Happiness is the Key to Your…Happiness?!?!

A few months ago a colleague told me, “I don’t know how you do it – you’re chipper and upbeat every single day!”

According to researchers at Germany’s Aachen University, only 27% of people are in fact “morning people” – and I’m NOT one of them. I’m just…HAPPY, and it makes me a better Recruiter,Teammate, Friend and Husband.

When Norman Vincent Peale published ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ in 1952 (a must-read), it set off an exponential tsunami of business about happiness. And recent studies conducted by Harvard researcher Shawn Achor cemented “Your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed.” Here are a few of his observations: Nuns with more joyful entries in their diaries lived longer; happier doctors made the right diagnosis twice as fast as other doctors; cleaning crews told they were getting lots of exercise by simply doing their jobs lost weight, but co-workers who were told nothing lost no weight; 4-year olds told to think of something happy completed tasks faster and with fewer errors; and many more.

Here are some tips for you to becoming more, happy:

• Understand what makes you happy – happiness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder – unique to each person
• List your goals to achieve happiness – and your mood will likely improve.
• Surround yourself with happy people – ever heard of the phrase “you’ve got a contagious smile?”
• Dedicate time to thinking about what makes you happy – I close my eyes and do this before EVERY call I make.

If we’re to believe the evidence supported above, as well as in the article written at Guardian Unlimited ‘The recipe for success: get happy and you will get ahead in life’, we would then deduct that:

In closing, I will share with you one of my favorite songs… the one which my beautiful wife Lindsay and I walked down the aisle to, after the Pastor introduced us as Husband and Wife for the first time:

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