The Happiness Advantage

Are you happy?  Truly content, happy?  Its something that has been on my mind lately as I feel like everything in my life has been geared towards when I am married, when I have kids, then I will be a mom.  So now that I have checked those things off my life list, I think WHAT NEXT?  Endure to the end?  Life is hard, but my goals in life have seemed to end.  I have had many a discussion and list making, thinking of what do I LOVE to do?

If you didn’t need any money, what activities, jobs, hobbies would you do? While sewing last week, I came across a ted talk on netflix.  It was short and sweet, and hit me straight in the head. We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.

If I work harder, I’ll be more successful.  If I am more successful, THEN I will be happier.  Every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goal post of what success looks like.  You got good grades?  Now you have to get better grades.  You got a job?  Now you have to get a better job.  You hit your sales goal?  We are going to increase your sales goal.  We think we have to be successful and then we can be happier.  Our brains work in the opposite order.  If you can raise your positivity, you will preform better at negative, neutral or stressed.  When we are positive our.brain preforms better, creativity, energy, and every outcome is more positive.  

So, what I took home from this, is that we can re-train our brains to be happy.  By listing the things you are good at, grateful for, or appreciate, or a positive experience you had you are learning to look for the good in each moment.  Excersize teaches your brain to believe that your behavior matters.  Random acts of kindness is proven to increase social support, which can be the largest predictor of happiness.