Ready to play air guitar with a rake? We've got some pacey, uplifting autumnal vibes you can dig while digging. Health misinformation runs rampant on social media. We debunked 8 popular health myths to give you the real story. Need help living more mindfully? When our sleep patterns get out of whack, it can take a toll on the rest of our lives — here's how sleep and weight loss affect each other.
Curious how working from home has changed the way we work? Microsoft's study suggests it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Want to create your own self-care rituals? We found the best books and products to help light the way when getting started with rituals on your…. Perversely, such efforts to improve happiness could be a futile attempt to swim against the tide, as we may actually be programmed to be dissatisfied most of the time.
Jennifer Hecht is a philosopher who studies the history of happiness. Some types of happiness may even conflict with one another. For example, a satisfying life built on a successful career and a good marriage is something that unfolds over a long period of time. It takes a lot of work, and it often requires avoiding hedonistic pleasures like partying or going on spur-of-the-moment trips.
Relaxing days and friendships may fall by the wayside. This dilemma is further confounded by the way our brains process the experience of happiness. By way of illustration, consider the following examples.
Yet we continue to think that this is the case. These are the bricks that wall off harsh reality from the part of our mind that thinks about past and future happiness. Entire religions have been constructed from them. I then ask them to anonymously report the grade that they expect to receive. Every hour, give yourself a break of about 5 minutes.
You can go get a drink of water, stretch, or just zone out for a few minutes. Taking a break is good for your mind and body.
While you stretch, daydream about something fun you would like to do after work. This is an excellent mood boost. Accept yourself for who you are. One of the keys to being happy to is to practice self-acceptance. While we all have changes we would like to make, it's important to remember to also appreciate ourselves for who we are.
You can learn to accept the things you cannot change without giving up on your goals. Make it a point to appreciate something about yourself each day. You could devote part of your daily journal entry to writing down one good thing about yourself, such as your work ethic.
Part 2. Change your environment. Do you feel like you've been in a funk? Or maybe everything is going ok, but you wish your mood was a little better each day? You might just need to make some small changes. If you change your surroundings, your mood can change, too.
Change doesn't always have to be scary. For example, if you and your partner are constantly fighting about closet space, a bigger apartment might be the key to a more positive outlook.
Changing your environment can also be small. Try picking up some fresh flowers for your living room each week.
Glancing at them daily might give you the small lift you've been looking for. Go out for lunch. Studies indicate that well over half of working Americans eat lunch at their desks. Or worse, some people skip the mid-day meal altogether. Working through lunch can actually lead to higher levels of stress and lower productivity.
So get away from your desk and grab some food. You just need to change your location. Try eating in a break room. If it's a nice day, take your sack lunch outside. Do something you enjoy.
Your lunch break should actually be a break. If you're eating with coworkers, try to avoid talking about work.
Instead, talk about your weekend plans. Or flip through a magazine. Surround yourself with positive people. Good moods can be contagious. Likewise, so can negativity. If you want to feel happier, try spending more time with people who seem content.
Look for family members, friends, or coworkers with a smile, and choose to try to spend more time with those people. For example, if you have a friend who regularly encourages you to try something new, try to spend more time with her.
Try to add these types of people to your daily routine. For example, if there are two coffee shops near your office, frequent the one that has the friendlier barista. Change jobs. For many people, work takes up a significant percentage of your time. And many people admit that they aren't happy with their jobs.
Sometimes, you might feel like your job is boring, or stressful, or just tiring. If it is feasible, consider a career change if you feel like your job is impeding your happiness. What is most important to you in a career? Is it salary? Flexible hours? A positive team environment? Spend some time figuring out what you would like to do. Then formulate an action plan. Feeling like you are taking control of this part of your life can go a long way towards making you feel happy every day.
Try not to quit before you have a formal offer from another employer. If you have a significant amount of savings you may want to quit before you find a new job, though it is usually easier to get another job if you are already employed. Try a new activity. It's possible that you are unhappy because you are in a bit of a rut. When people are bored, they typically are not feeling very upbeat.
If you regularly try new things, you can alleviate boredom and increase your happiness. Trying new things also gives you the opportunity to find something new to enjoy. The results of this study are surprising: Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels early on, the follow-up assessments proved to be radically different:. Of those who had taken the medication alone, 38 percent had slipped back into depression. Those in the combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31 percent relapse rate.
The biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9 percent. You don't have to be depressed to benefit from exercise, though. Exercise can help you relax, increase your brainpower, and even improve your body image, even if you don't lose any weight.
We've explored exercise in depth before , and looked at what it does to our brains, such as releasing proteins and endorphins that make us feel happier. A study in the Journal of Health Psychology found that people who exercised felt better about their bodies even when they saw no physical changes:. Over both conditions, body weight and shape did not change. Various aspects of body image, however, improved after exercise compared to before.
Yep: Even if your actual appearance doesn't change, how you feel about your body does change. We know that sleep helps our body recover from the day and repair itself and that it helps us focus and be more productive. It turns out sleep is also important for happiness.
Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine. They could remember 81 percent of the words with a negative connotation, like cancer.
But they could remember only 31 percent of the words with a positive or neutral connotation, like sunshine or basket. The BPS Research Digest explores another study that proves sleep affects our sensitivity to negative emotions.
Using a facial recognition task throughout the course of a day, researchers studied how sensitive participants were to positive and negative emotions. Those who worked through the afternoon without taking a nap became more sensitive to negative emotions like fear and anger. However, an intervening nap blocked and even reversed this negative emotional reactivity to anger and fear while conversely enhancing ratings of positive happy expressions.
Of course, how well and how long you sleep will probably affect how you feel when you wake up, which can make a difference to your whole day. Another study tested how employees' moods when they started work in the morning affected their entire workday. Early mood was linked to their perceptions of customers and to how they reacted to customers' moods. And, most important to managers, employee mood had a clear impact on performance, including both how much work employees performed and how well they performed it.
Not staying in touch with friends and family is one of the top five regrets of the dying. If you want more evidence that time with friends is beneficial for you, research proves it can make you happier right now, too.
Social time is highly valuable when it comes to improving our happiness, even for introverts. Several studies have found that time spent with friends and family makes a big difference in how happy we feel.
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