Ask yourself this question and answer it 6 different times:
If I was 5% happier….
What’d you come up with? Maybe things like, It’d be the weekend, or I would have more money, or I would drive a better car, I would smile more often.
What if you could just be 5% happier right now, or tomorrow and for the rest of your life? I know I personally wouldn’t appose to that.
Here’s a little summary of something I learned at work today that helps to answer this question.
First of all I just want to talk a little bit about how Society today is a much busier, frantic and unhappy society than it was even just 10 years ago. For instance, depression rates are 10x higher now than they were in the ‘Great Depression’…the beginning mean age of depression has dropped significantly from 29.5 years in 1960 to 14.5 years.
I know this may seem a little daunting and maybe a little scary or even depressing to some or many of you. I know it was for me and I don’t like to hear things like this unless they come along with ways to get around, to solve or to resolve the problem.
Shawn Achor the Harvard professor who has been studying the Science of Happiness and Potential, gave this presentation, and he had a few suggestions or tips to help yourself become a little happier. By being happier yourself, you can help others become happy, as many people can and will feed off of your happiness.
Now this isn’t to say that by doing these activities you will always be happy and never again have a little spazz out or feel angry, but they will help to raise the baseline that you are functioning at. Another great piece of evidence he had was that people, and this is people of all ages, from 4-84, perform up to 50% better on basically any task given to them. Whether it be a math question, an intelligence exam or emptying the garbage can, if someone is primed with being happy (asked to think about their favourite memory or something along those lines) they will without a doubt perform their task with 50% better efficiency, accuracy, speed etc. Not only with they perform their task with greater results, they too will feel better about the task they are doing and the results that they achieve.
So how can one go about increasing their baseline happiness you ask?
Gratitudes – This is waking up everyday and stating to yourself 5 things you are grateful for, or maybe before you go to bed, or at any time that’s convenient for you. How does this help to increase your happiness? Your brain starts using more resources to seek out good things in your life, so you can focus more of your time there versus the more negative and stressful things in our lives. If you do this simple 30 second activity, you will increase your baseline happiness for 24 hours. Do it for 21 days straight and your baseline will be elevated for up to 6 months! Think how greatly your own life could improve if you tried to do this everyday!
Journaling – Writing about a positive experience, even just one sentence a day for 30 days will put a decrease in doctor visits, you will be noticeably more social and you will strengthen your immune system!
Simplify vs. Multi-tasking – He found that humans are happier when they can get more done by focusing on one task at a time, versus stressing ourselves out by trying to do more than one thing at a time. Let the iphones of today do the multitasking for us!
Utilizing strengths – Figure out what your strengths are and use and abuse them. You will find yourself feeling more energized, productive and…happy!
Exercise – Pretty self explanatory this one is I’d say…Exercise releases endorphines (a neurotransmitter or brain communication chemical for essentially happiness) which elevate your mood, increase awareness and energy levels.
Last but not least,
Meditation – Practicing meditation and focusing on your breath actually changes the way your brain structures itself, increasing your ah-hahh-ness. Super literal term right. He goes on to say, “you’re breathing anyways, might as well watch it.” SO TRUE!
Okay so I lied, I think this was a little longer than a spark notes but I thought this was a pretty amazing thing to have learned today and I really wanted to share it with as many people as possible because apparently I’m on a constant mission to help the world, by helping people help themselves and live even just 5% happier, because, why not!
Check out his presentation here! part 1– part 2 – part 3
Oh and come exercise, build your strengths, practice gratitude and meditate in savasana before and after class in the glorious hot rooms here at MYK!!
mokshayogakelowna 