As we near Christmas and the New Year, we wish you and your families health, peace and happiness throughout the next year. Happiness is not something that comes from outside, but rather inside ourselves. This TedTalk by Shawn Achor, a brilliant speaker, offers advice for reversing the formula that success brings happiness by becoming more positive in the present. Did you know that dopamine makes you happier and turns on your learning? He offers a gift of 5 acts to increase your happiness—write or think of 3 gratitudes each day which teaches us to scan the world around us for positive not the negative; journaling one positive a day; exercise which teaches your brain that your behaviour matters; meditation which allows us to get over cultural ADHD, and random or conscious acts of kindness, write one positive email a day to a friend or colleague.
If we reverse the formula for happiness and success, we can give our youth the gift of a real revolution for reversing two of the biggest challenges we now face—climate pollution and biodiversity loss.