PERSONAL HAPPINESS SPECIAL Four Daily Habits That Will
Make You Happier
According to
experts, the traditional formula for success may be backwards.
Do great work, you’ll
get a promotion and then you’ll be happy. This is the mainstream formula for happiness.
We’re taught that working hard will lead to a great success and
finally result in happiness. But happiness experts say our formula is wrong.
They argue being happy first is what causes us to do great work and have great
successes. A Harvard Business Review analysis
of hundreds of happiness studies showed happy workers were 31% more productive,
had 37% higher sales, and were three times more creative. But how can we
achieve this happy state of mind? Neil Pasricha, the author of the bestselling
book The Book of Awesome has now penned a second book calledThe Happiness Equation which outlines the steps to happiness. Pasricha argues all we need
is 20 minutes a day to perform one of four happiness habits:
We know physical
activity can impact our mood, but Pasricha points out a study by Pennsylvania
State researchers who discovered three 20-minute walks per week caused people
to outperform on a happiness scale people who were taking anti-depressants and
people who were walking and taking anti-depressants, showing that exercise
alone can impact your happiness.
Pasricha calls this the
20-minute replay. "If at the end of the day you journal for 20 minutes
about one positive experience that happened to you during the day, you’ll be
happier," he says. The reason journaling about a positive experience can
make you happier, he says, is that by journaling you get a tripling effect of
the positive experience. First, you have the positive experience. Then, in
writing about it, you re-live it. If you read what you wrote, you re-live it
again, giving you three positive moments from one experience.
This works for weekly
recaps too. At the end of the week, write down five things you were grateful
for. Looking at the silver lining simply makes you feel better about the things
that maybe didn’t go your way.
Committing yourself to
performing five random acts of kindness over the course of a week, Pasricha
says, has a greater impact on your happiness than exercise. These random acts
of kindness can be as simple as holding open the door for someone or paying for
someone’s coffee. The reason these acts of kindness make us happy is because
they cause us to feel good about ourselves. "If I hold a door open for
you, I feel good, I feel proud of who I am and that fills me up with
happiness," says Pasricha.
"If you close your eyes and do silent deep breathing, you
increase the activity in the prefrontal cortex of your brain; the area
responsible for focus and attention," says Pasricha. Meditating for only
20 minutes a day means you’re less likely to be affected by distractions,
allowing you to be more productive during the rest of your day. If you have
trouble closing your eyes and sitting in silence, try using a guided meditation
app. Pasricha uses a free app called Headspace for his meditation
practices.
LISA EVANS
http://www.fastcompany.com/3057913/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/four-daily-habits-that-will-make-you-happier?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-weekly-newsletter&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=03252016
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