Why can’t we hold on to the good stuff? Our brains turn out to have a bias to negativity. It’s measurable, and there have been multiple brain scan studies done that show that our brain reacts more strongly to negative stimuli. The big question then is how do we fight against our brain’s bias to negativity?
Continue reading →A big key to our own happiness lies in making people around us happy, and helping out. When you start to think about it, it makes sense, doesn’t it? We are social creatures who get to work together to truly thrive. It follows that helping those around us has an internal rewards system built in. In other words, our happiness goes up as we improve the lives of those around us. What a great deal – two (or more) Happiness for the price of one!
Continue reading →It’s easy to get caught up in all the little things that stress us out and ruin our day. Frankly, it’s not worth wasting a lot of energy on all of things that happen on a daily basis that we don’t like. Sure, we can (and probably will) get upset over the fact that someone else took the last good parking spot, or that the grocery store is out of our favorite brand of cereal.
Continue reading →News flash: Moods are contagious. Have you noticed that when you hang out with a bunch of sad and depressed people, you’ll start to feel down? And when you are in a group of happy people, you can’t help but start to smile. Just like in everything else, you become the average of the six people you spend the most time with. It makes sense to surround yourself with happy people if you want your own level of happiness to increase.
Continue reading →Happiness happens around other people. It isn’t the amount of money we make or have stashed away in a bank account. It isn’t the big house, the fancy car, and all the stuff we accumulate over the years. What makes us happy is spending time and sharing experiences with other people. All the “stuff” does is give us a conversational topic!
Continue reading →Your brain expects to take action and get stuff done, in between appropriate periods of rest. On the other hand, when we don’t have anything meaningful to do and we don’t feel like we’re contributing, we get depressed. People who don’t have a fulfilling job or feel like the work they do is useless are much more likely to feel down, tired, sad, and depressed.
Continue reading →The reason goes back to the way our brains are wired: first, humans can only experience one emotion at a time, fear or joy. Everything else relates back to one of those two.
Continue reading →I found it fascinating to realize how much the food we eat can affect our mood. I think it’s no accident that since the advent of lots of processed food with added sugar and preservatives in the Western diet, depression and other mood disorders have dramatically risen. We look for ways to increase happiness by changing our behavior in different ways when the simplest solution may be to change what we eat. Let’s look at a couple of key ingredients and nutrients that have been shown to directly affect our mood.
Continue reading →You can set the positive tone of your entire day by thinking about all the things you have to be grateful for. Practicing gratefulness makes you focus on all the good and pleasant things in your life and that, in turn, improves your overall happiness.
So spending a few minutes first thing in the morning thinking about what you are grateful for can improve your mood and your feeling of being happy for the entire day. That’s something well worth perusing and you don’t have to spend a lot of time on it.
An easy way to increase our overall happiness and contentment is to simply do at least one thing that triggers happiness every single day.
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