Web for Small Business

Ten Ways to be Happier

Posted on 25. Sep, 2009 by Cat in Productivity

There have been huge advances in the study of happiness and how to attain it in recent years. Forbe’s Rebecca Ruiz writes about Ten Ways To Be Happier Now, prompted by a new book The How of Happiness by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California.

To summarise, the ten ways are:

1. Be at the Center of Your Network: People at the centre of their networks are more likely to be happy and those on the fringes are more likely to be melacholic. If you feel you’re at the edges, organise regular get togethers with your family, friends and neighbours.
2. Surround Yourself With Happy People: Happiness (and depression) are contagious – even up to three degrees of separation!
3. Watch Less TV: Watching too much TV and gaming have been known to make people feel less in control of their lives. Dr. John P. Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland found that unhappy people watch over 30% more TV per day than very happy people with no other differences in their lives. 
4. Lead an Active Life:  Dr. Robinson found that  happy people spend more time socializing with relatives and friends, attending church, reading the newspaper, working and being active. 
5. Manage Your Time Wisely: Dr. Robinson found that using time unwisely–having too much of it or not enough–was recently correlated with increased levels of unhappiness. He found that 51% of unhappy respondents felt they had too much time, compared with 19% of those who felt very happy.
6. Find Ways to Cope: Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky found that developing an effective coping strategy is key to overcoming most troubles. There’s also no single way to cope, though she recommends trying to develop strengths you didn’t know you had–like the ability to manage a household budget in the midst of a financial crisis.
7. Set and Pursue Goals: According to Dr. Lyubomirsky, goals give us a sense of purpose, they tend to cultivate self-esteem, since the sense of accomplishment can segue to feelings of confidence and they add structure to the daily routine of life, which Dr. Robinson’s findings on time-use revealed can be an important component of long-term happiness.
8. Don’t Think Too Much: Dr. Lyubomirsky often encountered a behavior known as self-focused rumination (in other words, obsessing over the unknown), which many people believe might lead them to clarity or resolution. But according to studies conducted in the past 20 years, such behavior actually fosters biased thinking, impedes concentration and diminishes a person’s ability to solve problems. Breaking this habit can be tough, but Lyubomirsky recommends distracting yourself with engrossing activities.
9. Practice Gratitude: A study conducted by Dr. Lyubomirsky required a group of 57 participants to write down five things for which they were grateful once a week. A second group of the same size did so three times a week. A third control group of 32 did nothing. Six weeks later, participants in the first group were happier, healthier and exercising more.
10. Experiment With Happiness: If the so-called secrets to contentment don’t exactly work for you, try another version or interpretation of the guidelines. You may not have the same success with a particular strategy as others do, says Dr. Lyubomirsky, because achieving happiness doesn’t happen in a uniform way. Instead, think of it as a sliding scale on which some methods work better, while others make little or no difference.

I also liked that there was some clinical evidence for the benefits of practicing gratitude – writing down five things that we’re grateful for everyday is a wonderful habit to cultivate.

In a related story on How to Buy Happiness, giving money away – not buying things for yourself – is more likely to bring happiness. And if you give to registered charities, you’ll also have the bonus of it being tax deductible!

How to set up a Google Alert

Posted on 23. Sep, 2009 by Cat in How To

Google Alerts are a handy way of monitoring conversations. Whenever there are updates to Google’s index on a particular search term, you can arrange to be notified.

You can use this to keep up to date with your company’s name, your product/service brand name, your own name or your company’s key personnel. You can also use this to monitor keywords that are relevant to your product/service so as to keep up to date with news in that area.

Go to Google Alerts, and you’ll notice a small box.

Fill in the search term you want – just choose one keyword or keyword phrase (you can make 1000 Google Alerts per email address).

Enter the email you want it sent to.

The default option is “Comprehensive” which you’ll get anything that turns up in Google’s search index, but this may be too much or irrelevant so you can limit it to news reports, Blogs, websites, video or Google Groups results.

You can also choose the frequency that you’ll receive email updates – once a day or week or as Google gets updated itself.

When you’re happy with your settings, hit “Create Alert” and you’ll get any updates on your search term straight to your inbox!

If you want more than 10 Google Alerts (you can have up to 1000 per email address), you will be asked confirm/verify that you want to receive these alerts via your

At any time you can stop getting alerts by using the “delete alert” link at the bottom of your alert emails.

If you have a Google account linked to your email, you can manage your alerts by going to the Google Alert page and finding the “click here to manage your alerts” or by using the “Manage your alerts” link at the bottom of your alert emails.

Will it Blend?

Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by Cat in Marketing

When you type “Blender” into Google, in the first handful of results (and the first result that involves an actual blending machine) you will find Will it Blend?

Blendtec make blenders but they also make wikedly successful viral videos showing their blenders blend all manner of things you wouldn’t normally blend. Their videos on blending an iPhone and and iPod had 5,430,656 and 5,466,711 views respectively. While this says something about the virability of stuff associated with Apple, most of their other blending videos reguarly get over 100,000 views with many hitting half a million or more.

Being in Australia, I’d never heard of the brand before but after seeing them pulverise garden hoses to hot soup (including the container), I’m now convinced of its superior blending power. It tops my list of blender desirability – I soooo want one! All because of some clever videos.

Because I can’t bear to watch an iPod or iPod being destroyed, here’s one of a sneaker being turned to dust:

Charity Spotlight: Kiva

Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by Cat in Inspiration

Kiva is one of the few charities where donors often get their donations back. This is because Kiva is a non-profit organisation that facilitates micro loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

The process (as the diagram below shows) is that you look through listings of entrepreneurs who need financing, choose one, send $25 or more to Kiva and they pass that on to the relevant micro financing organisation in that developing country that lends it to the entrepreneur. When the entrepreneur pays the loan back to the micro financing organisation, it goes back through Kiva to you – you can then lend it to someone else if you want, donate it to Kiva to help with their operating costs or withdraw your funds.

And because Kiva partners with micro financing organisations on the ground in developing countries, you can be assured that the entrepreneurs’ stories listed are genuine.

Here’s a video that explains what Kiva is:

Here is an example of a Kiva loan request:

Micro finance (also known as micro credit and micro loans) goes beyond charity and empowers people in the developing world to create self sustaining businesses. It also means that one donation can have multiple lives as it able to be recycled to fund future projects.

30+ Idea Sources for HubPages and Articles

Posted on 15. Sep, 2009 by Catherine in Content and Copy

As part of a Hubpages content creation challenge, I put up a huge list of ideas for articles for places like HubPages and Squidoo and Ezine Articles. It’s a good source of ideas for not only article marketing but blog posts.

Here is a small selection:

• Idea Source 14: Archives of big blogs and websites: Look through the archives of websites/blogs in your niche that are massively prolific. Examples are http://Mashable.com, http://Gizmodo.com, http://www.bhg.com – they are an ideas goldmine.
• Idea Source 17: Email Newsletters: Look through any email newsletters that you subscribe to (if you don’t have any, you should subscribe to a number in your areas of interest – make sure you set up a filter so that they bypass your inbox – this is purely for reference when you need it not to make your inbox more unmanageable): the tips and advice can be idea starters for Hubs.
• Idea Source 28: Twitter Search: Type your keyword or niche into Twitter Search and you’ll get a list of recent conversations that feature that word. Often there will be links but what I love is looking for questions or problems – these you can answer in a Hub.

For more go to my hub: 30 Sources for Ideas for the Hub Challenge – A Cheat Sheet.