Activity # 1: 30 Days of Happiness or Get Confident Stupid

1.       30 days of happiness

The Talks:

Shawn Achor: The Happy Secret to Better Work: Shawn talks about how the human brain can actually be rewired to become happier. Happiness is usually categorized as something that needs will be attained if we accomplish something, this is all backwards. We think if we achieve this or that, if we get this job, if we get this girl, we will be happy but in fact being happy should be the first priority then when we’re happy these said things are more attainable. Shawn opens the talk discussing how when a statistic is taken it becomes the study of what is average, the idea is to eliminate the weirdos to uphold the average but this does not help when it comes to creativity or potential. The idea is not to delete the outliers who aren’t average but to ask why and move the entire average up. In short its about how little emphasis is placed on people's happiness when you take a step back and look at some bullshit statistics. Its about rewiring for happiness.

Dan Gilbert: The Surprising Science of Happiness: There’s something called the impact bias where we assume certain outcomes will be overtly different when the results end up doing otherwise. But in most cases happiness can be synthesized. We have psychological immune system we are not aware of. Gilbert lists 3 figures who should be really pissed off but aren’t because of something called synthetic happiness. Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we want and holy shit, that's awesome. But synthetic happiness is looked down upon because of the choice of words, but there's a lesson to be found here. Success is getting what you want, happiness is liking what you get. There was an experiment where people select their favorite painting but are not given the one they select, they're evaluated, then several weeks later it was found that everyone came to prefer the painting they were given . The ability to change your mind is the friend of natural happiness, but it’s the enemy of synthetic happiness. And when you’re stuck synthetic happiness is the instinct that should kick in. Now of course the lesson isn't not to strive for success but that when shit does not seem to come together to remember we have a natural instinct to adapt that we can exercise whenever the powers that be take a dump on our face.

The Challenge: 

Well….Get Happy

These two set ups will be fun to prepare because they are different approaches to the same problem. One is about reflecting and the other is about adjusting and adapting. But what they both have in common is they both deal with the lens we see things through. The idea here is to change my entire thought process, and re scan my brain for positive experiences instead of negative.

The idea isn’t some brief happy spurts, like a musical number with animated birds landing on my shoulder but an entire re wiring. Another website I consulted, High Existence, discussed the first step in getting out of a funk was making a conscious choice to be happy. So, it’s not just about following a series of instructions it’s about taking charge of the goddamn happiness train. What’s the first advice every a-hole gives you when you’re broken up with? That you shouldn’t let someone else control your emotions. And that’s fine but that should be the pretext all the time, not just when your heart is stuffed into a pressure cooker.

The activity

Let me focus on Dan Golbert’s talk first because it is full of great ideas but I had a hard time deciding where exactly the challenge came in. What I think is great about it is that my first instinct when hearing the talk was to decide where I can apply synthetic happiness. Because often they are small little day to day moments that I can have a better outlook about, like driving to work and dealing with assholes on I-4. Realizing what you can change and what you can adapt to is as big a part of the talk as anything. If I step back and look at a particular situation and the idea of adapting to it seems unbearable then maybe I need to consider if its something I can change.

Part 2 of the challenge is a little more straightforward as Shawn outlines very specific guidelines to practice each day that will make us happier........ and probably more pleasurable to be around. 

> Keeping a Journal: Of 3 positive experiences from the previous day. This re adjusts my outlook to focus on my positive adventures not my negative ones. It gets your brain in the habit of recalling happy times.

> Exercise:   I already do this so I'm a bit skeptical, but this challenge entails doing it every day of the week, so maybe that's the difference .

> Mediation: Meditation takes you out if this fast paced ADD generation we're stuck in. We don't need to have cosmic visions that feature elves every time we meditate. All we really need for a valuable meditation is to realize just how long an increment of time like 10 mins really is, there's lots of time to breath. Stepping outside of ourselves is highly therapeutic.

> Random acts of Kindness: This doesn't have been things like volunteering at a homeless shelter. Just simple acts of gratitude towards the people in your life who have stuck with you. I like to do this with my married friends because most of us have had a conversation at one point about becoming adults, and needless to say they've done  better than me so it shows I'm not bitter.

This will rewire my brain and make me awesome