By Ashraf Al Shafaki BenefitsThis course aims at providing you with a road map to integrate more happiness into your life. By actively participating in this program and following up on it after completing the training you will be gradually yet steadily building up and living a generally happier lifestyle. ObjectivesBy the end of this course you will:
What's DifferentIf you have previously read about or attended workshops about how to accomplish your dreams, here is what is different about this workshop:
StrategiesThis course will help you achieve your dreams through the following 3 strategies:
Activities
StepsThis training employs a 3-step program starting by finding your true sources of happiness followed by keeping record of your dreams and finally acting, with the help of others, to carry out activities and actions that would unleash your talents making your life happier in the process. Uncovering your True Sources of HappinessMany of us are hypnotized with a canned set of goals that society prescribes and convinces us that they are the true sources of success and happiness. Although money, fame and power may be common human aims yet what brings each of us true happiness differs from one person to the other. The first step in the happiness program is for each to try and find his or her true sources of happiness. This training will provide you with simple methods to delve deep into your true self and discover what really makes you happy by going back to your childhood to know what made you happy then. Documenting your DreamsYou might have many dreams you would love to achieve. After completing the first step and discovering what your true sources of happiness are, you now have the freedom to go wild with your imagination with your dreams after breaking free from what society had dictated should be your goals in life or sources of 'success'. You then start the second stage by writing down your dreams one at a time. By actually writing down what you would love to achieve and do in life you are actually starting the process of achieving it and starting to exercise true happiness itself. Besides providing you with the first trickles of happiness, the process of writing your true dreams will help condition your mind to act on getting you closer to achieving your dreams when decision making is involved during day to day decisions (such as taking a training course or not, buying something, applying for a certain job ... etc). Writing down your dreams on paper is the first step on the road of achieving some of them. Living your DreamsSome dreams might be too faraway or just too difficult to achieve for you. The happiness training will provide you with the means by which you can get closer to achieving your dreams. The two sources of help provided by the happiness training are: using a reverse map to help you chart the road to achieving your dream and using a close support group of people to assist you in achieving your dreams through a network of connections and personal support. The role of a dream can also be to show you what really makes you happy. If a dream appears to be too far for you or too difficult to attain right away then perhaps you could aim first at a miniature version of that dream. By actively seeking to live such a miniature version of your true dream, you will start experiencing an increased level of happiness in your life. This increased level of happiness will make you a person who is better capable of achieving the larger dream. Instead of just trapping your far fetched dreams in your imagination, documenting them by writing them down then acting on them by attempting to implement if only miniature versions of them is the alternative life style that this program helps you achieve. Getting HelpYou get help through the support of others who understand, appreciate, encourage and even push you towards realizing your dreams. Obstacles in your path to realizing your dreams can be dealt with through team meetings in which attendees pour in their thoughts on how to tackle obstacles you see in your path towards your realizing dreams. VolunteeringFinally, the program introduced volunteering as a flexible and easily attainable way to get a taste of sustainable happiness through selecting and participating in activities that are related to your true sources of happiness. Sustaining HappinessAs you start putting more happiness into your life it is a good idea to work on sustaining those happiness gains you have managed to reach and even work on increasing them more. The method used to attain this is through being thankful for what you have. The more thankful you are the more sustainable your happiness will be and the more it can even increase. Here are steps of being fully thankful with each step being a prerequisite for the next one and with each further step you rise up to a higher level of thankfulness:
Following the previous three stages of thankfulness for a specific gift guarantee sustaining it and even increasing it. Wrong Ideas
Living your Dream: Delayed Vs. Instant ExperienceDelayedA prevalent belief is that one should stand the pain and be patient and take in his suffering and work hard and withstand being tired now in order to be happy later on and reach his dream in the future. The problem with this method is that one might die before realizing his dream in which case one would have suffered all his life for nothing. Another flow in this method is that one would have suffered a lot and a short time of happiness might not be worth it or if the amount of happiness was equal to the amount of suffering so at the end the person has not really gained anything since both cancel one another. In such a case the person could have just saved himself all the trouble and remained neutral with no suffering and no happiness to reach this state of zero gain. Furthermore, a person who has spent to much time suffering and not allowing himself to feel happy now might not feel satisfaction when he realizes the dream he had been working for for long and conversely feel a craving for returning back to the state of suffering he has long been used to. Finally, delaying the actual taste of your dreams is no catalyst to realizing them but rather on the contrary it makes achieving your dreams a more distant event. InstantBy instant one does not mean instant realization of one's dreams but rather having an instant taste of such dreams by trying as soon as possible to live if just mini-versions of those dreams. This method has so many benefits. First of all, you get to be happy quickly and do not have to wait till you fully realize your dream to get a taste of happiness. Secondly, you start living the happiness and it increases with time as you get closer and closer from realizing your full dream, so if you die before realizing your full dream you would have still realized part of it and enjoyed living in that part of your dream. Thirdly, living in if just a mini-version of your dream revitalizes your mind and soul providing you with much more energy that enables you to realized your full dream much faster than if you were holding yourself back in misery in hope of getting a sudden realization of the full dream in the distant future. Activities
TrainerI would like to think of myself as a talents facilitator in the sense of helping others both discover and realize their dreams.
Get InspiredVisit my Scanner Daybook website in which you will find a list of my own dreams. Discover your Talents This is the first part of the two-part workshop Unleash your Talents. Use your TalentsThis is the second part of the two-part workshop Unleash your Talents. Tidbits
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