To be Happier, Change Your Habits and Mindset
Are you happy? Do you want to become happier? Making small changes in your life—like meditating or exercising regularly—can potentially influence your happiness. So, can your understanding of different mindsets.
In the book, When Likes Aren’t Enough: A Crash Course in the Science of Happiness, Tim Bono, lecturer in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, details some of the factors that contribute to happiness as well as tips to help you increase your own.
The book shares nearly 100 testimonials from Bono’s students that follow their uses of his strategies for improving happiness, which are based in empirical data. The students’ accounts include both struggles and benefits experienced when using these different approaches to everyday life.
“One of the most important takeaways is just the understanding that psychological health is just as much about knowing how to recover from the negative times and having coping strategies to help you withstand those as it is about actually building happiness,” explains Bono. “We all face adversity in our lives, and you have to be prepared. You have to know how to engage your social networks or go for a run or get a good night’s sleep to help you cope productively and in ways that are psychologically healthy. Then you’ll be in a position to get back on your feet and back on the path toward happiness.”
Having resilience is one such way that you can overcome adversity and bounce back toward happiness. (In fact, a recent Quartz article makes the case that resilience is the new happiness.) As a business owner, you’re guaranteed to encounter setbacks from time to time. Seeing these as learning opportunities instead of failures will help you get back up again and be more positive when facing your next challenge. To build resilience in general, you can draw on mindfulness, gratitude and curiosity.
Lisa Cunningham
Lisa Cunningham is a freelance writer and social media consultant. She holds a master’s degree in professional writing with a focus on web content development from Chatham University and a bachelor’s degree in English writing and communication from the University of Pittsburgh.
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