How do you manage bad news? How do you stay motivated? How do you manage your attitude?
We all want to be happy. This deep desire for happiness is screamingly obvious in the marketing messages for almost all products and services. The pervading message behind most marketing is that this product or service will give you what you are missing and you will discover and experience "happiness".
A wonderful formula I read about how to determine happiness levels is happiness levels = your expectations - your reality.
Now you might think, "does this mean that if we had no expectations we would be happy"? That is a good question and as tempting as that is to explore - think about the last frustrating conversation you had when the other person did not do what you thought they should/would/could have done - I'm going to ask a better question: "If happiness is so closely linked to expectations, how could you reframe your expectations to weight the formula in your favour?"
In a world obsessed with instant gratification, it is easy to get lost in everybody's favourite radio station - WIIFM. The What's In It For Me focused frequency keeps us feeling entitled that the world should be serving us, giving us what we want, meeting our needs and creating experiences that make us feel good. This is a flawed model. We have no control over what people will do. They in turn are not mind readers and are trying to please a wide range of people. What would happen if you focused on what you could control?