I recently learned that choosing happiness can make a difference in your life and health. For 10 years Harvard Professor Shawn Anchor studied happiness and reported his findings in his book The Happiness Advantage:
If we can get somebody to raise their levels of optimism or deepen their
social connection or raise happiness, [it] turns out every single business and educational outcome we know how to test for improves dramatically. You can increase your success rates for the rest of your life and your happiness levels will flat line, but if you raise your level of happiness and deepen optimism it turns out every single one of your success rates rises dramatically compared to what it would have been at negative, neutral, or stressed.
If we take a positive approach to life, we are more likely to succeed. I have followed the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Sweetie). Here are my 5 happiness principles:
- Be Positive: I choose to focus on the positive and see happiness surrounding me every day. I appreciate the sunshine and the rain; the birds singing, the squirrels running up the trees; my computer working daily; the family and friends and pets in my life. There is beauty all around if we choose to see it. I am optimistic.
- Be Grateful: I am grateful for waking up every morning healthy, with a home, a job, money to pay the bills, food on the table and to share, my cats to share my life, my healing work, my connection to Spirit, my friends, family, neighbors and clients.
- Be Loving: I say ‘I love you’ to my pets, friends, family and to those special people in my life regularly. It is never too early or too late to say the words that mean so much to those in your life. It also gives them an opportunity to say them back.
- Be Kind: I am kind to the people I meet daily while driving, shopping, living, at meetings, on the phone or the computer. A compliment, a smile, a wave, letting someone ahead of you in the grocery or traffic line is simple and easy and sends a sweet message that people can cooperate.
- Be of Service: Focus on others outside yourself. Of course we need to take care of ourselves and our families. But I believe we must have a broader perspective of ‘what is my life purpose and why am I here on this world?’ If we know that we are here to serve a broader goal in the world such as healing others or the planet, expanding knowledge of science, teaching children, being an artist, musician or creator, building or gardening for others or whatever your skill or talent is, then small setbacks or glitches are not the end of the world. If we serve others, then we have a greater sense of our role in the world and the Universe. It sustains me in the long run.
So make your daily goal Happiness. It will improve your life, your business, your education and your health. Attitudes of happiness mend your genomes and aid in healing diseases that lie dormant in your cells. Happy people are healthy people too.
Many blessings for health, prosperity, peace, joy and love,
Ariann
