I listened to an Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations’ podcast yesterday with Harvard trained –positivity psychologist, Shawn Achor. It’s nothing short of brilliant: “Happiness is a choice and we’re not shackled to our unhappy genes”.
Wait what? So:
- You can be happy even if parts of your childhood weren’t
- You can be happy even if your parents weren’t
- You can be happy even if you weren’t born happy genetically
- And, you can be happy even if bad things have happened
Yep. Dope. Knew it.
You gotta listen to the two-part podcast because Achor’s (and not mine) is the voice you want to hear in your head on this topic. He’s so relateable and so not Harvard-y.
You can fight your genes and your environment to be happy and there’s science behind the benefits of living a positive life. It’s not just a spiritual gimmick.
My take away was pretty simple and it made me think of my kids. Yours too. Because, they need to practice happy NOW. Their baseline happy is higher than the generation before it (us) but it can be higher! Our world needs them to understand and teach the difference between pleasure (fleeting) and joy (happiness even when times are tough).
“The joy you feel striving for your potential”
All we have is now, yes — but — we can practice now for how we react (to bad stuff) later… with compassion, high integrity, kindness, compromise, and community — these are master qualities.
Positive thoughts. Positive life. It’s proven. By Harvard! Lol… Let’s go.
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