People used to obsess over frequent-flier miles. Now, with lending standards getting tighter, they’re applying similar energy to improving their credit scores.

Jeffrey Sheldon, a 36-year-old Purcellville, Va., computer-systems administrator, has an enviable credit score of about 740. But he’s planning to refinance his adjustable-rate mortgage in June and knows that lenders will be taking a particularly close look at his credit record.

when Mr. Sheldon was shopping for an auto loan last fall, he first compared rates online. Then, he allowed only two lenders to pull his credit report because he knew that lots of inquiries could drag down his score. Now, he’s making extra payments so he can pay off the five-year auto loan in 3½ or four years. He figures the lower debt level will boost his score, which already is near the upper end of the 300-to-850 range of the FICO score, the widely used measure of consumer creditworthiness.

“It’s a game you have to play,” Mr. Sheldon says. Once every few months, he charges something on one of his lesser-used credit cards because he fears that issuers will close inactive accounts, reducing his total available credit and damaging his score.

The behavior of credit-score strivers can appear bizarre to the uninitiated. Many rejoice over joining the “700 club,” feverishly apply for new credit cards they don’t need, keep drawers full of old credit cards they barely use and fight for the removal of the smallest blemish on their credit reports.

Even consumers with good credit, like Mr. Sheldon, are pushing to improve their FICO scores — and with good reason. Whereas just a year or so ago a score of roughly 680 to 720 would qualify for the best rates from many lenders, that bar has now been raised to 720 to 750, credit experts say.

Many lenders are demanding higher scores because they’ve been burned by rising delinquency rates. In the fourth quarter, consumer credit delinquencies hit their highest level since 1992, according to the American Bankers Association.

“The rules have definitely changed,” says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com. “Back when they were giving money away to anyone who could fog a mirror, you didn’t have to have those stratospherically high scores unless you were going after something really high-end.”

At the same time, new scoring systems may complicate consumers’ efforts to monitor and improve their scores. Fair Isaac Corp., the developer of the FICO score, is introducing a scoring model, dubbed FICO 08, that the company says will do a better job predicting the likelihood of a borrower defaulting on a loan.

These days, a clean credit record isn’t just important if you’re shopping for a loan: It could even affect your career. Potential employers, landlords and insurers routinely examine credit reports. “Having a good credit score is far more important now than it ever has been,” says Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action, an education and advocacy group based in San Francisco.

Yet many consumers battling to improve their credit score have found the fight frustrating, costly and even futile. Some pay hundreds of dollars to credit-repair services or adopt strict credit regimens, only to find that their scores won’t budge.

That doesn’t discourage people like Simon Hernandez, who spends hours each quarter studying his credit report as part of his quest for a score of 750. The 34-year-old Denver respiratory therapist plans to buy a house sometime next year and fears his score in the mid-600s won’t get him the best rates. He has two credit cards that he uses for gas and groceries and has sworn off applying for any other type of credit. Despite his diligence, he occasionally sees his score drop for no apparent reason. “I’ve spent hours looking to see if I’m missing something on my report,” he says.

The basic steps to build and maintain a good credit score haven’t changed: Pay your bills on time and don’t max out your available credit. Payment history accounts for about 35% of the FICO score, while the amounts you owe — including the number of accounts with balances and the fraction of available credit used on credit cards — accounts for another 30%. Other factors include the length of credit history and the types of credit used.

Another key step: Get a copy of your credit report. At annualcreditreport.com, you can get a free report from Equifax Inc., Experian Group Ltd. and TransUnion LLC, the main credit-reporting companies that provide records to lenders. (Consumers generally must pay to get their actual FICO scores.) Search reports for mistakes — more than a quarter of reports contain errors, according to a survey by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a Washington-based advocacy group. Dispute errors with the credit bureau as well as the lender. If the lender can’t verify the information within 30 days, it will typically be removed from the report.

Also note whether credit-card issuers are reporting a credit limit for your account. Issuers don’t always report these limits, and that omission may cause your highest balance on the card to be treated as your limit. That can make it appear as if you’re using most of your available credit, dragging down your score.

Consumers shopping for a loan can protect their credit score by moving fast. The FICO system, aiming to distinguish between a search for lots of new credit and comparison shopping for a single loan, ignores all mortgage and auto-loan inquiries made in the 30 days before scoring. If you find a loan within that period, the inquiries won’t drag down your score while you’re rate shopping.

Some popular strategies to boost credit ratings can actually backfire. While some consumers assume that applying for new credit will raise their available credit and boost their score, “You don’t want to increase your limits in a short period of time because that can be a great sign of risk,” says Rod Griffin, senior manager of public education at Experian. And though it may seem prudent to close old credit-card accounts that you’re not using, that can also sink your score.

New credit-scoring models, meanwhile, are putting new wrinkles into the credit-repair game. Fair Isaac’s new FICO 08 scoring model, for example, disregards “authorized user” records when calculating scores. Bottom line: People’s credit scores will be affected by cards on which they’re named as account holders, not authorized users. Experian and TransUnion plan to offer lenders the new scores in coming months.

Fair Isaac took this action after concerns were raised about credit-repair companies charging consumers to be listed as an authorized user on a credit card of a stranger. The new FICO model means people who have little credit history aside from their authorized-user status should apply for their own cards or get listed as a joint account holder.

Relative to older versions of FICO, the new model also generally places more emphasis on having a variety of credit types, such as installment loans and revolving accounts like credit cards, while increasingly penalizing people who use a big chunk of their available credit. Since the credit bureaus have developed their own scores to compete with FICO, consumers should know which one they are getting when they order their credit score. FICO scores from the three main credit-reporting companies are available at myfico.com.

Some consumers are discovering that all their tinkering is having little effect. Darrell Booker, 30, a database administrator in Richmond, Va., has tried all sorts of strategies to boost his score. Over the past year or so, he has tried to get some late payments removed from his credit report, disputed a paid account that showed up on his credit report as unpaid and paid hundreds of dollars to a company that promised to help him clean up his credit. But the only real boost to his score came when he focused on paying off his credit cards.

“Let me focus on things I know I can totally control,” he says, “and that’s reducing my debt.”

by Wall Street Journal Online

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Oprah’s Show - Dr. Oz Goes to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Camp

Dr. Oz - Treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Home Treatment
Taking care of yourself every day is important in dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This includes taking your medicines as directed every day and doing the homework your therapist gives you to do at home, such as self-directed exposure and response prevention exercises. With exposure and response prevention therapy, you repeatedly expose yourself to an obsession, such as something you fear is contaminated, and deny yourself the ritual compulsive act, which in this case would be washing your hands.

It’s also important to involve family members and loved ones in your treatment, especially if your health professional suggested you participate in therapy together. Keeping lines of communication open may help you deal with relationships that have become strained during your illness.

Reducing overall stress in your life, although not proven treatment for OCD symptoms, may help you cope. Stress- and anxiety-relieving tips include:

• Taking slow, deep breaths.
• Soaking in a warm bath.
• Listening to soothing music.
• Taking a walk or doing some other exercise.
• Taking a yoga class.
• Having a massage or back rub.
• Drinking a warm, nonalcoholic, noncaffeinated beverage.

Eating a healthy, balanced diet and avoiding certain foods or drinks may also help you reduce stress.

• Avoid or limit caffeine. Coffee, tea, some soda pop, and chocolate contain caffeine. Caffeine can make stressful situations seem more intense. If you drink a lot of caffeine, reduce the amount gradually. Stopping use of caffeine suddenly can cause headaches and make it hard to concentrate.
• If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation. If you are feeling very stressed, you might be turning to alcohol for relief more often than you realize. If you drink, limit yourself to 2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink per day for women.
• Make mealtimes calm and relaxed. Try not to skip meals or eat on the run. Skipping meals can cause your blood sugar to drop, which will make other stress-related symptoms worse, such as headaches or stomach tension. Eating on the run can cause indigestion. Use mealtime to relax, enjoy the flavor of your meal, and reflect on your day.
• Avoid eating to relieve stress. Some people turn to food to comfort themselves when they are under stress. This can lead to overeating and guilt. If this is a problem for you, try to replace eating with other actions that relieve stress, like taking a walk, playing with a pet, or taking a bath.

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One weekend last winter, while my husband was off bonding with the menfolk in his family, I indulged in a thoroughly girly pastime: reading my earliest diaries. Sandwiched between covers of green leatherette and puffy pink vinyl were all the daily details of my preteen and early teenage years, and I wondered for a moment before cracking the first volume if I really wanted to dredge them up. Would I find page after page of melancholy meanderings documenting my adolescent angst? Woeful accounts of heartbreak and angry outbursts against authority?

I took a deep breath, began to read, and then began to smile, surprised and delighted that the girl I found living in those yellowed pages was happy, happy, happy, nearly every day. Parties, bike rides, and bowling were “a blast,” but even dissecting a frog or giving a speech in class was fun. She loved her friends, her family, her life, and, clearly, herself.

“I’m discovering my inner Gidget,” I told a friend who called while I was immersed in the diaries. But then, as I closed the cover on my 13-year-old life and stepped back into my 53-year-old existence, I had to wonder where Gidget had gone. Not that my life felt unhappy that November day — it was still filled with pleasurable pursuits and satisfying relationships — but my overall bliss-o-meter seemed to be registering several degrees lower. When was the last time a party had been a blast? Probably sometime in the sixties. Most social events now had become more obligatory than festive. Maybe the dimming of delight was an inevitable consequence of growing up and getting responsible, but I wanted to believe it was possible to boost happiness at any stage of life. The question was, how?

Luckily for me, a whole new branch of psychology has been exploring just that issue. Instead of focusing on negative states of mind, such as depression and anger, positive psychology seeks to understand and enhance upbeat emotions. And rather than telling people to work on correcting their weaknesses, this new approach suggests that they’ll be happier if they identify and find ways to use their inherent strengths.

It sounds like a tabloid headline — “Researchers Discover Secrets of Happiness!” — but this line of inquiry, which incorporates findings about how our brains are wired as well as observations about how we behave, has brought forth some simple and reliable ways to become happier. And dovetailing with these findings are striking new insights into the mood-boosting effects of meditation. By wiring up Buddhist monks and regular stressed-out schlumps who’ve been taught to meditate, researchers are finding that the practice literally shifts brain activity toward the sunny side.

The science of happiness is still in its formative years, and proponents all have their own takes on how to put its principles into practice. But the basic approach revolves around what medical psychologist Dan Baker calls happiness traps and tools. Hanging our hopes for happiness on acquiring this or that material possession is one typical trap; practicing gratitude for what we’ve got is one of the tools. For more than 30 years, Baker, founding director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, and coauthor of What Happy People Know, has devoted himself to teaching people how to be happy. The key to contentment, he maintains, is sidestepping the traps while learning to use the tools.

The biggest obstacle

“Fear is the greatest enemy of happiness,” Baker says. And it isn’t something we can easily rid ourselves of. Being hard-wired for fear goes back to the dawn of humanity, when the ability to respond quickly to threats from snarling predators was essential. But most modern fears boil down to two basic types: fear of not having enough and fear of not being enough. So we go around hoping to ease our heart-pounding primal anxiety by trying to achieve and accumulate as much as we possibly can.

It’s a losing battle, says Baker; the instinct to be fearful is just too ingrained in us. But we can train ourselves to react differently to fear.

Appreciation, Baker contends, is fear’s most powerful antidote. “It’s a fact of neurology that the brain cannot be in a state of appreciation and a state of fear at the same time,” he says. The two states may alternate, but they can’t coexist. That’s because appreciation engages a part of the brain (the neocortex) that is dominant over more primitive areas (like the amygdala) where fear resides.

To keep fear in check, Baker tells people to perform something he calls “appreciation audits.” Take a few minutes three times every day, he suggests, to think about something you deeply cherish — your husband’s sense of humor, the view of your garden from the kitchen window, the taste of chocolate. It doesn’t matter what you choose; what’s important is the quality of the feeling.

After reading Baker’s book, I decided to give this a whirl one week when a demanding assignment had my primitive brain swinging like a frantic monkey between states of panic and doom. Every few hours I took time out to focus on something pleasant — the cheery sunflower picture in my breakfast room, the breeze on my face when I stepped out onto the deck for a moment. Sure enough, I felt a surge of contentment that carried over into the rest of my day. I still hated the horrid work assignment, but I didn’t hate my life because of it.

Surprisingly, one route to happiness that Baker doesn’t recommend is through pleasure. I always figured that since riding my motorcycle, dancing, and spending time outdoors made me feel good, then I should try to do these things as much as possible. But somehow, no matter how often I rode my bike or danced the night away, I still felt vaguely unhappy at other times. No wonder, says Baker: By focusing so much energy on activities I could only do occasionally, I was overlooking everyday opportunities for feeling good that were right under my nose.

Another pitfall is attempting to fix our faults. Worrying over weaknesses — even with the intention of correcting them — shifts our attention to our shortcomings, which only reinforces our fears. Instead, we should identify and use our “signature strengths,” says positive psychology pioneer Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness. A 245-item questionnaire on his website (http://www.authentichappiness.org/) helps users identify their characteristic strengths.

Play to your strengths
Curious about the fit between my best qualities and my current life, I took the online survey and learned that my top five strength categories are appreciation of beauty and excellence; curiosity and interest in the world; bravery and valor; creativity, ingenuity, and originality; and honesty, authenticity, and genuineness. The results didn’t necessarily surprise me, but they did get me thinking about how much — or how little — I actually exercise those strengths in day-to-day life. My work, relationships, and hobbies — from motorcycle adventures to gardening to making mosaics — offer plenty of opportunities for using the whole gamut, but on too many days I don’t make an effort to apply them.

As a reminder, I decided to print my list of strengths in purple ink on little cards, and I stuck them where I’d be sure to see them every day — in my journal and planner and on my computer monitor. After a few days of staring at the cards, I proposed an idea for a change in my part-time job as a university science writer that would allow me to focus more on the field that intrigues me the most. Almost immediatelly, I started feeling more satisfied with my work.

Still, while appreciation audits and strength surveys were nudging me toward contentment, I was finding that stress — whether in the form of difficult people or excessive deadlines — could derail me all too easily. Besides, maintaining my happiness this way was starting to seem like a lot of work. I still yearned for a way to just flip a switch in my brain that would tilt me toward the positive pole.

Then I read about new research linking a practice called mindfulness meditation and mood. Wow, I thought. Have researchers finally found the happiness Holy Grail? By simply sitting and paying attention to my breath for a while every day, the studies suggested, I could actually retrain my brain to be happier.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work. We’ve long known that meditation can be calming by slowing heart rate and lessening stress hormones. But researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that mindfulness — a state of attentiveness to the present moment that can be increased through meditation — quiets the brain’s fear centers and shifts brain activity to a region associated with positive moods. The Wisconsin research team, led by Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry, studied two groups of stressed-out employees from a local biotech company. One group got training in mindfulness meditation and was asked to meditate for an hour a day, six days a week, for eight weeks. The other group wasn’t asked to meditate.

At the beginning and end of the experiment, the researchers monitored electrical activity in the subjects’ brains with an electroencephalograph (EEG). Earlier studies had shown that when people are upset, depressed, or under stress, activity is greatest in the amygdala, that hub of fear, and another part of the brain called the right prefrontal cortex. When people feel upbeat, on the other hand, those regions quiet down and another area, the left prefrontal cortex, gets busy.

Most people shift back and forth between right and left activity, reflecting a mix of good and bad moods. However, seriously anxious or depressed people are more active on the right, while highly optimistic, resilient folks lean to the left. (A Tibetan lama studied in Davidson’s lab was wa-a-a-a-y left.) In the mindfulness study, stressed-out subjects who received meditation training showed a shift in brain activity over the eight weeks, with increasing activity on the mellow left side.

Impressed, I decided to try my own experiment. If my girlhood diaries were any indication, I had once been a naturally left-leaning lass. Maybe diligent mindfulness practice could shift me back in that direction.

My mindfulness experiment
I decided to use meditation tapes for training, and the happiness questionnaire on Seligman’s website to assess my mood at the beginning and end of my experiment. For eight weeks I meditated once or twice a day for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. I also read mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life, and tried to practice mindfulness throughout the day, reminding myself to fully experience each moment as it occurs instead of ruminating about the past or projecting into the future.

I was an ideal guinea pig for such an undertaking, especially the week I had chosen to begin it. My mood is about the lowest it’s been in a while, I wrote in my journal a few days into the experiment. I feel restless, agitated, irritable, resentful, unhappy — not all at once, but at turns — and even resistant to doing the things and adopting the mindset that I know could make me happier.

But by the middle of the next week, I was already feeling calmer and learning to let my days unfold instead of getting uptight about whatever I thought should be happening. I find myself without as many desires and expectations for how things should be, I wrote, which is allowing me to be more receptive to whatever comes up.

As a result, experiences felt richer and more satisfying. At a blues concert one night, I experienced the music in a completely different way. Instead of half-listening while random thoughts ricocheted around my mind, I focused on the sounds and melodies so completely that they seemed to seep into every cell in my body. As the weeks went on, I felt myself becoming more content, less restless and edgy. I enjoyed my favorite pleasures — motorcycling, outdoor activities, and the rest — as much as ever, but frequently felt just as good doing other things.

A happy ending
Was I transformed? That’s hard to assess objectively, but my score on Seligman’s general happiness questionnaire did increase from 4.25 to 5.75 (on a scale of 1 to 7). Even more telling, my husband noticed something different. “Have you stopped having PMS?” he asked one day.

Mindfulness had worked some minor magic on me, but perhaps the biggest thing that had changed as a result of my experiment was my idea of what happiness is. It may sound mundane, but I realize that happiness is more of a habit to be cultivated than a state of bliss to be attained once and for all. Like good health, it must be maintained through certain regular, daily activities. Appreciation audits and meditation sessions won’t guarantee that I’ll never have another unhappy day, but I expect those practices will provide me with a lot more happy moments.

Case in point: Last weekend I spent several hours making dozens of cookies for a family party. In the past, I might have been anxious to finish the baking and get on to something more fun, and I probably would have burned a batch or two in my haste. This time, mindfully mixing ingredients and savoring smells, I enjoyed the process as much as the perfectly browned results.
And the party? It was a blast.

How to Get Happy
Not as joyous as you’d like to be? Avoiding these happiness traps and using the tools can make a huge difference, says medical psychologist Dan Baker.

Tools
Practice appreciation.
Appreciation is the most powerful fear-fighter. Try taking appreciation breaks throughout the day or creating Top Five lists of things like “favorite people,” “things I’m looking forward to,” or “things I love about my son.”

Exercising choice.
Powerlessness feeds fear. So look for opportunities to make choices — even small ones, such as waiting a split second before reacting to fearful and angry urges.

Lead with your strengths.
Focusing on strengths and building on successes creates energy, which drives real change.

Rephrase your life story in positive language.
“The stories we tell ourselves about our lives eventually become our lives,” Baker says.

Build balance and variety into your days. The more different — and rewarding — dimensions in your life, the greater the chances you’ll be happy.

Traps
Trying to buy happiness.
Once basic needs are met, increased wealth doesn’t bring greater felicity, research shows. Our prehistoric ancestors had to constantly hunt and gather to survive, so scarcity is burned into our brains. No matter how much we acquire, we’ll always feel it isn’t enough.

Pursuing pleasure.
Pleasure loses its punch when we rely on it as an exclusive route to well-being. Happy people create rituals that help them draw enjoyment from everyday events.

Resolving the past.
Bad memories can’t be erased, but they can be transcended. Focusing your attention on finding satisfaction in the here and now is more effective than fixating on past
anguish.

Overcoming weaknesses.
Training attention on your shortcomings — even with the intention of fixing them — only reinforces your fears.

Trying to force happiness.
Better to go at it obliquely, by cultivating qualities such as optimism, courage, altruism, and a sense of humor, all of which contribute to happiness.

Source: Adapted from What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and Cameron Stauth.

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Money and happiness are two of the most powerful forces in our lives, but what’s so interesting to me is how we’ve convinced ourselves that there’s a powerful connection between them: We seem to think that if we were rich, our lives would be perfect. My friends, I hope I can convince you otherwise.

The Money Myth
In my years of talking to thousands of people who’ve had no money, some money, and heaps of money, I’ve found that it doesn’t create or sustain happiness. That’s not to say that money isn’t an important factor in our emotional state—if we can’t pay our bills and support our families, we carry a great deal of stress on our shoulders and in our hearts. But it’s seriously flawed logic to jump from a position of “money is important” to “money is the key to happiness.” Need some proof? How about the articles we’ve all read about lottery winners who buy a ton of goodies after they hit the jackpot, but within a few years tell the world how out of control and miserable their lives are? It reminds me of how some of us have a screwy relationship with food. When we’re unhappy, we gorge on comfort foods that we believe, either consciously or subconsciously, will make us feel better. Sure, that hot fudge sundae might give us a nice temporary lift, just like buying a great new handbag or outfit—but it’s temporary.

Truth and Consequences
The average U.S. household has a credit card balance of about $8,000. It’s hard to be happy when you carry an $8,000 balance on a credit card that charges 18 percent interest. My message to you is that happiness is not tied to how much money you have—how much you had in the past or hope to have in the future—but how you deal with what you have right now.

I want to be very clear that I fully understand that it’s far more difficult to live on $20,000 a year than $200,000. I know this from personal experience; until I was 29, I was a waitress bringing home $400 a month. But I also know that we all have the capacity to take control of our lives—regardless of our bank accounts—and to commit to making the right decisions for ourselves and our family. When we do that, we’re on the road to happiness. When you’re happy, you create your own financial stability by living within your means.

Power Moves
In my experience, most people are unhappy because they aren’t being honest with themselves. Being truthful with yourself plugs you into your inner power. Whether it’s your relationship with money or with a partner, you aren’t going to be content or successful until you are connected to your heart and operating with all your energy. Quite simply, by making the right choices from a position of strength rather than weakness, you are bound to be happy. In part you’ll feel better because your finances are in good shape, and also because you took the initiative to create a life based on honesty. In my book, that’s the priceless route to ultimate happiness.

by Suze Orman,  O, The Oprah Magazine

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Are you restless in your current job? Or, if you haven’t been working outside the home, are you feeling like it might be time to do something else? You certainly wouldn’t be the only one. According to numbers just recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of women-owned businesses grew 20 percent between 1997 and 2002—twice as much as other businesses. (The number of businesses owned by women of color are growing five times as fast as the national average!) All told, women own 6.5 million businesses, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all the businesses in the United States and generating $950 billion in revenue. Are you thinking you might like to join their numbers? I’ve outlined some key steps for you to follow.

In Serendipity, one of those movies I can’t help watching every time it reruns on cable, Jeremy Piven has one really great line. His best friend, John Cusack, has just spent the past hour and a half completely upsetting his romantic life—including calling off his wedding to a beautiful woman right before walking down the aisle—because he can’t stop thinking (and chasing down) another woman he spent a single, remarkable evening with seven years before. He knows he’s acting crazy…he just can’t help himself. And Piven tries to tell him that he did the right thing by reminding him: “The ancient Greeks asked only one thing about a man when he died, ‘Did he have passion?’” Piven was talking to Cusack about love, but he could have just as easily been talking about work.

And the answer, in the case of most Americans, would be “no.” Only about half of us are satisfied with what we do every day. And whether you’re considering dropping out of corporate life or giving up your time as a stay-at-home-parent (or making some other kind of big switch) to start your own business, I’m guessing you’re among them.

The good news: today—more than ever before—it’s possible to start your own business. And we’ll get to that in a minute…but first let’s concentrate on figuring out what you love. That’s right, love. Why? Because people who are happy with their jobs are four times more likely to be very happy with their lives. Four times! In fact when you look at all the factors that figure big in a person’s happiness, their jobs or careers (in other words, what they do every day) weigh very high on the list—after marriages and self-esteem, but before health, finances, children, friendships and appearance. Being happy with your work life also makes you more likely to feel useful, confident and content—and less likely to feel stressed, restless and hopeless. Clearly, it makes sense to find an occupation that satisfies your soul as well as your wallet.

Understand that there are three different ways to look at work. There’s work for hire, otherwise known as a job—if they didn’t have to pay you to show up, you’d quit. There’s a career—that’s when you’re on a track and you feel a personal drive to move from point A to point B to accomplish some of your goals. And there’s a passion—that’s something you’d do even if you weren’t getting paid. Getting paid for their passion is, for many people, the ultimate goal. For others, who have come to terms with the fact that no one is going to pay them to fly-fish (or whatever), the goal is finding a job that pays a livable wage but leaves enough free time to pursue their passion. The career—in the middle—is where most of us end up.

Aristotle called the ultimate satisfaction “eudaemonia: a state characterized by engagement flow and immersion in life activities.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, former chairman of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, simplified it and called it “flow.”

Flow is when you’re so caught up in what you’re doing that you stop watching the clock. You’re not overwhelmed. You’re absorbed. Time sails by. You look up only when something finally distracts you and you realize that it’s three-and-a-half hours later. You skipped your midmorning cup of coffee. You haven’t bothered to check your e-mail. You even forgot to go to the bathroom. In other words, you’re involved. And being involved in something you enjoy doing—where you can use your skills to accomplish a task you feel is meaningful and important—makes for a satisfying work experience.

Chances are you find yourself in flow only occasionally. Csikszentmihalyi’s research has shown that 15 percent of people say they’ve never experienced flow and 15 to 20 percent of people experience it every day (some several times). And the rest are in between. The more often you can get to this place while you’re working, the happier you’ll be. Why? Again, workplace happiness is a big contributor to lifetime happiness.

Unfortunately, I can’t describe the scenario—the new business, career or passion—that’s best for you. Rob, a creative director at an advertising agency, knows his passion is throwing pots, and he’s trying to come up with a business idea sound enough to allow him to transition. My brother Dave, who works in accounting for a mutual fund family—a job he likes—would eventually like to support himself with his music. But I can tell you a little bit about the characteristics that next phase of your life should have.

by Jean Chatzky,  O, The Oprah Magazine

 

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