THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

A couple of weeks ago I went with my son Seth to a City Managers Conference in Seattle.  The Keynote speaker was Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage.  You can view a potion of his talk here. He was fun, funny and very informative.

The idea behind his Harvard research is that we think we will be happy when...X...(fill in the blank)

Research shows that happiness helps us achieve ...X...(fill in the blank)

In other words, that is the reverse of what many of us think.  Being happy helps us be more creative, think more clearly, be more productive and many more benefits.  Being happy will help us be more successful in our pursuits in family life, work, and social interactions.

He suggests 5 things that we can do every day to be happy in the now and will help with long term happiness:

1. Write down 3 new things you are grateful for.
2. Journal 1 positive experience you have had, journaling will help your brain remember it. Doing these two things will retrain your brain to be on the lookout for the positive rather than the negative.
3. Exercise: it will tell your brain that your actions matter.
4. Meditation: concentrate on your breathing for 5 minutes, keep your mind from wondering. Meditation will help slow you down from the rush of multitasking and will help you be less stressed and better able to focus.
5. Random, conscious acts of kindness.  Compliments, paying for someone's meal, opening the door, writing an email.  Any kind thing you consciously do will lift your mood.

Doing these things hardly takes any time and they will lift your baseline of happiness if continued on a daily basis.