When we think about happiness, many of us think it’s something we have to go get, or that it will come “if only,” (i.e. I’d be happy “if only” I had that great job, I’d be happy “if only” I was married, etc…)
I’d like to invite you to think about happiness in a different way. Happiness is a choice, really it is. How do you cultivate happiness in your life? When do you feel happy? Below are things you can do every day to create more happiness in your life and in others.
Send an Appreciative Email
When you open your inbox for the first time each day, take two minutes to send an email to someone in your social support network (family member, friend, teacher, coach, coworker) praising him/her or thanking that person. Studies from Harvard show this is so powerful that there is actually a correlation between happiness and social connection of 0.7, significantly higher than the correlation between smoking and cancer. Social connection can be as predictive of your longevity as high blood pressure, obesity and smoking.
Smiling Is Contagious
Through a study involving 11,000 hospital employees over six months, it was found that smiling, making eye contact and simply saying hello within 10 feet of another person increased the hospital’s patient satisfaction, the doctors’ job satisfaction, and the likelihood to refer the hospital to others. This is because of the way neurons function in our body, lighting up at the receipt of a friendly gesture, telling our brains to smile when someone smiles at us and spreading the joy all around.
Give Thanks
Think of three things you are grateful for before you go to sleep for 21 days. Write them down on paper. Being thankful increases our ability to have a positive outlook on life. A Harvard study showed increasing your optimism can improve your productive energy by 31 percent!
Have Fun
By adding 15 minutes of a fun, mindful activity to your day, like gardening, going on a walk or working out, your brain learns to believe that behaviors matter — the core of optimism. In fact, in one study, researchers took people suffering from depressions and had half take an antidepressant and half do light aerobic exercise in order to train their brain to believe that their behavior matters. While there were equal drops in depression for the first few months, the group that added a habit of exercise had significantly lower chance of relapse back into depression 10 months later. Habits like the “Fun 15” help your brain record a victory, which creates a “cascade of success,” where individuals start creating a constellation of positive habits around them, decreasing the likelihood for depression and despair.
So remember, Happiness is a choice! You can choose it any time and take steps to increase it in your life everyday.