[Starry Night Coaching] June & July Newsletter
Shannon Friedman
3 Tips for Making Your Life Better!
There is a vast body of knowledge out there when it comes to self help. Here are a few of my favorites:
- I highly recommend the book Non-Violent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg for learning to better understand your own feelings and needs, communicating your feelings and desires, and for learning how to understand and empathize with other people’s feelings and needs.
- Keeping a gratitude journal is a nice way to hone your positive thinking skills. Here’s mine. I’ve found it so refreshing that I’ve been keeping it since 2003. I noticed a big shift immediately once I started it (I wrote in the log 5 or more times/week for almost three years). I started actively looking for things to put on the list. Throughout my day my mind was attuned to looking for things to be grateful for. Eventually given more time, I’ve become more grateful without consciously trying. Throughout the day I often think about things I’m thankful for unprompted.
- The Feeling Good Handbook provides great insight and practice for skills to improve your quality of life. In coaching as I’m trained by CTI, we term that voice in your head that tells you that you’re not good enough as “The Saboteur.” David D Burns addresses The Saboteur by helping you understand how it is working in your head, and he gives you tools for helping to reframe your thoughts in a more constructive manner.
Sometimes you can speed along self-help by hiring a trained professional to guide you in your personal quest for fulfillment and happiness. Life coaches such as myself are trained with techniques anchored in what has shown to bring people a richer, more grounded and more fulfilling life. Some of these techniques are based on studies that have been scientifically demonstrated to make people happier. Other techniques are based on wisdom that is too complex for modern studies to boil down just yet. The more complex wisdom has so many different facets that are so individualized to the person that is being worked with, that it cannot be isolated into little pieces to be tested.
By hiring a professional you are receiving the expertise of someone who has spent years of their time studying what it takes to make you happy, so that you can benefit from their knowledge, since that person will have done the studying already and can pass along the wisdom in a way that is personalized to you.