My good friend Molly King is amazing. You know this if you’ve followed my blog because anything she’s shared with us has been mind-blowing and awesome. Ok, enough about her, let’s get onto the next incredible thing she’s shared via facebook.

Today’s Thought of the Day:
The ‘pursuit of happiness’ is often backwards in our culture. Watch this video and see if you fall into that trap, or if you have “correctly” prioritized things to help make you as positive as possible… every day!

I am a huge fan of talks and presentations that ask people to question things. Big things. Topics like “How can my actions, thoughts, and beliefs fundamentally impact my true state of happiness?”

Shawn Achor (Positive Psychology Expert), delivers this TED Talk at TEDxBloomington called “The Happy Secret to Better Work” and it is awesome. Aside from delivering some VERY funny material, the issues he brings up ring oh-so-true with me, and I hope with many of you, too.

A few highlights of his presentation, and some of my summary/thoughts about them:

“If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average…”
~ He explains how instead of ELIMINATING the “outliers” to cater to the average in the world, as our culture likes doing (that whole one-size-fits-all mentality), that we should instead spend more time focusing on people who excel in things. The goal shouldn’t be to bring everyone DOWN to the average, but instead to raise the average UP to those people who are great!

(When asked what Harvard students could possible have to be UNhappy about)
“What that question assumes is that our EXTERNAL world is predictive of our happiness levels. When in reality, if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness. 90% of your long-term happiness is predicted not by your external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change… our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then effect reality.”
~ Funny how that works, huh? The old American saying of trying to “Keep up with the Jones'”, or… the family that “looks” the prettiest, happiest, richest, etc… is FUNDAMENTALLY flawed. Instead, that actually has just as much truth to it as “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.” Does money/success/wealth (in whatever sense you mean wealth) lead to happiness? Potentially there could be ZERO correlation between the two. So yeah, the poorest family on the block might have the house filled with the most love and happiness imaginable. Take ANY situation (person with the nicest car/job/clothes/things) and put those material items into perspective. At the end of the day, true happiness is found within your head and your heart.

“We need to reverse the (current) formula for happiness and success”
~ Exactly true. As he points out, right now the goal is to get THE BEST of everything. The reason for that is because we think that WHEN we get “that thing”, that we’ll be happy. What ends up happening instead? If and when we do get it, we just set the bar even higher. You grow up, grow old, and then die… potentially never having been happy or proud of ANYTHING you’ve done. Only because you always wanted more. So sad.

Stop for a minute and think of THREE THINGS you’re proud of RIGHT NOW in your life.

Seriously… do it. You can post it in the comments section here for everyone to see and discuss, or you can keep it to yourself. But smile and be proud of yourself for a minute.

Three Things I’m Proud Of/Grateful For:
1- That I get the privilege to coach AMAZING people everyday and see the positive changes they choose to make in their lives!
2- That I have several jobs, my own car, a place to live, and food on the table every day. So many people may never experience that “comfort” a single time in their entire lives.
3- That despite how immature I was growing up at times, that I have an absolutely amazing family filled with love and support for one another. Without them, I would be nowhere. I love them!

See? Man, that feels good!