Tag Archives: happiness

Think You (or Your Students) Need Willpower?  Think Again!

“How do I change my behavior?” That’s the question one of my students asked after a GCC Money Talks session. It was the Fall of 2019 and Money Talks had just launched and this student was one of the first to participate. It was a great question, unfortunately, I didn’t have a great answer. I did find a blog post with 5 Ways of Changing Your Financial Behavior but I knew that I needed a better answer.  Fortunately, I found that I already had a great resource on my bookshelf. The book, Change Anything is exactly that – a great answer and set of strategies

A BIG Mistake that Parents Make About Paying for College

As a College Financial Educator, I’ve become familiar with several mistakes that students, and their families, make when paying for college. And one that concerns me is when parents prioritize college over building their own retirement fund.  I get it, parents love their kids. But here’s the thing, there are loans for college, no one’s going to give you a loan for your retirement. I also get that your kids are headed to college before you’re retiring, but your money needs time to grow. For every 10 years that you hold off investing, you’ll need to double the amount of money that you invest to

A Closer Look at the Value of Appreciation

To appreciate something is to pay attention to its value (and in so doing, to increase its value in our own eyes). When we don’t do this, we fail to see the value in the people, situations and things around us – they depreciate (lose value) in our eyes.  So, why do we do this? After all, why would we want any part of our lives to lose value? Well we don’t want to but often people get focused on other things and many things get overlooked or taken for granted. This Thanksgiving weekend, I want to remind you of the value of appreciation.  Gratitude

Don’t Make Small Talk – Make Big Talk

Believe it or not I suck at small talk. I’ve tried and I would say that my social skills have improved over time. Still there are times when I struggle in this area. But perhaps small talk is overrated. After all, wouldn’t you rather have a more meaningful conversation? That’s what Kalina Silverman thinks too. After a conversation with a friend had her wondering about the value of small talk, she embarked on an experiment called Big Talk. Later, she developed a set of cards that can help people to have more meaningful connections with others or to reconnect with themselves by using the questions

The Personal Development Candy Apple That Will Help You Breakthrough

I’m a fan of personal development – and analogies. One of my favorite analogies is that learning is like making a candy apple. You see, to make a candy apple, you don’t just dip the apple into the red, candy syrup once – you dip it in and then let it set and then dip it in again and let it set and repeat this process to build up that candy coating (well, at least that’s the metaphor – the recipe I just saw is nowhere near that labor intense). And this serves as a metaphor for learning. We don’t learn things by spending a

Want to build generational wealth? Do this first!

Generational wealth is a topic that many have become interested in and that’s a good thing. But the focus is largely on passing along wealth in the form of assets and savings. But money without money management skills only leads to bigger money issues. Don’t believe me? A CNBC article reported that lottery winners are more likely than average individuals to declare bankruptcy. And just google: ‘celebrities who went broke’ to see more examples of how money without financial education (and self control) led to bigger money problems than the individual previously faced. I’m on a mission to break generational legacies of being broke and

Utopian Dreams

A perfect world.

Where everyone is happy, everyone gets along, laughter and smiles abound. Wine and chocolate everywhere.

Alarm clock blares.

Reality check. Life is not and will not ever be perfect. We will get sick or injured, family and friends will come and go, we will run out of money, we will see many failures.  And that is okay! So how do we make our lives most effective and efficient despite all of the distractions and barriers to success? How do we achieve the elusive work-life balance that everyone craves?

A long time ago in a professional development workshop, the presenter started with “fill in the blanks…I will be happy when ___________.” So everyone shouted things like degrees, houses, cars, kids, vacations, etc. But those were the wrong answers.

“I am happy now. ” That is the correct answer.

If your happiness is placed somewhere off in the far distant future, then you will never be happy, because you won’t reach it in a single day or week, and once you reach your goal, you will set another distant goal that will send you off into even more discontentedness.

So, if you have a special dream, smile and be excited for the process that will take you there. Be happy now, in your imperfect world, find the joy in little things, and learn to laugh at the obstacles, breathe, expect failure, laugh at that too, and when your dream does come true, you will have learned happiness in the process, intensifying the ecstasy.

I had a dream that this post would be a lot longer and more detailed, filled with inspiration for all. But seriously, who has time for that?!