Do you want to have greater happiness, fulfillment and success in your personal life?
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor is a new book in the burgeoning field of positive psychology that argues this is the appropriate order of events. The book has seven positive principles that each person can use to increase positive feelings, which are shown to then create personal and career success.
The book weaves current research with personal (and often humorous examples) to assist the most optimistic person to the most pessimistic to increase levels of happy.
To increase your personal happiness level he recommends eight ways you can re-wire your brain to be happy:
- Meditate for 5 minutes a day
- Spend money on experiences (not things)
- Schedule and do more things you enjoy (or find something to look forward to)
- Commit 5 acts of “conscious kindness” a week
- Exercise Signature Strengths: Figure out what you are good at and do these every day
- Exercise
- Fill your life with positivity (one way is to journal—here is a link to Anchor’s ipad application
In a future blog, I will focus on how these principles can be used by managers and co-workers to increase the happiness of their peers for mutual success (and dare I say, a more fun work environment?)