TLDR; Four of my favorite pieces on happiness & the power of mental loops on our thinking, our perspectives, and our actions.
For the past five or six years, there have been a few learnings on happiness that have stuck with me. This week I added a new one, so I thought I would share all four—with my newest addition at the end.
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Hacking happiness isn’t a new topic, but one of the first times I actually started paying attention was when my former CEO introduced a framework for it.
He says there are 5 Keys to Happiness...
Live in the moment
It's better to be loving than to be right
Be a spectator to your own thoughts, especially when you become emotional
Be grateful for at least one thing every day
Help others every chance you get
Two years later, a colleague introduced me to Shawn Anchor’s The Happy Secret to Better Work (24m+ views, 12min video).
He talks about the emerging field of positive psychology and says there are 5 things anyone can do every single day to rewire themselves to be happy.
Three Gratitudes
Journaling
Exercise
Meditation
Random Acts of Kindness
Then I picked up The Happiness Equation, and met Neil Pasricha at a talk in Brooklyn. He breaks his book into nine chapters, all truly compelling, but a core argument is that you must “Be Happy First.”
He quotes William Shakespeare:
For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
And argues that most of us think “Great Work » Big Success » Be Happy” but in reality if we make a conscious choice to be happy first everything else follows: “Be Happy » Great Work » Big Success.”
And last week, a great friend shared a book with me called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.
Kamal Ravikant talks about the power of your thoughts, and the mental grooves that develop in your brain over time from the feedback loops in your head. The vicious and virtuous cycles of positive & negative psychology.
Kamal suggests that loving yourself leads to all other good things in life, and there are four steps anyone can take:
Mental Loop. Create a mantra for yourself. Kamal recites “I love myself, I love myself, I love myself” over and over and over.
Meditation. Block time each day to sit, and give the monkey in your mind a rest. Repeat your mantra on inhale, exhale the heavy thoughts. Repeat for at least 10 breaths, but ideally 7-10 minutes.
Mirror. This one sounds a bit odd, but stare into the mirror—into your own eyes—and repeat the mental loop out loud.
One Question. Develop a circuit breaker for negative thinking. Kamal asks himself: “If I loved myself truly and deeply would I let myself experience this?” He says asking this question is a trick to becoming present and to reframe difficult situations.
It was as if the simplicity of his approach had tied it all together—Jeff Weiner’s 5 Keys to Happiness, Shawn Anchor’s Happy Secret to Better Work, and Neil Pasricha’s Happiness Equation—they all, in one way or another, require love & positive psychology.
The power of our thinking creates mental loops that deepen the grooves in our brains that our thoughts flow through. It’s up to us to create those loops and deepen the right grooves.
If you’re up for it, read the article, watch the 12-minute video, and pick up both books. In that order. I think you’ll find they build in an interesting and productive way.
See you Monday.