Tal Ben Shahar, The Teacher Of Happiness

We do not need to have everything that we think we lack to be happy, or wait for everything we want to arrive, or stop ourselves from not reaching the top to be happy. Being happy is a matter of enjoying what I have now, being happy is being calm and full with what I have. This is how Tal Ben Shahar, the teacher of happiness, explains it.

Tal Ben Shahar is a professor at Harvard and became famous for his classes on happiness, which he defines as “that general sense of pleasure and meaning; a happy person enjoys positive emotions at the same time that he considers his life to be full of meaning ”. In the following video, Tal Ben Shahar explains and defends his theories on how to face life with enthusiasm and joy.

Some of Tal Ben Shahar’s keys to being happy

Among his theories on positive psychology and the development of a happy life, one stands out that, always defended by science, generates in us that feeling of pleasure and meaning. Some of their tips are:

• Face-to-face relationships : interpersonal relationships face to face with the other and not through screens, generate in us a feeling of pleasure that leads to happiness. When we spend time in contact with the people we love, we also invest time in ourselves and our well-being.
• Simplify life : sometimes we insist on going fast, on doing many things at the same time to finish sooner, on focusing on what is going wrong to try to solve it and we get lost in it. Simplifying life is making it easy, knowing that there are problems, but that we have tools, knowing that everything will not always go well but there will always be something that will. Focus on what we do, on just one thing and enjoy it.

• Physical exercise : performing physical exercise helps to release tension, improves our circulatory system and generates endorphins, which promote the feeling of well-being. “With thirty minutes of regular physical exercise three times a week we will not only be healthier but also happier.”
• Expressed gratitude: being grateful and realizing what we have and valuing it generates in us a feeling of happiness. Being aware of everything we have and being grateful for it leads us on the right path of pleasure and well-being
• Permission to be human : we all get excited, we all feel and react to what happens to us, we must feel free to express ourselves and not be afraid of what they will say. Emotional intelligence gives us the key to get to know each other and develop ourselves in our relationships.

• Dedicate time to our hobbies: obligations are present in our day to day, but making time for what we enjoy is what makes us feel that we have a full and happy life and therefore should be a mandatory task for everyone.

Can you learn to be happy?

According to Professor Tal Ben Shahar, it is possible to learn to be happy and, in fact, it should be taught in schools. Being happy is not being well all the time, being happy is knowing how to tolerate discomfort and not stop being well or feeling full even when you are in a bad situation or with bad conditions.

Tal Ben Shahar tells us that you can learn to be happy if we know how to make decisions. From the smallest that we could come to believe insignificant, for example, I decide to leave my mobile phone when I spend time with my friends, to the most important ones, such as what I decide to study or if I dedicate my time to my work.

If we manage to learn from childhood in schools techniques of improvement, emotional intelligence, resilience, interpersonal relationships …, we will be getting that from small we program our brain to be happy, to overcome adversity and enjoy the little things.