How do you find happiness? Society tells us to work hard in order to be successful, and that success will make us happy. But happiness experts say the opposite: Being happy first will cause you to do great work and in turn bring you success. So, if we follow the advice of the researchers, how do we become innately happy people?
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Neil Pasricha, the author of the bestselling book The Book of Awesome has now penned a second book called The Happiness Equation, outlining the steps to happiness. He says all we need is 20 minutes a day to perform one of these four happiness habits:
1. Take three brisk walks a week
Pasricha points out a study by Penn State researchers that discovered three 20-minute walks per week caused people to outperform on a happiness scale than people who were taking anti-depressants and people who were walking and taking anti-depressants—showing that exercise alone can impact your happiness.
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2. Replay your day
Pasricha: “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.” The reason 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.
3. Do five random acts
Pasricha says that committing yourself to performing five random acts of kindness a week 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.
4. Meditate
“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.
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Curated article from:
Fast Company
