Happiness is an option

What the heck are you saying now. Happiness just happens or it doesn’t, right? Some people are happy and others aren’t so lucky to be so. How can it be an option?

First off all : Let us see what it is that we call “happiness”.

It’s not the things in life that makes us feel good, it’s the joy you feel going towards your potential.
Shawn Achor (NYT bestselling author, happiness researcher, expert on happiness. )

Happiness is not related to external things. We find happiness in the most unexpected situations and unhappiness when we have it all. There just aren’t any rules and there is no direct connection between both.

Now when we decide to let our happiness depend on external things, that is where things go wrong. Let me explain that.

We all know this feeling :

“I will be happy when I get that job.”
“I will be happy when I get my degree.”
“I will be happy when I have that car.”

But it turns out, because of how our brain works, how it processes our world, that as soon as we have what we want, we are not happy, but we shift our goal to something else, on which we -again- depend our (future) happiness. So happiness remains a future goal and we are never truly happy.

Something like this happens :

“I have the job, now I want that promotion”
“I have my degree, now I need to find a job”
“I have that car, now I want a house with a garage”

In other words, we should not search happiness in the destination, but in the road towards that destination.

To help us out, Shawn Achor has made up 4 habits that are proven to make us happier. He can know out of personal experience, what works and what doesn’t : he depended his happiness to getting into Harvard, then getting his degree, but got depressed once he had graduated, which initiated an 8 years research of happiness in that same college.

I was so happy I got in and I assumed that everyone who got into such a place and environment with opulence and opportunity would be guaranteed happiness. What we found is that 80% of them go to debilitating depression once they get there, and another 10% contemplated taking their lives!
Shawn Achor

How shocking is that? Harvard students depressed? 80%?

His research showed us that these 4 habits, that are not aimed at changing reality but they will change how you look at reality, actually and truly work. It comes as no surprise that positivity works, but his research showed that when you raise your positivity in the present, the brain experiences a ‘happiness advantage‘ : your brain will function in a better way at all levels. Your intelligence, creativity, energy levels rise, as well as your productivity. You become more successful. You are happy. His 4 habits are set up to teach yourself to focus on the positive things. Here they are :

4 Habits that bring happiness

Do this for 21 days :

1. Every day, for 2 minutes, write down 3 things that you are grateful for that have occured during the past 24 hours. What is important is not what you are grateful for, but just the scanning of your past 24h to something nice and positive.

2. Go on a brisk 15 minutes walk, 4 to 5 times a week. It is an equivalent of taking an antidepressant. (physical exercise)

3. Take your hands off your keyboard for 2 minutes a day and just watch your breath go in and out, you train your brain to do one thing at a time. (meditation/mindfulness)

4. Write a 2 minute positive email to someone, praising or thanking him : one new person every day, so in total you thank 21 people.

Interesting, isn’t it? Will you try it out?

I recommend listening to Shawn Achor’s TED talk, not jut interesting, but funny too! I assure you that you already feel happier after hearing him speak.
Or listen to Mel Robbins’ podcast

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