Sunday 9 February 2014

My Happy Project - Positive Brains

My Happy Project: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

The last few days I have been suffering from a significant lower back pain.  The result is me lying down more then I would like to be.  It is difficult lying down flat on your back because you really can't do much very easily, so I have been thinking (usually gets me into trouble).  I have been getting very interested in the idea of happiness and how your outlook on life impacts every aspect of your life.

I am sure that all of us can agree that being happy is probably a good thing.  Today, some employers are also realizing that happy employees are a good thing for the company.  There seems to be so much discussion about this I have a hard time understanding stories I hear from friends and family about overbearing work places that restrict an employees freedom to the point of suffocation.

I prefer to focus on the people who continue to promote happy in a real and meaningful way.  I often come across good resources that discuss this and I find my self empowered by them to make change in my own life.  So all this lying around resulted in a plan to create a small mini-series on my blog devoted to sharing happy resources.  I hope that you will continue the discussion in the comments on how applicable some of these things are to you.

There are many happiness project type blogs, books and 10 step formulas to happiness.  I often find things suspect that someone has discovered the secret to happiness that you can also learn for a low price.  I feel that if I had discovered a way to happiness, I doubt that I could contain it or wait for you to pay me for it.

I welcome you on this journey of discovering happiness resources.

Today I would like start by sharing Shawn Achor's TED talk "The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance".


This talk is a humorous approach to the discussion about happiness.  Shawn talks about the reality that we are exposed through social interactions and mass media a disproportionate amount of negative events.  We then tend to believe that this is the normal way of thinking.  We have to intentionally train ourselves to focus more on the positive aspects of life to rewire our brains.  The result of this has the potential to dramatically change the way we experience day to day living.

To accomplish this re-wiring Shawn suggests the following:
  1. 3 Gratitudes - record 3 things that you are grateful for daily
  2. Journaling - writing positive experiences down allows you to relive it
  3. Exercise - teaches your brain that behaviour matters
  4. Meditation - allows your brain to focus on a single thing instead of multiple tasks at once
  5. Random Acts of Kindness - write one positive email praising or thanking someone daily
The result is training our brain to focus on the positive and allows us to change what success is.

I have watched this talk several times and I love the message of intentionally focusing on the positive and going out to find news stories about the positive aspects of life.  Happy is not an accident stumbled upon by someone else, it is something that we need to do.  By doing this for ourselves and performing acts of kindness we will be paying it forward. Consider yourself a happiness ambassador and share your experiences with your friends.

We can choose to do nothing and hope that happiness and success stops by or we can go out and grab them and make them our own.  Tell me what you think.


My Happy Project: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

1 comment:

  1. Happiness is a choice.
    My motto is that if they proof me wrong in the end of being positive, at least in the mean time i've been better off.

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