Super Bowl champion football coach Pete Carroll did it his way with positive energy and a rah-rah approach to winning.

The “defeated” Denver Broncos coach John Fox was more deliberate but no less competent.

Carroll’s team was a defensive monster. 

Fox’s team an offensive monster.

What a matchup.  But somehow it didn’t turn out that way – at least on the field.

Denver quarterback Peyton Manning bluntly admitted it is tough to forget losing the Super Bowl but he forgot to mention that already won one.

Never forget success – make it an IOU and use it again and again.

Coach Fox should be thinking that he is blessed to be alive after emergency heart surgery just a few months before the big game.

I wrote a book about embracing the advantages of disadvantages because we can’t always win but we can always learn from adversity and win another day in some way.  It doesn’t have to be the same way.

Coach Fox who celebrated his 59^th birthday Super Bowl week had it right when he said, “Setbacks are setups for better things to come”.

Always succeeding is lucky.

Learning from both success and failure is how we make our own good luck.

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There is nothing that works as effectively as what I am going to share with you this morning to improve happiness.

No prescription plan required.

No doctors or psychologists.

When you want to feel better immediately, this is the best approach I have ever seen.

1. Embrace your daily flow of life activities by doing both that which is familiar and comfortable for you and something new and different.  If you make the same breakfast every day, add a new twist.  If you hold your meetings the same way, conduct them standing up – something different.  The “new and different” actually changes the physiology in our brains and promotes happiness.
2. Do things that are meaningful as often as possible.  Meaningful matters.
3. Close the mental file on the past and the future.  Yes, we can visit there but only visit.  When we spend too much time in the past or trying to live in the future beyond planning purposes, we tend to ruminate on things that make us unhappy or even depressed and negative.

Something old.

Something new.

Something that has meaning.

And slam the mental files on anything that takes us out of the beauty of the present moment.

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Guess how long it takes to get used to winning the lottery?

Psychologist’s say the joy lasts only a year at best and long-term can transform that happiness into sadness, loss of friends and even going broke.

Everyday pleasures feel just as good as winning the lottery.  Really.

Loyola researcher Fred Bryant and University of Michigan researcher Joseph Veroff scientifically studied the art of prolonging happiness by savoring all types of good things in life.

1. Celebrate the good moments or as Amit Sood says, do not postpone joy.
2. Slow down and consume good and happy moments the way you lick an ice cream cone or enjoy a latte.
3. Ease up on some of the good things that occur – like eating candy, don’t eat it all at once or you’ll get sick. 
4. Simplify your life.  Too many options can reduce your pleasure.  We like options.  Just not too many if we want to remain happy.
5. Share your happiness the moment it happens.  Sharing is a natural extender of that which is good. 
6. Doing something new boosts happiness because it is in the now. 

Savor pleasure by consuming it as it occurs.

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Many workplaces are toxic, and yet we need a job.

We are intertwined with friends and associates who we might ordinarily not pick out of a lineup to be real friends.

And we can’t choose our own family which means we deal with what we have inherited for better or worse.

So what’s a person to do?

Discovering and articulating the negativity we see and hear around us helps insulate us from being those people.

Saying it to ourselves – “this guy is really depressing, so negative about the future”.

Or, again to ourselves — “what a sad view of life she has”.

Once we get used to articulating the negativity around us, we automatically distance ourselves from the destructive attitudes that bring us down.

Humans become like our environment – we adapt to circumstances as well as prevalent attitudes.

For the rest of today, see if you can make a mental note every time you see or hear a negative situation developing.  And see if it doesn’t make you feel instantly better.

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Two Harvard psychologists, Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth, created a smartphone app to get to the bottom of how frequently people’s minds wander.

They then contacted 2,250 adult volunteers at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were thinking about and what they were doing.

They found that their volunteers spent approximately half their time thinking about what was not going on around them instead thinking or even ruminating about the past, the future or things that may never happen at all.

They were happiest when they focused their minds on what they were doing in the moment.  Research backs the advice of many who insist that happiness and fulfillment can only be found in the present moment.  Thinking about other things is a prescription for unhappiness.

This is not to say we cannot plan for the future.  We just can’t live there before it’s time.

Nor is it saying we cannot learn from the past.  Just life today does not exist in the past.

Our brains can be retrained to live in the moment by becoming conscious of even mundane things that we do.  The more we try to reside in the moment, the easier it is to unconsciously live in the now and reap more of the happiness benefits.

There is no pill, no therapy greater than focusing on the here and on.

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No matter how anxious two people are to solve the problem existing between them, there is a greater urge that they almost always give in to.

The need to be right.

Most people can only listen to each other for only so long – and that’s usually not very long at all.  As David Burns says, “One attitude that gets in the way of good communication is the need to solve problems. I often tell troubled couples that they must refuse to solve the problems in their relationship if they hope to experience greater love and closeness”.

Being upset, arguing, bickering is not communicating.  And if anger is not shared openly – and it almost always is not – then game over.

The awesome power of listening is the tool that makes salespeople richer, careers more rewarding, relationships closer and it requires no skill other than keeping our mouths shut for a moment while simultaneously opening our ears.

Resisting a good argument even if you are “right” or if it is absolutely about “the truth” is the direct path to problem solving.

A friend of mine who brokers hundreds of millions of dollars of radio stations used to tell me that the terms of the deals often took a backseat to the dynamics between the dealmakers.   And that even when they wanted to do business together, they couldn’t get out of their own way.

When in doubt listen. 

Overcome the need to be right.

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Some of the best coaches are teachers.

No, all of the best coaches are teachers.  And teachers know that everyone learns at their own pace. 

As a professor at USC I soon learned that students don’t care whether the next class is about the history of whatever.  They care when you engage them.

I had a professor in college, John Roberts, who used to do an opening monologue and made the class laugh.  By the end of the semester the class thought it had hijacked the professor, he made radio and television that much fun. 

But he later shared his secret in which he kept stimulating the discussion until students started asking questions about what he had already planned to teach.

At work, we give orders.

At home, we give commands.

The best way to get someone to win cooperation and get results is to change your mission and create in others the burning desire to learn.

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There is one sure way to get what you want.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say, “will what God wills” and you’ll always get what you want.

For the less religious, the same principle applies – accept more things and be happier.

This is not to say don’t have goals, ambitions and drive.  Perhaps you know people who never relent until they get what they want only to find out that what they wanted didn’t make them happy for very long.

The secret is to have many victories of time – not just one.  The Olympian who works a lifetime for a medal they may not win can leave them feeling worthless for the rest of their lives if they haven’t learned to savor smaller successes along the way.

And here’s the great revelation.

Getting what you want feels the same no matter whether the accomplishment is major or minor.

To cultivate that feeling of pride and self-satisfaction that we all seek, learn to savor many small accomplishments over time rather than withholding satisfaction until or unless you accomplish your goal.

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A natural depressant is being sedentary. 

We’re designed to be active. 

Over the weekend I met a woman at a funeral who is well into her eighties.  She mall walks two miles a day leaving her “girlfriends” winded at the closest Starbucks kiosk.  She told me she jumped from a cliff using a glider ten years ago when she was “only” in her late seventies.

I was so impressed with her enthusiasm level – and remember, this was at a funeral imagine what she is like on a happier occasion – that I went looking for evidence that exercise was the bromide we have all be searching for.

In a 2007 study in Psychosomatic Medicine, some 202 people with major depression – not just the blues – were divided into three groups.

One group was randomly given the antidepressant Zoloft, another received supervised home exercise programs and the rest got a placebo.

After four months, the exercisers were just as likely to enter a remission as the group taking medication.

We know exercise improves our mood so to not take full advantage of increased daily activity is like turning down a free gift.

As Ellen DeGeneres says “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”

But wherever she is, she’s healthy and happy.

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may have dealt a serious blow to his presidential ambitions because of revenge – that is assuming, of course, that he was aware of the actions of his staff to disrupt traffic on the George Washington Bridge that spans New York City.

Putting politics aside because both political parties are usually always guilty of the same transgressions, seeking revenge kills careers, families and interpersonal relationships.

Confucius said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves”.

Don’t get mad get even is bad advice.

If forgiveness doesn’t work, try channeling your creative juices.

There is much psychological evidence that creativity heals the urge to seek revenge and it helps folks deal with the painful circumstances revenge creates.

Politicians will never learn, but they are not alone.

Until we deal with the feelings that prompt us to use whatever powers we have to seek revenge on another, our lives will not only be filled with anger but careers and families will be broken as well.

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