Don't Pursue Happiness; Follow These Steps to Get Happy

Blog

Don’t Pursue Happiness; Follow These Steps to Get Happy!

Linda
No Comments
happiness, caring, communication, gratitude, lifestyle, Personal Growth, positivity, self care, Success

There is no point in pursuing happiness. That is, there’s no point in doing stuff that you think will one day lead to being happy. I can almost hear you thinking, “wow, this one’s going to be a downer. No thanks!” Before you stop reading, stay with me for a minute or two. You’ll be, um, happy you did.

I am a huge fan of Shawn Achor, positivity psychologist and author of The Happiness Advantage. His Ted Talk is among the most watched of all time too. Here is a link to it.

Shawn Achor’s Ted Talk

In both his book and Ted Talk, Achor draws on research in his field (who knew, by the way, that studying happiness was a thing?) to teach us that there are things we can do daily to increase our levels of happiness. Increasing our happiness, in turn, improves our relationships with others, our productivity at work, and so on. In other words, happiness isn’t a thing one acquires after achieving certain goals or reaching certain milestones. e.g. “I’ll be happy once I make enough to buy a house” or “I’ll be happy once I get that promotion.” Nope. Achor says we’ve got it wrong. It’s the other way around. We don’t become happy once we are successful. We become successful when we are happy.

So, how do we create happiness?

According to Achor, there are five concrete, simple steps that we can do to increase our levels of happiness. When we do these steps, we increase the likelihood that we’ll achieve our goals, which we once thought would make us happy. Instead, being happy helps us achieve our goals. We had it backwards! Those five things are so easy to do that it almost seems too simple, but the research is tried and true.

The Five Steps to Happiness

For 21 days, which is roughly the amount of time it takes to form a habit, doing the following things each day produces the effects Achor discusses.

Identify three things for which you’re grateful. Again, write these down or tell them to someone.
Exercise–just move. You don’t have to become an ironman triathlete.
Meditate for a couple of minutes. You don’t have to be Deepak Chopra. Just get still and let your mind be. Prayer is fine too.
Perform a random or conscious act of kindness or send a positive email or text to a colleague or friend.
Journal about something positive that happened during the day.

Partner Up to Create Happiness!

In the past, my significant other and I have “worked the steps” for periods of time. Not only has the time we spend talking been good bonding time, but we both agreed that following the steps changed our outlooks on life quickly and in very noticeable ways. Both of us, in other words, felt happier.

Each evening we checked in with each other by going through the five steps. We didn’t write anything down unless we weren’t together and were texting. We just talked. We listed our “gratefuls,” as we called them, talked about something positive that happened that day, and accounted for the other things. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves noticing things to be grateful for throughout the day. Sometimes, I was grateful for little things, like the barista making my specialty coffee just right, or having a good ride on my horse. Lots of times our “gratefuls” were about each other. What is more affirming than having someone tell you why he or she is grateful for you?

Join the Facebook 21 Day Don’t Worry. Be Happy Challenge!

I’ve started a Facebook 21 Day Don’t Worry. Be Happy Challenge group. Anyone is welcome to join, so please visit my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lettersfromthecoffeeshop and join the event: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1932943440349972/?ref=bookmarks

It’s going to be a fun, no pressure, positive, 21 days. I hope you’ll check it out and join us!

Everyone is welcome. Let’s start a happiness revolution.

As always, thank you for reading. I appreciate you.

Articles

Meditation and Imagination: Warmup Rituals for Courageous Writing

“How did you end up here?” It’s what people ask foreigners or people who’ve been through tough times. The grammar offends me. What is the referent for here, exactly? This country? This town? This relationship? This trouble? This chair? On the floor? On the rise? Indefinite antecedents should be a felony. And—end? I’ve yet to meet mine. I don’t mean to be ugly, but could we at least change the verb to one less terminal? Alight, maybe, or land, though the latter sits heavy. Either trumps the alternative. Earnest or incredulous, the question in question lays track on my life’s

Butterfly Fierce

Expectations have been my downfall, and my choices have led to predictable disappointment more than I care to admit. Perhaps that’s why it irks me to no end when the ink of a good pen runs dry prematurely. I expect more of them, frankly. Like life, so the pen writes. I wax poetic as I reach into my desk drawer to retrieve another from my stash and find disappointment. A lone red pen is all that remains. Red ink is as offensive to the page as an overcooked metaphor. I compose the hard bits in longhand. Maybe blood-colored ink isn’t

Baxter’s Golden Ticket

Baxter Brown was a boxer dog. I didn’t know his name when he arrived on my porch one cold March evening about five years ago, but I had seen him before. He wore an ugly orange collar with the owner’s name and number roughly engraved on a gold plate. I called the owner. “Aw, just beat him with a stick. He’ll come home,” the owner said. “Someone needs to be beaten with a stick,” I said. “But it is not the dog.” I hung up and invited the dog inside, where he belonged. He was shivering and terribly thin, so

First Things First: write first, worry later

Most worry about how to tell their story impactfully without inciting the wrath of anyone whose behavior the writer exposes and condemns. I understand the concern. It’s legitimate. However, the time to worry about such matters is not when composing a draft.

Blog