So what can we do to increase our happiness on our birthday and every other day for that matter

Use Success and Motivation Principles To Put The Happy Back In Your Happy Birthday by Edward W. Smith
Two recent research studies have shown that you are more likely to have a heart attack on your birthday than any other day of the year. Many people view their birthday as a negative event. This article will help ensure that your birthday is a true celebration of a happy life and give you the tools to build many more "happy birthdays" for yourself in the future.
A 2006 article published in the Journal Neurology described a Canadian research study that tracked more that 50,000 patients and found a strong relationship between birthdays and what researchers referred to as vascular events. Another large study in New Jersey found similar results.
Having a birthday seemed to be a milestone that triggered a review of one's life.
The research suggested that the cause of the heart attacks was stress and negative emotions associated with being unhappy with where we were in life versus where we thought we should be.
So what can we do to increase our happiness on our birthday and every other day for that matter?
Probably the most important key to happiness is focusing on the positives in life. View you past as positive, view the present as positive and view the future as positive. Events are events, and it is the labels we put on them that makes all the difference. One person will look at being fired as the end of their life,5838 Ugg Bailey Button Bomber Jacket Chestnut Boots, and another will look at it as the chance to start doing something different.
Lighten up on yourself when judging your past and expectations for the future. The best baseball players miss 60% of the balls they swing at, famous actors miss more roles than they get, and stock market analysts pick more losers than winners. But only wins count and that is what they are paid on. So it is in your life, focus on the wins and forget about the losses. Also give yourself credit for what you have learned, if you know now that something was a mistake that means you have learned something and will do better in the future.
When I speak to groups, I do an exercise in which I ask the group to take 10 seconds and look for all the things in the room that are red. Then I ask the group to close their eyes and list all the things they saw in the room that were green. As a rule, no one can list any green items, since they were only looking for red items. Life is the same way. If we only look for problems, problems are all we will see. Conversely, if we look for positives, we will find positives.
Happiness can actually be planned; it doesn't have to "just happen". Establish a goal to be happy everyday. Setting the goal to be happy plants the idea in your mind and will cause you to take steps that will lead you in that direction.
What makes you happy? Most people have lists of things that would make them happy, but they have never experienced the things on the list. On the other hand, the things that they have experienced in their lives that made them happy do not often make it onto the list. We discount our experience and pick up desires that many times are given to us by the media or other people. I urge you to take some time and write down things in your life that have brought you happiness, and ignore what others may think about the items on your list.
Perhaps it is time for you to rewrite history and also become a fortuneteller. Do a review of your life thus far and relook at those events you consider to be negatives. Can you find a more positive way to look at the event now that time has passed? Sometimes we put a label on things as being bad, when they happen, that doesn't stand up over time. You could be carrying a negative view of something that is no longer justified. Also, become your own fortuneteller and predict good things for yourself in the future. Find something that will give you hope for the future and build a view of your future based on that hope.
Focusing on happiness can give you one more reason to start figuring out what you want to do with your life and more importantly, implementing a plan to move towards what you want. Your life is an unfinished manuscript and you have a chance to write in a surprise happy ending. Just being on the path to the life you want will increase your satisfaction with life and decrease the stress factors as you move through life.
It is time to start living your dreams, not your history. Yesterday is over, and tomorrow isn't here yet. Live today and start working your plan for the future and put the Happy back in Happy Birthday.