The Science of Happiness (or JOY!)
I’ve been writing for a few days about the importance of joy in the church. The ideas were based solely on experience.
Today, I sat down in front of the TV, grabbed the remote and flipped through some channels. Saturday afternoon. Blah TV. Sports. Ancient reruns. Try PBS. Great! Fundraiser time! But wait a minute. This guy is talking about happiness. I’ve been writing about joy!
I stumbled across a presentation by Harvard researcher, Shawn Achor, who has studied the science behind the human emotion, happiness. It makes me happy to know that there is science behind what 2×2 has been advising! Joy!
I listened to the last half of his talk and when it came time for the ten-minute pitch, I went online to find out more. Here is a 12-minute video from his talk at a TED conference. Watch it and pay attention to his list of five action steps near the end.
He has some interesting ideas.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at ways to apply some his thinking and research to Church life.
Shawn Achor is the author of The Happiness Advantage.
