Shawn Achor’s TEDx Video on Happiness Advantage / Positive Psychology

I recently watched Shawn Achor’s TEDx Video on Happiness Advantage / Positive Psychology.

It was funny, interesting and inspiring. Do not miss it, Highly recommended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GXy__kBVq1M

3 Steps to a Happy Life

Simple advice

Credits: http://celineiamawoman.blogspot.in/2012/04/3-steps-to-happy-life.html

Clean up your attitude

Have you ever wondered what makes you unhappy, discontented, dissatisfied and restless?

1. Jealousy: Resentment of others’ success and prosperity.
2. Persecution complex: The unhealthy belief that people are deliberately placing obstacles on our path to prevent us from achieving what we desire.
3. Obsessive desire for perfection: The inability to be content with what we are and what we do.
4. Needless regret over past decisions: It’s futile wishing to change the past, which cannot be changed.

To put it simply, we are unhappy because:

• We can’t get what we want.
• We are not satisfied with what we have.
• We live in the past or fantasise about the future, and cannot live in the present.
• We want to change conditions around us, or in some cases, we resist any change in our present conditions.

It is clear that unhappiness arises out of our unwillingness to accept life as it is.

I am sorry, I could not help but post the content from the article literally here. A great article, worth a read.

Read the entire article here. Found via a forum post in http://www.geetham.net/forums.

Shorter hours, Longer vacations and Early retirement

Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. And another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible results.

Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.

—Jubal Harshaw, in To Sail Beyond the Sunset
by Robert Heinlein

Found this quote by Heinlein in an InformIT article. Emphasis mine.

Happy Pursuit of Happiness

Cheers,

Sendhil

On Happiness

Things that make us happy spoil our equilibrium because we are sad after they are over.

A quote from a post on Vipassana Meditation by Meeta Kabra – Found via a quora answer.

http://smritiweb.com/meetu/vipassana-vipaschana-vipashchana/

http://www.quora.com/What-is-Vipassana

Summary of research and studies about happiness

Found this article about happiness from a quora answer to How can you maximize your happiness in life?. It is a good summary of research / studies on happiness and pointers to the same.

How to Be Happy

Accept the things you can’t change

People waste tremendous amounts of emotional energy on things that can’t be changed — notably other people and their behavior. Does it really do any good to get angry at that jackass driver who cut you off on the freeway? It won’t change anything. Even if you yell or honk he probably won’t notice or care. The anger makes you feel worse, not better. The same can be said for holding grudges or harboring resentments — it’s "like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die."

from http://www.quora.com/How-can-you-maximize-your-happiness-in-life