I recently came across this very entertaining TEDx talk.
Take a look:
Shawn Achor – “The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance”
As you can hear, being happy makes a massive difference. It’s possible to predict how successful 75% of people will be, not based on their IQ, but how happy they are.
Just think about that – all the time you were at school and they were telling you how important exam results were to be “successful”, to be “happy” – they were wrong. In fact, they were wrong twice. The were wrong that good grades (“IQ”) meant you’d be happy, and they were wrong that being successful had anything to do with good grades (“IQ”).
So whilst he explained, being happy isn’t really about getting into that prestigious school, or earning more than you can spend, he was very quick when he went over how we can be happy.
“How to be happy.” That sounds like such a strange and contrived thing to say – I mean either you are happy or you aren’t happy, right? How can you possibly teach yourself to be happy?
Well, as it happens I recently saw a post on reddit by What_The_Funk explaining one of the methods he briefly mentioned:
Writing down the 2 highlights of the day every day before I sleep. And every week/month/year, choose one from that period. Best thing I have ever done. Focused my thoughts on all the great things that happen. every morning I wake up thinking: what will I write on my highlight list today. and in the evening, it’s almost difficult to determine the highlights out of lots of positive things. and picking a highlight of the month/year… just makes you grateful.
Does that sound difficult? Hell yes!
Does it sound achievable? Absolutely.
Even if the highlight of your day is “took a five minute break from work and enjoyed every second of it” or “pressed snooze on my alarm, TWICE”, you’ll still, by the end of the week, have a list of the things that have made you happiest over the week.
After almost a month of doing this everyday, I bet you start to look at things a little bit differently. 🙂
Let’s start now, what were your two happiest moments of today?
