at the beginning here. In the past six entries we built a foundation for happiness. From solid stuff. We centered everything around this working definition of happiness: HAPPINESS IS A PATTERN OF POSITIVE EMOTION THAT COMES FROM SEEING GOOD THINGS HAPPEN AT A GOOD PACE. Then we unpacked the

A few months back I published this blog about happiness. Since we’re in a “happiness series,” I thought I’d bring it back here.  

This is a sixth entry in a series about happiness. Start at the beginning here. Everyone is asking, Are we happy? Happiness Works surveys employees to determine how happy they are to create more happiness at work. There are dozens of research organizations doing the same thing. Researcher questionnaires often ask, “How happy are you?” From the answers they work to

If you’re the average person, researchers say you need to triple your positivity, for your own health and the health of those around you. This post shows why. (This is part of a series on happiness: what it is, how it works, and where it comes from. Click here to start at the beginning.) In my last post I described

I think it’s interesting how people look for “lasting happiness.” The myth is that they can arrive somewhere in life or experience an event and be happy forever. If I found the love of my life, I’d live happily ever after. If I got that new job, I’d find true happiness. If I got a new car I’d enjoy it

How happy are you? It all depends on the way you see things . . . This is the third blog in a series on happiness. Click here to read the other two . . . Part 1 – “What is Happiness?”  Part 2 – “Happiness: A Pattern of Positive Emotion” Each of these blog articles uses this definition of

This is part two of a series that looks at what happiness is and where it comes from. Click here for part one, “What is Happiness?” In part one I proposed this working definition of happiness: HAPPINESS IS A PATTERN OF POSITIVE EMOTION THAT COMES FROM SEEING GOOD THINGS HAPPEN AT A GOOD PACE. In a series of blogs we’ll

It’s a big question. We all want to be happy. We all have a vague and intuitive sense of what it is. But when asked, most can’t define it. “It’s about having fun,” says one person. “It’s about success,” says another. “Relationships are what make us happy,” says another. Then someone says back, “These are things that make us happy,

If you’re stressed and exhausted at work, chances are good the culprit is email. It’s time to do something about it and re-energize work life. It starts by understanding how oppressive email truly is. Several weeks back I wrote about the massive rise of personal written communication. I went back to 1986, when the average person wrote a personal letter

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey tells a well-known story about an incident on a subway… I was riding a subway on Sunday morning in New York. People were sitting quietly, reading papers, or resting with eyes closed. It was a peaceful scene. Then a man and his children entered the subway car.

My last post helped us separate fears into two categories: useless and useful. When there’s no real threat, or the chance of harm is extremely low, that’s a useless fear. But when the threat is real, and the chance of harm is high, that’s a useful fear. I used a snake metaphor to describe these two categories, where useless fear

It’s tempting to think all fear is bad. Motivators often assume this and we believe them because of great quotes like these… Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. ~Mark Twain Limits, like fear, are often an illusion. ~Michael Jordan The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt The problem