We all want to be happy, but since about 2012, happiness has been on the decline. Why is that? And how can we increase our own happiness?
In a conversation with the Harvard Business School, Oprah Winfrey and Arthur C. Brooks talks about their book, Build the Life You Want, and they talk about what happiness is and how we can be more happy.
My biggest takeaway from the talk was we can’t be happy all the time, but we can work to be happier. Happiness is a direction, not a destination. We find it by focusing on faith, family friends, and work that serves, and by looking at whatever happens to us, good or bad and asking, “How can I use this to make myself better, and how can I use this to serve others.”
Brooks says, “There’s a simple three-part formula for improving your happiness: understand the science behind it, apply that information to your life, and share that knowledge with others.”
Brooks also says many of us want money, power, pleasure, and fame, but if we make them our goals, we’re in trouble. The things that lead to joy and happiness are faith, family, friends, and work that serves.
If you want money, power, pleasure, and fame, then great! But only use them as a springboard to make your work and the people and world around you better.
You need peace and perspective. Arthur C. Brooks says the happiest people have a ‘Happiness Investment Portfolio,’ and you need to put deposits into 4 accounts every day: your family, your friends, work that serves other people, and your faith.
There’s a simple three-part formula for improving your happiness: understand the science behind it, apply that information to your life, and share that knowledge with others. - Arthur C. Brooks
Oprah and Brooks both say that one source of happiness is sharing what you have learned and experienced, good, bad, and ugly. We make people around us better we can help them learn and grow from our experiences, so happiness is as simple as sharing what you’ve learned and gone through with others.
Manage Your Emotions
One of the things that affects our happiness is our emotions. We have positive and negative emotions, and both Oprah and Brooks say this is okay and part of the human experience. Experiencing sadness, fear, and anxiety helps us better experience and enjoy happiness, confidence, and peace.
Instead of allowing bad experiences and negative emotions to ruin your day or weekend, observe them, accept them, learn from them, and share them in a healthy way. Oprah says having a bank of positive emotions available to substitute with negative emotions can help. In one particularly rough time in her life, she said she sat with her journal and wrote everything she was grateful for, and that helped her move from positive to happy; from sad to happy.
Negativity Bias
Why do we have to work harder to feel happy than we do to feel sad? Why do we have to work harder to feel positive emotions than negative emotions? Brooks says we have a negativity bias that forces us to observe and experience negative emotions five times more often and stronger than we do negative emotions. Biologically, this has helped humans survive because it helps us identify threats earlier, but it also keeps us from experiencing and sustaining happiness.
So, what are some things you can do to make you more happier?
1 - Invest time and energy into friends, family, serving others, and your faith.
2 - Keep a gratitude journal. Every day, think about and write down five things you are happy about or grateful for. On bad days, write 20 things you are grateful for.
3 - Do something good for someone. Help bring joy to someone else. Serve someone. Make someone else happy.
4 - Write a kind note to someone. It makes you think of gratitude and it does something good for someone else, so you kill two birds with one stone.
SOMETHING(s) TO THINK ABOUT
1 - What is your biggest takeaway from this post?
2 - What is one thing that makes you happy?
3 - What is one thing you do, or can do, to make someone else happy?
4 - What is one thing you do to help you pull yourself out of a funk?
For a printable PDF version of this post, click here: Happiness | Build the Life You Want
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