Marci Shimoff Speaks on Love & Happiness
A connection to something greater than ourselves.
When I interviewed all these people who are happy, they all talked about finding a state of inner peace and well-being that doesn’t depend on circumstances. The most universal quality amongst all the people I interviewed is that they all feel connected to a larger energy than life. Whether you call that God or Spirit or Nature or Creative Intelligence, it doesn’t matter, but they feel connected to that bigger energy. Any practice that helps you feel connected to that is a key to greater happiness.
Exercise. Exercise is a fast track to greater happiness because it releases the endorphins that change your total body chemistry.
Don’t believe everything you think. On average we have 60,000 thoughts a day and, on average, 80 percent of those are negative. It’s called the negativity bias. We inherited it from our ancestors, the cavemen. They had to pay attention to all the things that are going wrong or they would die. We are no longer in that situation, yet we’ve maintained that bias to remember the negative. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true. We need to question our thoughts, especially those that are negative and are dragging down our happiness.
We want to build new neural pathways that are more biased toward the positive, and there are techniques and tools to do this, to dissolve the negativity bias we have and create a happiness bias.
You mentioned you found what you wanted to do at a very early age. For people who are still struggling to find their true calling, what tips do you have to discover what they’re really meant to do?
