16
Nov
2015

The Most Sought After Destination…

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Where few people ever arrive.

The destination? It’s not a jet-setting hotspot. Not a trendy eatery or new-age spa. In fact, it is not a physical location at all.

Rather, it is an individual space of joy. A communal place of graciousness. The mental, emotional, spiritual state of … Happiness.

What IS happiness?

There are countless definitions, but for the sake of this writing, happiness is a feeling of optimism, of being enough, of experiencing positivity in the present.

The on-going present!

Not happiness as in the occasional random primo parking space, or hand-picked flowers form your child. Not the rare spectacular sunset or butterfly landing on your arm.

This happiness is about a base-line optimism.

There is a phenomenal TED Talk, given by Shawn Achor, in which he posits that we have “pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon.”

Scientific evidence strongly suggests that we have the formula for happiness backward. We think if we work harder we will be more successful and if we are more successful we will be happier.

What? This is NOT the formula???

But, I am a lifetime subscriber! And we were promised in first grade…

The problem is every time we have a success we just change the goal post. If happiness is on the opposite side of success, we never get there.

We never arrive. We can’t.

Despite ample personal evidence I seem to perpetually fall into the not even seductively sexy spiral of accomplish-produce-achieve-repeat.

And, as a mom, I far too often set this up as the pinnacle, the paradigm– the process to which our family aspires.

It is exhausting.

And… brain studies show we have it all wrong. It is actually the other way around. The happier we are, the more successful we feel and the harder we work.

If we raise the level of positivity our brain experiences in the present moment, it performs significantly better than in neutral, negative or stressed. Everything improves.

Intelligence rises. Creativity rises. Energy levels rise.

We can work harder, faster, smarter AND have more fun.

Plus, raising our level of positivity floods our brain with dopamine. This not only triggers feelings of happiness, it turns on all the learning centers in brain.

This is transformative.

Simply by being more positive we can position ourselves to be better learners.

By helping our children begin more positively, we can help them better participate in the world around them.

This requires upending a life-long theory about cause and effect.

As a family we talk about trying to be positive about everything we do.

But it is confusing to think about happiness being the cause of hard work. It has always been the effect. The order seems altogether off.

Like desert before dinner.

The salaciousness of it!

And yet, truth echoes out all around it.

I work out twice as hard when I go into it with a positive attitude. I am infinitely more likely to assume the best from everyone if I feel optimistic about my own life. Happiness does breed success. And success does breed harder work.

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