“We can build our leadership upon fear, obligation, or trust. However, only a foundation of trust results in the collaboration and goodwill necessary to achieve our peak performance.”

Empower yourself, smile, and be positive!  In keeping with this month’s focus on happiness, here are 10 behavioral choices that can block happiness. If you notice you engage in a couple of these behaviors, don’t beat yourself up just decide to change it and start today!

You are conditioned to be unhappy!

A happy person is more difficult to find than a billionaire in the world today.

Tony Robbins shared that thought during an interview and my ears perked up because on a recent search for the most requested self help topics, happiness came in at the top of the list.

Are we that unhappy as a society? If so, what might be contributing to this unhappiness?

We humans tend to be like pack animals—safe in our herds. We don’t like to stand out too much; at a primal level it feels unsafe.

So the question is…do you conform or think?

So we conform to generally accepted standards of behaviors, attitudes and beliefs within our herds, and we mostly expect others to as well.

A 75-year-old woman is not likely to dress like a 15-year-old, for example. She doesn’t belong to that tribe and may be alienated by her own tribe if she were to dress like that.

Most of the time, we don’t even realize we are conforming. We do what others do because others do it, not because we have consciously and thoughtfully chosen it. It’s just “what is done.” Or we conform because of pressure and expectations.

Everything is connected. When the mind and body are in sync, anything is possible. Learn more about the mind-body approach.