Got 15 minutes? Well according to a Harvard researcher you can do these 5 things to boost your happiness

Got 15 minutes? Well according to a Harvard researcher you can do these 5 things to boost your happiness

via Inc.com by Melanie Curtin

In addition to being a TED speaker whose talk has millions of views (and counting), happiness expert Shawn Achor has written several books on the subject. He has also been interviewed by Oprah twice (an activity that has been shown to boost happiness dramatically).

And in an interview with Arianna Huffington for her LinkedIn Learning Series, Thrive, he gave five practical tips for how to be happier.

The best part? None of the things on the list takes more than 15 minutes to do daily. But the benefits are tremendous: because of neuroplasticity, you can actually train yourself to feel happier.

That’s right: If you keep up the following habits for 21+ days, you will change your brain for the better. It’s proven:

1. Meditate.

You knew this one was going to be on the list. You’ve heard it countless times already–so why don’t you have a meditation practice yet?

Because you think it’ll take too long.

But Achor says it doesn’t need to be a big deal–it can be as little as two minutes. He himself takes that much time to “just take my hands off my keyboard and do nothing; just quiet everything for just two minutes, and just watch my breath go in and out.”

Achor says even just that brief time single-tasking helps him. “[T]hat simple action cause[s] my brain to have that moment of quiet, that noise-canceling moment. When you have that, your brain actually gets resources back to scan the world for why I could feel happy in that present moment.”

…keep reading the full & original article HERE