Archive for the ‘The Happiness Project’ Category

Taking Time for Yourself

Listen and Restore Your Inner Voice

My family and I are enjoying a Family Experience Week in beautiful Findhorn, an eco-village and spiritual community in Scotland. We’ve been working in the Original Garden, where Findhorn began, weeding flowerbeds, clearing pine cones, harvesting St. John’s wort (for medicinal tea), picking blueberries and raspberries. The children painted a rainbow mural on the shed in the Flower Garden. We’ve built a campfire by the River Findhorn, swam in the river and the sea, cooked in the community kitchen, and star-gazed at the big black sky at night.

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9 Questions To Help You Find Your Purpose

Find Your North Star

One of my main goals as a coach is to help my client identify a “living question” that he or she can use as a North Star to guide them in their life now and into the near future.  A really good question has the answers you most need to hear!

Here are nine of my favourite questions I ask myself and my coaching clients when exploring life-purpose. These questions correspond to the nine points of the Enneagram. I encourage you Continue Reading

Scrooge: A Love Story for Christmas

One of my favourite traditions at Christmas is seeing a theatre production of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Last year, I took my friends David Hamilton and Nick Williams to see Simon Callow in his one-man play. One year, I took twelve family and friends to see Patrick Stewart’s one-man show at the Albery Theatre, London. Last weekend, Hollie and I went to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see David Edgar’s adaptation. This Friday we go to the Old Vic Theatre to see Rhys Ifans play Ebenezer Scrooge. You get the picture, right!

A Christmas Carol was published on 19th December 1843. The first edition sold out by Christmas Eve. It is one of the most loved short stories ever written. Like all great literature, you can read it as a psychology paper, a political commentary and… Continue Reading

The Tea Meditation

I am happy to tell you my first TEDx talk has been published on YouTube. It’s called the Tea Meditation and it’s about experiencing everyday abundance and unreasonable happiness. I gave my talk at Findhorn, Scotland, in the Universal Hall, which is a truly inspiring place to speak at. My wife Hollie, my children Bo and Christopher, were in the audience, along with lots of friends from the Findhorn community. My son Christopher, who is six years old, was so impressed with what his dad was saying, his front tooth fell out during the talk!

 

The inspiration for my TEDx talk came from something that happened during a 90-minute keynote talk I gave at an I CAN DO IT! Hay House event in San Diego 2010. During the talk, I spontaneously went into a rap (a rant, some say) on the infinite number of choices of tea that now exist on our planet and that despite the dramatic increase in herbal teas, medicinal teas, spiritual teas, flower teas, environmentally friendly teas, and ergonomically designed teabags, our levels of happiness have not Continue Reading

What is the Happiness Project?

9 Things Happy People Know

Today marks the launch of my new 8-week online happiness program The Happiness Project. It’s based on the original 8-week program, started in 1992, and subject of the BBC science documentary How to Be Happy. I’ve called this online program The Happiness Project because it features every major principle and practice of my work. It’s my greatest hits album on happiness!

My original 8-week happiness program was tested by independent scientists, selected by the BBC science team, who verified it to be “a genuine fast-track to happiness.” This got everyone’s attention! Since that documentary, the world’s media has interviewed me countless times. I’ve kept a small archive of my favourite interviews, which include interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer for Good Morning America, and Michael Parkinson for the BBC.

Here is a selection of the questions I am most commonly asked as Director of The Happiness Project. These questions and my answers come from transcripts of various interviews over the years. So here it goes! Continue Reading

Your Hero’s Journey: 6 Powerful Inquiries for Living Your Purpose

I was asked on a recent radio interview, “If you could take one book with you on a desert island what would it be?” I had no hesitation in answering. My desert island book is A Course in Miracles. I did add, however, that if I could also bring a desert island DVD (to play on my solar-powered computer) it would be the PBS series Power of Myth in which Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist, is interviewed by Bill Moyers.

My wife Hollie and I have recently been re-watching the Power of Myth series. It gets better with each viewing! We’ve just arranged a dinner next week with our friend Liz Trubridge, producer of the Downton Abbey TV series, to watch Continue Reading