What is the top Happiness Advice From the Experts?
There are a lot of people who are happy to hand out life advice. My mum has handed down some doozies (in all fairness, times – and science – have definitely changed over the years).
I now know that going outside with wet hair won’t make me sick, and I won’t drown if I swim less than 30 minutes after eating. And I can attest to the fact that hair-of-the-dog always makes things worse, not better.
But what’s the latest advice about how to be happier? And who are today’s happiness advice experts (not just what mum told me … which was to “find a man who treats you right”)?
Let’s take a look at what the world’s experts on happiness – monks, psychologists and professors – have to say about how we can live a happier life. Here are 7 pieces of happiness advice to live by.
7 Pieces of Happiness Advice
1. Flow, the Secret to Happiness
Positive psychology pioneer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has studied those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction, and his happiness advice lies in doing activities that bring about a state of “flow.”
“There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger.”
2. The Habits of Happiness
Biochemist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says we should train our minds in habits of well-being to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfillment.
“Mind training matters… this is not just a luxury. This is not a supplementary vitamin for the soul. This is something that’s going to determine the quality of every instant of our lives.”
3. The Surprising Science of Happiness
Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our “psychological immune system” lets us change our views of the world, so that we can feel better about the world in which we find ourselves.
“Our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.”
4. Plug Into Your Hard-wired Happiness
Writer and life coach Srikumar Rao says we all strive for happiness — but our model is wrong. We need to learn how to accept the life we have, and to do that we must invest in the process, not the outcome.
“There is nothing that you have to get, do or be in order to be happy… Think about your life 10 years ago…if you remember clearly, there were certain things you wanted… Odds are pretty good that many of those things you wanted 10 years ago you now have. Is that correct? Where has that left you? In exactly the same place, right?”
5. Want to be Happy? Be Grateful
David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk who says that happiness in born from gratefulness.
“A grateful world is a world of joyful people. Grateful people are joyful people, and joyful people – the more and more joyful people there are, the more and more we’ll have a joyful world.”
6. The Happy Secret to Better Work
Positive Psychologist Shawn Achor is the CEO of Good Think, and he says happiness inspires us to be more productive and more successful.
“90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world… only 25% of job successes are predicted by IQ, 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.”
7. What Makes a Good Life? Lessons From the Longest Study on Happiness
Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard happiness study, says good relationships are the key to a fulfilling, long life.
“Social connections are really good for us, and (…) loneliness kills. Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies, they protect our brains.”
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