Books on Happiness / HarperCollins,.It's All in Your Head - Thinking Your Way to Happiness.[2006.ISBN0060759992]

H o w t o B e H a p p y 211

Exercise 6

•Think people will turn down your requests for help? Make it easier for them to say yes.

•Think about what obstacles they might face, and come up with ways to overcome those obstacles.

•Explain your request, showing why you’re approaching them.

•Frame it as a specific request for help with a single problem.

Exercise 7

•Have a hard time asking for help? Practice.

•Frame all your requests for assistance, no matter how large or small, as requests for help.

•The more you “ask for help” and then receive it, without either feeling like, or being treated as, a failure, the sooner you’ll internalize that it’s not a big deal.

Exercise 8

•Think you can be of assistance to someone? Offer to help without waiting to be asked.

•Don’t calculate if there’s a possible quid pro quo—whether this person could be of assistance to you in the future.

•The more you help others, the more others will help you.

Exercise 9

•Hesitating to take on a task? Practice tackling things you fear.

•Come up with a list of actions, large and small, that you’ve hesitated to undertake.

•Prioritize the items by difficulty . . . and then do the most difficult one first.

•Alternatively, the moment you realize you don’t want to do something, large or small, do it.

•Don’t focus on the end result. Concentrate on the action itself.

•When, during the course of day-to-day life, you find yourself hesitating, or rationalizing inaction, ask what you’re afraid of. Then get past your fear of failure by taking the action.

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Exercise 10

•Find yourself overwhelmed with dreams? Take control of your aspirations.

•Make yourself a pot of tea or coffee, or if you prefer, pour a glass of wine. Find a comfortable, quiet place where you’ll be able to sit and think for at least an hour.

•Take out your journal and turn to a blank left-hand page so you have two blank pages face-to-face.

•On top of the left-hand page write the words “The Best.” On top of the right-hand page write the words “My Best.”

•On the left-hand side of the left-hand page, list the important areas of your life. Skip two or three lines between each item. Once you have a list you feel confident represents most, if not all, of the important areas in your life, you can move on to the next step.

•Consider the first item on your list. What would it mean for you to be the best in that area of your life? What would it take? Write your thoughts down.

•Do this for each item on your list.

•Go over your notes. Would it be possible to achieve more than one of these goals? Or would you need to focus on just one area of your life to achieve your ultimate goal?

•Turn to the right-hand page you headed “My Best.” Assume you need to incorporate all these areas into your life. What would be the minimum achievement you’d look for in each area? What would it take to achieve that minimum satisfactory goal? Write down your answers.

•Allowing for seasonal variations, resolve to set aside some time each day, or each week, to each of the areas of your life you’ve listed as important.

•Think of your choices as addition by subtraction.

Exercise 11

•Stop trying to forgive others and just try to let it go. Take out your journal, turn to a fresh page, and write the word “Anger” on top.

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•Try to list all the grudges you are holding. Don’t worry about putting them in any kind of order. Include both large and small incidents, leaving a blank space after each entry.

•Focus on the first item. In the blank space after the first entry, write down exactly what you gain by holding the grudge.

•Think about each entry and go through the same mental exercise.

•If in the future you remember further grudges, turn back to your journal, write them down, and try to come up with a benefit to holding on to your anger.

Exercise 12

•Stop trying to forgive yourself and just try to let it go. Turn to a fresh page in your journal and head it “Regret.”

•Write down as many incidents as you can in which you’ve wronged someone in one way or another. Again, these can be large or small, from your childhood or yesterday.

•Once you’ve listed all the entries that come to mind right away, turn back to the first item. Come up with a way to apologize for your action or inaction.

•This might be a direct verbal apology or a mental apology during a moment of meditation.

•In cases where apologizing will do more harm than good, engage in an act of compensation.

•Having apologized for all the items you’ve listed in your journal, make a practice of apologizing unhesitatingly for your actions whenever it’s appropriate.

Exercise 13

•Living in the future? Take out your journal and turn to a fresh page. On top of the page write the heading “Things for Which I’m Grateful.”

•Start by writing, “I’m alive,” and move on from there, line by line, filling as many pages as you need.

•Start by concentrating on people you love.

•Next, move on to places you love or loved.

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•Finally, turn to things you value.

•On days when you’re feeling down, turn back to the list you’ve compiled and reread what you’ve written. Then, after a few minutes’ reflection, add some new entries to the list.

Exercise 14

•Living in the future? Tell people you’re grateful for what they’ve done for you.

•Whenever an opportunity arises, just thank people for coming into your life.

P o s t s c r i p t

An Appreciation of Mark Levine

Mark Levine has been my coauthor for more than two decades. When we met, Mark was in his mid-twenties, working as the editor of a small trade journal. I, like the proverbial cat, had already lived a few of my nine lives. Mark was a quiet, gentle young man, but I could tell right away he had the goods. Little did I know that, as Bogart said to Claude Rains in Casablanca, “this was going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

In the years since, we have become a real team, so much so that I can honestly say we operate symbiotically. We know each other’s thoughts and can finish each other’s sentences. Each of us contributes particular talents to our books in terms of research, interviewing, organization, and writing, but I know that the whole is coherent and clear because of Mark’s exceptional ability to transform the dross of raw material into publishable gold. I feel as though it is Mark who has helped me to find my voice and to communicate my ideas in their most succinct and compelling form.

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I have witnessed an enormous growth in Mark, from unassuming wordsmith to a geyser of knowledge. At this point in our partnership, it is much less clear who is the mentor and who is the student. I owe him an enormous dept of gratitude for our shared success. What we have aimed to do, and what I think we have achieved, has been to help our readers achieve their own best selves, and it is especially gratifying to know that in this work, I have had a collaborator who has helped me to achieve my own best self.

So with the publication of It’s All in Your Head, our twentieth book together, I happily take this occasion to express my gratitude to Mark, the student who is fast surpassing his mentor. Neither of us could have anticipated twenty years and twenty books ago that we would end up with sailing so wellbalanced a boat, through fair weather and foul. It may have helped that we each return to a different port of call, he to Ithaca and Deirdre, me to New York City and Corky.

Nor could we have guessed how the teamwork would promote an enduring affection. La Rochefoucauld said, “A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take least thought about acquiring.” Well, by now I have thought about this one a lot, and take pride in calling Mark my friend and partner. And for both of these, I give deepest gratitude.

—Stephen M. Pollan

A b o u t t h e A u t h o r s

Stephen M. Pollan is a New York City–based attorney, financial adviser, and life strategist.

Mark Levine has been Stephen Pollan’s collaborator for more than fifteen years.

Together they have authored numerous books, including the national best sellers Lifescripts, Live Rich, Second Acts, and Die Broke.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits

Designed by Nicola Ferguson

Cover design by Leander Reeves/kittycave.net

Copyright

IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD © 2005 by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.

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Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader December 2005 ISBN 0-06-113066-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pollan, Stephen M.

It’s all in your head : thinking your way to happiness : the 8 essential secrets to leading a life without regrets /

by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine.

p.cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-075999-5

ISBN-10: 0-06-075999-2

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