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stress

Category: stress

5 Ways to Maximise Your Happiness

If you’re happy/satisfied/fulfilled, you’ll do your best work. So, if you want to improve your performance, work out how to increase your happiness.

This article pulls together a series of posts that provide simple ways to do that:

  1. My favourite is inspired by JK Rowling and her Harry Potter books: they have lots of powerful images of ways to develop a powerful Patronus to thwart your own Dementors: Magical Ways to Maximise Happiness.
  2. Children are the experts at happiness (before they are conditioned to worry and fear failure). As the famous philosopher said, “A person’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play”: Childish Ways to Maximise Happiness.
  3. Music is one of the most powerful influences on our emotions, and a good song is my quickest route to happiness: Musical Ways to Maximise Happiness.
  4. Sport provides us with a rich source of techniques to improve performance, and so satisfaction: Sporty Ways to Maximise Performance.
  5. And if you are really under pressure, you can use a combination of these ways to reduce your stress: Simple Ways to Minimise Stress.

Musical Ways to Maximise Happiness

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Photo by Spike on morguefile.com

We know that smiling into a mirror kicks off chemical reactions that make us feel happy. But listening to happy music is more powerful and much more fun. So in honour of #WorldSmileDay, here are my top 5 tunes to make you happy:

 

  1. My post on simple ways to minimise stress recommended Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds. So Bob goes straight in at number one.http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aGlcUK_GkM
  2. As Bobby McFerrin wisely says, “In every life, we have some trouble. When you worry, you make it double. Don’t Worry. Be Happy!” Whistle along!
  3. Or actually Sing A Song, particularly one with a base line like this one. “Smile, smile, smile and believe. Sing a song. It’ll make your day.”
  4. OK, While My Guitar Gently Weeps may not sound like the happiest song. But the pure genius of Prince (guitar solo at 3’28) sends shivers up my spine and makes me smile with delight. And the way he chucks his guitar away at the very end is hilariously brilliant. Trust me!
  5. Now we need some dancing too and no happy list would be complete without James Brown’s I Feel Good. If you can match his footwork, you’ll be smiling all day. (With a bonus intro from Ed Sullivan.)

Happy World Smile Day.  [Sorry Pharrell – you’d make the top 10 for sure!]