Project Happiness Articles — wellness

When I’d encounter myself in high-stress situations, I would engage in the following 5-minute exercise, which is extremely efficient if you feel a lot of nervousness and you need to be quickly calmed down (i.e: when looking for a job, before an interview, before a presentation, before asking for a raise). You can do it wherever and whenever you want.

Journaling brings happiness because it helps us to see the forest through the trees. The act of writing helps us prioritize the people, places, activities, and work that foster joy and meaning in our lives.

If happiness is available to us at any moment through the power of our minds, why does it sometimes seem so hard to do? When our thoughts run amok, how do we choose better ones? We’ve all had those experiences (moments, hours, even days!) when finding a happier thought seemed nearly impossible. When endless loops of worry, frustration, overwhelm, etc. not only challenged our ability to find our happy place, they caused us to forget we even had the choice.

Do your parents, significant others, friends, or even colleagues have tons of quotes and positive sayings around the house? Mine do. Everywhere I went in my childhood home, there was always some form of inspiration. From the guest bathroom to my mom's home office, there was never a moment where I didn’t see something positive. 

From an evolutionary perspective, we know that we have not experienced any meaningful genetic mutations from our Sapiens ancestors who roamed the planet some 70,000 years ago. Yet our culture and lifestyle are completely different now. Then, we used to be hunter-gatherers. We walked anywhere from 7km to 18km a day [1], we ate a balanced, healthy diet of whatever was available in one place – from fruits to edible roots, plants, and the odd animal – and we slept through the night.

It all starts in the head. Mindset is number one. Without a clear mindset, you cannot even take the first step toward what you would like to accomplish. It’s that famous quote by Henry Ford, “whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” It has always been one of my favorite quotes because it’s true. You have to trust yourself before you can trust a new environment. You have to trust your intuition and your instinct. This comes from practice. Trusting yourself can be saying “yes” before you’re ready. This is where the majority of my greatest opportunities have come from.

Acknowledge and Fight the Stigma – A recent NPR interview with Author and Professor Dr. Anthony Rostain discusses the burgeoning mental health epidemic on college campuses. A record number of students are feeling anxious and find it difficult to get help even though they know it is available. In some cases, students might even be adamantly against it. Why? Well, the reasons vary but one stands out – denial or procrastination. Only 1 in 4 students get the counseling.  

What does the word happiness mean to you? Though we all want the same thing, happiness, love, to live a meaningful life, to rise to our potential, there is no set formula – the path is different for each one of us. But one thing is sure: happiness is at the core. Our natural state is one of joy; we are here to feel alive. When we vibrate from a place of joy, we are attuned to who we really are. This allows life to open up to us, and allows us to meet that energy in ways we might not have previously imagined.

Connection is my shorthand for the incomparable bliss of knowing and embracing your values and true self, authentically moving through the world nurturing positive connections with other people and the world around you. The idea of connecting (to your own self, to other people, and to any other aspect of our lives) is something with intuitive appeal for us. Life is really all about relationships – how we relate to ourselves, to others, to the world, to our work, etc. What would happen if we focused on strengthening all of those relationships, instead of trying to be “happy”?

Many of us do not learn enough tools when growing up to manage stress. Unless we take the initiative to learn alternative coping strategies, we respond to stress with the same patterns we have learned as children. Ten years ago as a pre-med college student, I was so stressed out that I wanted to drop out of college. I believed that I had to be perfect in order to be successful. I feared failure. I knew I needed to make a radical shift, so I started to see a mind-body therapist and adopt a meditation and yoga practice. These practices provided me with some starting tools to retrain my brain to handle stressors with resilience.