The Happiness Advantage: By first focusing on being happy, we can improve our mood and productivity that will give us the drive to follow our passions and increase our chances of success. First be happy, and you will be more likely to achieve your goals and dreams.
Actionable ways to become more happy
- Meditate
- Find something to look forward to
- Commit conscious acts of kindness
- Infuse positivity into your surroundings
- Exercise
- Spend money on an experience
- Exercise a signature strength (something you know you’re good at)
The Losada Line - 2.9013, the ratio of positive to negative interactions necessary to make a corporate team successful. Just as useful in daily life with friends and family as well.
Pygmalion Effect - Employees typically become the kind of worker their manager expects them to be. Expect greatness and you might just get it, expect a bureaucratic pencil pusher and you’ll get one.
Neuroplasticity - the brain can actually change shape to accommodate a part of the brain you use more. For example - a study of London cab drivers showed that the part of their brain that deals with spatial awareness (knowing where they are and directions) was noticeably larger than the average person. Through practice and repetition, we can mend our brains. Other repeated practices like meditation have shown to change the brain physically as well.
The Fulcrum and the Lever - We can change our thoughts to use them to our advantage - change your mindset in every situation to make the most of it. For example, if you fail at running a 5 minute mile, instead of being upset, look at the positives of what you did well and think about how you can improve them more to reach your goal
The Tetris Effect - Our brains work in patterns. If you are constantly stressed and negative about your daily life, your mind will start to look for the negatives in everything. By improving your mindset, you can train your brain to look for positives in your lives and focus on things that make you happy. This will retrain your brain to spot beneficial things and patterns instead of breeding negativity.
Falling Up - Taking failure not as a negative but rather using it to learn and catapult you into better habits that will transform your thinking and life.
The Zorro Circle - When we have a lot going on, we can collapse mentally and shut down. An effective method to break yourself out of this habit is to focus on one small manageable goal. Each day add to this goal little by little and your once small manageable goal will turn into larger ones that are making a real impact on your life.
The 20 Second Rule - Human willpower is limited and can hold you back from the things you want to accomplish. By simply making the habits most important to you more accessible or by putting distractions further out of reach, you can learn to use your time more wisely and overcome the obstacle of willpower with less effort. Make your good habits more accessible and make the bad ones harder to repeat. For example - putting your phone across the office when you’re working so that you’d have to get up and walk 20 seconds across the building to get it will result in you using it much less than if you had it sitting right on your desk.
Social Investment - The most successful and happy people invest in their friendships and relationships. By having a good social support network, you will always have people you can reach out to in times of need, and it always feels good to support your friends and help them along the journey of life when you can. Relationships are everything at the end of the day and will make you happier than most work ever could.