The happiness researcher and positive psychologist, Shawn Achor has researched different habits that are incredibly easy to integrate into your daily life. They will train your brain to have a more optimistic outlook and thus bring you to be happier.
What Is The Advantage of Happiness?
Shawn Achor took notice of how much we focus on the problems in order to find a solution. He saw how as a society we learned to always be chasing happiness and never quite let ourselves get it.
As a productivity-driven society, he watched that we collectively pushed our happiness over what he calls the cognitive horizon. What does this mean? This means that we tell ourselves we will be happy after we reach a certain goal.
The problem is our goalposts for success keep changing and with that, we never are able to reach happiness. If our goal is to get good grades then our goalpost becomes better grades, the same with other achievements as well.
Now what many people don’t realize or know is that there is an advantage to being happy in the present moment and not after a goal. Shawn Achor says, “Your brain at positive performs significantly better (31% better) than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, and your energy levels rise.”.
Learn more about what Shawn Achor calls the happiness advantage here.
Shawn Achor’s Habits For Happiness
Listed below are Shawn Achor’s researched habits for success because he says, “investing in happiness now reaps an incredible dividend”. Each habit will only take up about 2 minutes of your day.
You can choose one habit to commit to for 21 days to be a part of Shawn Achor’s 21-day happiness challenge or you may implement more than one of the exercises as they will each create their own positive impact.
Gratitude
A simple but powerful one. Simply pause to list 3 new things you are grateful for each day. Yes, only 3 are required. How does this create a powerful mental shift?
Explore our related article: Gratitude Exercises To Work With The Law of Attraction.
Your brain will eventually begin scanning not only your day but your life for positive input rather than the habitual negative input. It begins to rewire your approach to life by simply pausing throughout your day to be grateful.
Meditation
During your day taking only 2 minutes to pause, breathe, and be fully present will retrain the mind to let go of negativity more easily and to find better focus. This practice greatly reduces stress and cultivates a more present approach to life. You can even practice this guided meditation for being fully in the present moment.
Journaling
Grab your journal and put it on your bedside table because this habit asks you to write one positive experience you have had each day. Why is this so impactful?
Have you noticed that it is common when people are asked about their day, their negative experiences are what they remember the most? This habit rewires the brain to find more meaning in the day and to again search for positive input as opposed to negative ones.
Excercise
Each one of us has a sacred physical vessel, also referred to as a human body. Taking only 10 minutes each day to exercise not only boosts endorphins and empowers the immune system, but it ingrains the belief that your behavior matters which then continues to your approach to the rest of the day.
Random Acts of Kindness
This habit spreads the advantage of happiness to others as well. To practice it, it can even be something simple as sending a positive and kind email each day, but this profoundly increases our feelings of social support.
With humans as social creatures, it is important to our happiness and wellbeing to feel supported and connected. Find out more about practicing loving-kindness in everyday life.
