Unapologetically Marie

Writer, podcaster, mental health advocate

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Finding Happiness and Resiliency

Finding happiness and resiliency is about having balance across three areas in your life: community & connection; health & wellbeing; and meaning & purpose.

The Great Attrition is Only the Start of the Happiness Revolution

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Happiness Revolution

The Happiness Revolution is finally happening, and it’s starting in the most unlikely of places… our workplaces.

All around the world, millions of employees have started rising up and taking control of their lives and their wellbeing. They’re saying “no” to corporate platitudes and mediocre work environments. They’re saying, “enough is enough.”

You see, since early 2020, we’ve all been thinking… we’ve been thinking about what’s important in life… a global pandemic will do that to you.

We now know we want to work to live, not live to work. We don’t value long work hours and bad work environments. We do value time with our family and friends, a slower pace of life, less stress, more time. Better wellbeing.

As organisational psychologist Adam Grant writes, “For generations, we’ve organized our lives around our work. Our jobs have dictated where we make our homes, when we see our families, and what we can squeeze into our downtime. What if we reversed that, and started planning our work around our lives?”

So, our jobs have to change. They have to enable, not hurt, our wellbeing. We don’t want to work 50-hour weeks, in horrible work environments with horrible bosses and colleagues. We want jobs that we’re passionate about. We want meaning and a sense of satisfaction from the work we do.

We also want flexibility. Not flexibility to work more hours, blur the lines between home and work and eventually burnout. No, we want flexibility to put our lives first and our jobs second. If we want to take a class at lunchtime, or pick up the kids from school, then we’re now looking for jobs that can fit around our personal wellbeing priorities, not the other way around.

Source: Work Chronicles | Comics about work (twitter.com)

Finally, we want positive, happy work environments, and we will no longer put up with bad bosses or teams. If we do have to spend 40 hours a week with a group of people, we want to at least enjoy their company and feel like a solid team working together to achieve a goal.

In a Wired article called The Great Resignation is here and no one is prepared, recent job quitter, Ashley said, “I want a job that suits my life and means I’m not tied to a desk all day, every day. And if I don’t feel happy, I can just quit. There are more than enough jobs out there.”

Ashley is the face of the Happiness Revolution.

You might be thinking that I’m exaggerating. Surely, I’m just talking about a handful of those pesky entitled millennials. This phenomenon can’t be that endemic, can it?

Sorry, it is, and we’re seeing it across all generations, all around the world. People are voting with their feet, by leaving their jobs in droves.

Global consulting firm McKinsey surveyed employers and employees in Australia, Canada, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. and found that forty per cent of employees were at least somewhat likely to quit in the next three to six months. In the U.S., an astounding 11 million people quit their jobs between April and June, according to the US Department of Labor.

Source: Ms. Young Professional (@MsYoungProfess) / Twitter

It’s the Start of the Happiness Revolution

The conditions are now ripe for mass disruption. For the first time since the first Industrial Revolution – before the slow degradation of organised labour over the past century – workers have the power, not the large corporations. We know there are plenty of jobs in the market, and thanks to social media we can easily organise ourselves and share information about the wages, conditions and benefits others are getting. Not only that, but we’re seeing the start of a post-Covid boom as economies pick up again, leading to more jobs than qualified people.

Now that we, the workers, have the upper hand, we’re calling out the long-ignored disconnect between the rhetoric at the top (or from the HR department’s glossy brochures and web pages), and the lack of any hiring processes that screen for true leadership. We’re saying “no” to bad bosses, who communicated poorly – or not at all – during the past 18 months. We’re saying “no” to the leaders who only care about making their bosses happy, who take all the credit for the team’s work, and who couldn’t even tell you whether you have a family, let along know that little Johny has been sick. We’re saying, “good luck micromanaging us from home!”

Employers need to up their game, and pronto. They need to realise they can’t just throw around empty statements like “employee engagement is important” and “we value our employees,” while hoping that the jerk they just promoted because he gets the job done will remember to use the corporate reward and recognition platform a couple of times a year. Nope, thanks to Covid, employees now expect more.

As millions of people around the world quit their jobs – sometimes in response to terrible leadership and wellbeing support during Covid, sometimes due to the fear of a mandated return to the ‘pre-Covid’ office environment, and sometimes in search of greener pastures – it’s clear there is no going back. No matter which way you look at it, the Great Resignation is here, and the Happiness Revolution is underway!

Sidebar: Before we move on, I do want to apologise to those ‘entitled Millennials’ who spent the past decade asking for jobs with purpose, true opportunities for growth, and flexibility – because they had already realised that life isn’t only about work and the rat race. After a couple of years of burnout, anxiety, soul-searching and eventually (for most of us) growth, the rest of us are now onboard. We finally get it. Sorry it took us so long.

woman sitting on sofa while looking at phone with laptop on lap
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

3 Steps to Retaining and Attracting Employees During the Happiness Revolution

Leaders, this is your wake-up call. If you want to retain any of your top talent, or attract any of the talent currently, or soon to be, on the market, you need to get onboard with the happiness revolution. The good news is that happy employees are more productive and more successful, so it’s a win-win.

All it takes is a bit of effort and time. Listen to your employees, get to know them, and as much as possible, have authentic conversations with them about what they want. The research in this space has been around for years, it’s time to finally prioritise it. Here’s what you have to do…

Help you Employees Find Purpose and Meaning – and not Necessarily With you

Leaders need to get back to mentoring their team members, being their biggest cheerleaders and helping them to reach their potential. This starts with having conversations to find out who your employees are and what they want out of life. It means knowing and caring about their lives outside work. It means knowing what drives them and what they care about. And once you know what they want, it means actively advocating for your team members, promoting their achievements and taking their career advancement into your hands.

More than anything, it means helping them find meaning in their job, or helping to craft a role that can provide that meaning. And if that’s not possible, it means helping them build the skills to eventually move onto another job that will deliver purpose and meaning. This might seem counter-intuitive, but they will work harder for you while they develop those skills and be an advocate for you and the organisation when they do leave (which they would have done anyway). Maybe one day they’ll return with deeper skills and more appreciation and loyalty.

None of this is new, but in a post Covid world, and in a fight for talent, there is no longer any time to dawdle. As organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant says in this Wall Street Journal article, “The Great Resignation isn’t a mad dash away from the office. It’s the culmination of a long march toward freedom. Flexibility is more than choosing the place where you work. It’s having freedom to decide your purpose, your people, and your priorities.”

We know the best way to succeed is to help others succeed. So get to it, because if you don’t invest time into helping your employees find purpose, they’ll look for it elsewhere.

Related reading: What Makes a Job Meaningful and Why That Matters

Provide True Flexibility – for all

Somewhere in the past 18-months – between Zoom calls, stretchy pants, and sourdough baking – we realised we no longer want “work-life balance.” We just want a life. A good life.

We’ve realised the dichotomy of work and life that is implicit in the term ‘work-life balance’ is false. We were not put on this earth to hate our jobs, work 50-hour weeks, work through our lunch breaks, never take leave, and suffer such severe burnout and stress that it impacts our physical health.

Meanwhile we try to cram every good experience into the remaining evening and weekend hours. Constantly ticking off our to-do list and never feeling rested. Then eventually we die.

NO THANK YOU.

That is not life. And that is not living.

The great thing about the global Covid work-from-home experiment is that we now know we can be productive when working from home. Despite leaders’ fears, nothing fell apart. In fact, the stock market has boomed since early 2020.

The work-from-home experiment also shone a light on inequity. Caregivers – who are disproportionately women — don’t necessarily want to go back to a world with an additional two hours of commute time, on top of an eight-hour workday and a few hours of caregiving squeezed into the remaining hours of the day. People on minimum wage don’t want to have to come back into the office, spend money on expensive work attire and CBD-priced lunches.

This experiment has shown we work 100% from home and still deliver results. So why then are some leaders talking about everyone coming back into the office?  Flexibility doesn’t mean everyone gets to work one day a week from home, it means you ask each and every worker what works for them, and you accommodate their needs. Nothing short of this will lead to retention of good employees.

Related reading: How to Move on From Job Burnout

Happiness Matters – Have Some Fun

I don’t know why organisations are so tied to employee engagement as a metric of success. No employee wakes up thinking, “Jeez, I hope I’m engaged today.’ But many millions of people are leaving poor-fit roles, depressing teams, bad bosses and in-flexible companies because they are not happy. Ask any parent what they want most in life for their children, and they’ll say “happiness.”

It’s simple really. Happiness matters. As psychologist and happiness author Shawn Achor found in his research on workplace happiness, happier workplaces are more successful.  “When we are happy—when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it,” he said.

As we enter the happiness revolution, and employees expect their happiness to matter, we need to bring some fun and joy back into workplaces and teams. Spend time laughing and learning together. Ask your employees, “what makes you happy?” Then make them responsible for contributing, but also take charge yourself for building a happy culture.

“Each one of us is like that butterfly in the Butterfly Effect. And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations our families and our communities.”
― Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work

Related reading: Fun Isn’t Only for Children – Here’s How to Make Your Life More Fun!

 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources!

School of Positive Transformation

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Work-Life Balance – What Really Makes Us Happy Might Surprise You

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Work-Life Balance

Lis Ku, De Montfort University

Finding the right work-life balance is by no means a new issue in our society. But the tension between the two has been heightened by the pandemic, with workers increasingly dwelling over the nature of their work, its meaning and purpose, and how these affect their quality of life.

Studies suggest people are leaving or planning to leave their employers in record numbers in 2021 – a “great resignation” that appears to have been precipitated by these reflections. But if we’re all reconsidering where and how work slots into our lives, what should we be aiming at?

It’s easy to believe that if only we didn’t need to work, or we could work far fewer hours, we’d be happier, living a life of hedonic experiences in all their healthy and unhealthy forms. But this fails to explain why some retirees pick up freelance jobs and some lottery winners go straight back to work.

Striking the perfect work-life balance, if there is such a thing, isn’t necessarily about tinkering with when, where and how we work – it’s a question of why we work. And that means understanding sources of happiness that might not be so obvious to us, but which have crept into view over the course of the pandemic.

Attempts to find a better work-life balance are well merited. Work is consistently and positively related to our wellbeing and constitutes a large part of our identity. Ask yourself who you are, and very soon you’ll resort to describing what you do for work.

Our jobs can provide us with a sense of competence, which contributes to wellbeing. Researchers have demonstrated not only that labour leads to validation but that, when these feelings are threatened, we’re particularly drawn to activities that require effort – often some form of work – because these demonstrate our ability to shape our environment, confirming our identities as competent individuals.

Work even seems to makes us happier in circumstances when we’d rather opt for leisure. This was demonstrated by a series of clever experiments in which participants had the option to be idle (waiting in a room for 15 minutes for an experiment to start) or to be busy (walking for 15 minutes to another venue to participate in an experiment). Very few participants chose to be busy, unless they were forced to make the walk, or given a reason to (being told there was chocolate at the other venue).

Yet the researchers found that those who’d spent 15 minutes walking ended up significantly happier than those who’d spent 15 minutes waiting – no matter whether they’d had a choice or a chocolate or neither. In other words, busyness contributes to happiness even when you think you’d prefer to be idle. Animals seem to get this instinctively: in experiments, most would rather work for food than get it for free.

Eudaimonic Happiness

The idea that work, or putting effort into tasks, contributes to our general wellbeing is closely related to the psychological concept of eudaimonic happiness. This is the sort of happiness that we derive from optimal functioning and realising our potential. Research has shown that work and effort is central to eudaimonic happiness, explaining that satisfaction and pride you feel on completing a gruelling task.

On the other side of the work-life balance stands hedonic happiness, which is defined as the presence of positive feelings such as cheerfulness and the relative scarcity of negative feelings such as sadness or anger. We know that hedonic happiness offers empirical mental and physical health benefits, and that leisure is a great way to pursue hedonic happiness.

But even in the realm of leisure, our unconscious orientation towards busyness lurks in the background. A recent study has suggested that there really is such a thing as too much free time – and that our subjective wellbeing actually begins to drop if we have more than five hours of it in a day. Whiling away effortless days on the beach doesn’t seem to be the key to long-term happiness.

This might explain why some people prefer to expend significant effort during their leisure time. Researchers have likened this to compiling an experiential CV, sampling unique but potentially unpleasant or even painful experiences – at the extremes, this might be spending a night in an ice hotel, or joining an endurance desert race. People who take part in these forms of “leisure” typically talk about fulfilling personal goals, making progress and accumulating accomplishments – all features of eudaimonic happiness, not the hedonism we associate with leisure.

The Real Balance

This orientation sits well with a new concept in the field of wellbeing studies: that a rich and diverse experiential happiness is the third component of a “good life”, in addition to hedonic and eudaimonic happiness.

Across nine countries and tens of thousands of participants, researchers recently found that most people (over 50% in each country) would still prefer a happy life typified by hedonic happiness. But around a quarter prefer a meaningful life embodied by eudaimonic happiness, and a small but nevertheless significant amount of people (about 10-15% in each country) choose to pursue a rich and diverse experiential life.

Given these different approaches to life, perhaps the key to long-lasting wellbeing is to consider which lifestyle suits you best: hedonic, eudaimonic or experiential. Rather than pitching work against life, the real balance to strike post-pandemic is between these three sources of happiness.

Lis Ku, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, De Montfort University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources! 

3 Silver Linings of the Pandemic  

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Silver Linings of the Pandemic

This time last year we were hopeful for a complete end to the pandemic and a return to normal life. Then the Delta strain hit and we went back into lockdowns and cases picked up again. Now, we’re facing the reality that Covid is here to stay and we’re grappling with the certainty of a different future from what we had previously imagined. 

With this renewed hope, now is the time to take stock of our lives and look at where the pandemic found us and where it leaves us. It’s true that our lives have been disrupted in unprecedented ways. We have lost a great deal. Yet a lot of good has also come from the pandemic. It has even impacted many of us positively as well. We’ve learnt lessons that no school would have ever taught us, and if we commit to growth, we can carry these lessons for a lifetime. Afterall, you should never let a crisis go to waste! 

So, what are these hard-fought lessons? Let’s take a look. 

1. We Understand the Importance of Getting Outside into Nature and Sun 

They say you often don’t appreciate something until it’s gone, and I’m sure I never fully appreciated going for a walk before the pandemic. Afterall, who could have ever predicted that something as simple as a walk to the park would be out of reach? Then, as the pandemic hit, many people found the only nature we could access was our backyards, balconies or the rays of light through windows.  

For days we were stuck indoors, and the effects to our collective mental health have been well documented. Boredom, fatigue, irritability, loneliness, anxiety… the list goes on. Not only that, but many of us also have to deal with the equivalent of the ‘freshman five’ although for me it’s more like the ‘Covid ten.’ Although I have put on weight I am forever thankful for the vast array of spandex clothing I have been able to order online.  

The physical and mental impacts of not being active are well documented, as are the impacts of not getting enough sun and the positive impacts of getting out into nature. 

This study shows that to be happier, all you need to do is take a moment to notice the nature around you. Simply take a moment to look at that tree outside your window, or that plant that has just flowered, and notice how it makes you feel. Researchers say observing nature — wherever you may be — will make you feel happier. Similarly, a team from the London School of Economics and Political Science found that being outdoors, near the sea, on a warm, sunny weekend afternoon is the perfect spot for most people. In their study, participants were found to be substantially happier outdoors in all natural environments than they were in urban environments.  

Dr George MacKerron, from University of Sussex, who undertook the study in conjunction with the LSE, said, “People recorded the highest levels of happiness in marine and coastal locations, followed by mountains and moors, forests and farms.” 

With things clearing up, we’re now stepping out again, and it shows. Just spending a couple of hours in nature changes the trajectory of our entire day. We’re happier, more relaxed and optimistic. As things open up again, let’s not forget to go out and savour the landscape. Feel the sun on our faces, and the breeze in our hair. Take in our surroundings and get that little bit more exercise into our days while we’re at it.  

2. We Value Relationships More  

With the hectic lifestyles that we led before the pandemic, many of us were taking our relationships for granted. But thanks to Covid, some of us were forced into small spaces 24-7 with the people we love – they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and this has proven true for many families. 

Difficult conversations were finally had. Issues were raised that were long overdue. Matters were clarified. Not an easy process; but a necessary one. Although Covid has exposed some gaps in already-shaky relationships, it has left others with a renewed appreciation for family.  

With nothing else left to do, we baked cookies with the kids, and had sourdough bread bake-offs with friends. We finally called our mothers every week, just to check in on them and make sure they’re ok. We played silly games and ate meals over Skype and Zoom. We planted gardens together, and went for walks with bubble-buddies.  

We’ve also had an opportunity to talk to our neighbours, often the only other company we could get besides our families. We shared supplies when families were running out.  

Quite simply, we prioritised checking in on friends and family, and as a result many of us have formed closer bonds than before the pandemic. There is substantial research into the benefits of close social bonds. You could read this study which outlines the health benefits of being social. Or there is this study that looks at the economic impact of having a happy marriage, and a good social life. The results? Good relationships and social bonds not only make you happier, they also make you richer! And then there’s this study which shows that eating together benefits your kids’ mental and physical health.  

During Covid, we learned to care for each other. When we return to a new normal, the pandemic will have left behind more united communities. Our challenge will be to continue to take the time to invest in these relationships once we’re back in our stressful, overcommitted lives again. 

3. We’re More Grateful  

Covid taught us a painful lesson on gratitude. The things we have, the very mundane things that we don’t even stop to think about, can be gone from us in a moment. Did we ever think that popping by a café for coffee would be a luxury? Or taking a flight? Or attending a party? Or just meeting friends to catch up? We know that now, and many of us have learned to be more grateful for what we have.  

Covid has impacted us all in so many ways. A quote I love to think about is that “we’re all in different boats, but we’re in the same storm.” So, while Covid has impacted us all, it has definitely impacted us in different ways and what each of us is thankful for will differ. For me, when I get sick of working yet again from home, I try to remember that at least I have a home and a job. That is something to be thankful for, and something which many people cannot say. When I think about what could have gone wrong, I know I have been truly blessed and this brings a peace and quiet optimism to my life that I wish I could share with everyone I know. And I am not alone, many people have been counting their blessings throughout these tough times… and that’s a good thing.  

Gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. Practicing gratitude can be as easy as sharing what went well that day with your family at the dinner table or keeping a daily or weekly gratitude journal. 

Related reading: How to Practice Gratitude, and Why You Should do it 

Covid has pushed us to our emotional limits; but it has also challenged us to live a more intentional, purposeful lives, build stronger relationships and acknowledge that every day is a gift. Hopefully, these three silver linings of the pandemic are lessons we all carry forward throughout the rest of our lives. 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources! 

Eating Fruits and Veggies Actually Makes You Happier!

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Eating Fruits And Veggies Makes You Happier

For our entire lives, organisations and people – from the World Health Organization to our mums – have told us we need to eat plenty of fruit and veggies and get exercise. So, it comes as no surprise that a new study has again found that fruits and veggies are good for our physical health.  

However, what might be news to you (well it was news to me!) is that eating fruits and veggies and getting exercise also make you happier with your life! Simply, they have positive mental health impacts too. 

The study, which was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, has found that fruit and vegetable consumption and sports activity increase life satisfaction. The study looked at UK Understanding Society Data, which covers 40,000 UK households over time. Though the impacts varied for men and women, the results were positive and significant across income groups, gender, education, age groups and rural or urban dwelling. 

It’s fair to say that we’ve known for a while that eating well and doing exercise is good for us, and researchers have long known that there’s a positive correlation between lifestyle and wellbeing but showing a causal effect had not been proven until this latest study.  “One of the problems with such an analysis is the potential for reverse causality, which is rife in all studies of life satisfaction. In particular, it is possible that those who have better lifestyles may have greater life satisfaction, but it is also possible that those who are more satisfied with their lives will adopt better life styles,” they write in their report.  

This first of its kind research aimed to unpack the causation of how happiness, the consumption of fruit and vegetables and exercising are related – with researchers using an instrumental variable approach to filter out any effect from happiness to lifestyle.  

Their conclusions? Eating fruit and veggies and exercising make people happy and not the other way round. 

How Did They do it? 

The researchers focused specifically on the ability of individuals to delay gratification and focus on the long-term benefits of lifestyle decisions.  

“These instruments are particularly appropriate because the consumption of F&V and sports activity are often undertaken as investments in a healthier future rather than because they bring immediate pleasure. This implies that individuals who have the ability to delay gratification are better able to make these investments,” the researchers write. 

As a result, the study found that the ability to delay gratification is a good instrument for these two lifestyle variables. They controlled for any direct effect that delayed gratification may have on life satisfaction, and the results show clearly that investments in a physically healthy future (eating fruits and veggies and sports activity) are very effective in improving subjective wellbeing. 

So, How Much is Enough? 

Eating Fruits and Veggies Makes You Happier

A similar study in 2014 at the University of Queensland found that eating eight or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day can improve mental health. In the study of more than 12,000 Australian adults, researcher Dr Redzo Mujcic found participants were at their happiest when they ate five portions of fruit and four portions of vegetables each day. 

“The results showed that the optimal consumption bundle is around four serves of fruit and four serves of vegetables a day for most well-being measures, and that less than 25 per cent of Australian adults consume this quantity,” he said. 

So what’s the overall verdict? Consuming more fruits and vegetables may not only benefit your physical health in the long-run, but also your mental well-being right now. 

Screen-time is Making our Girls and Young Women Unhappy, and the Pandemic is Making it Worse

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A new study shows that being online more during the pandemic has exacerbated already shocking levels of online harassment and abuse, negatively impacting many girls and young women’s happiness and mental wellbeing.  

In the last year, more than 70 per cent of the girls and young women interviewed in the U.K. Girlguiding study experienced some form of online harm, such as harassment, bullying, hate speech or images that made them insecure about how they look. In Australia, research released in 2020 found that 65 per cent of girls and young women reported being harassed or abused online – not only that, but that young Australian women cop more online harassment than the global average.  

However, this latest study has found that although technology has allowed girls and young women to keep up with studies and stay connected with their friends, being online more is putting their mental health at risk.  

“While social media has been a crucial way for girls and young women to connect over lockdown, a rise in online harassment and appearance pressures have left many feeling isolated,” said 18-year-old Emily, who is an advocate for Girlguiding’s annual Girls’ Attitudes Survey.  

More time online has led to more opportunities to experience the dangers and negative impacts of harmful comments, bullying and hate speech. Hate speech and hateful comments are the most common type of online harm.  

Additionally, moving to online classes and video calls means many girls and young women also felt increased pressure to fit in and look good on video calls. More than 50 per cent of 11-21-year-olds said they had felt self-conscious on a video call, and 94 per cent think more should be done to protect young people from body image pressures online.  

A Steady Decline in Girls and Young Women’s Overall Mental Health 

In addition to the negative impacts of social and online media over the past year, perhaps more concerningly the study has shown a steady decline in girls’ and young women’s wellbeing since it’s first report in 2009.  

Overall, fewer girls and young women are saying they’re happy most of the time, with 32 per cent of all girls saying they feel unhappy most of the time compared to 17 per cent in 2018, and 8 per cent in 2009. They also say they know more girls and young women their age suffering with their mental health, and they feel sadder, lonelier and are more worried about their futures because of the pandemic. More than 70 percent of the 11-21-year-olds surveyed said they know more girls and young women their age with anxiety disorders or with depression.  

“It’s also clear that the pandemic is taking its toll,” said Girlguiding Chief Executive, Angela Salt. “Girls’ mental health has been significantly impacted. Online harms have been exacerbated. It’s critical that we address the decline in girls’ happiness that we’ve observed since we started this research over a decade ago. Society must do more to address this worrying downward trend.” 

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash 

As a result of the pandemic, almost three in five 11 to 21-years-olds said their most common worry is struggling with their mental health and wellbeing. The numbers are higher for girls and young women with disabilities (73%) and LGBTIQ girls and young women (78%). 

Finding Hope 

Despite declining overall mental health and exacerbated impacts of the pandemic and being online more, there are some silver linings to the report. When it came to managing their mental health, 71 per cent of respondents said that that being outdoors had helped them feel more positive.  

Additionally, girls and young women were hopeful for the future with 45 per cent hopeful that people will be more caring after the pandemic and 42 per cent of 11-21-year-olds hoping communities will stay connected and technology will help fewer people be as lonely. 

The annual Girlguiding survey asks more than 2,000 girls and young women aged 7 to 21 how they feel about their everyday lives, including specific and emerging pressures facing them today, and what these mean for their happiness, wellbeing and opportunities in life.  

The Neuroscience Behind why Your Brain may Need Time to Adjust to ‘Un-social Distancing’

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Kareem Clark, Virginia Tech

With COVID-19 vaccines working and restrictions lifting across the country, it’s finally time for those now vaccinated who’ve been hunkered down at home to ditch the sweatpants and reemerge from their Netflix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your former social life.

Social distancing measures proved essential for slowing COVID-19’s spread worldwide – preventing upward of an estimated 500 million cases. But, while necessary, 15 months away from each other has taken a toll on people’s mental health.

In a national survey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S. – including 61% of young adults – reported feeling “serious loneliness” during the pandemic. Statistics like these suggest people would be itching to hit the social scene.

But if the idea of making small talk at a crowded happy hour sounds terrifying to you, you’re not alone. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling uneasy about returning to in-person interaction regardless of vaccination status.

So how can people be so lonely yet so nervous about refilling their social calendars?

Well, the brain is remarkably adaptable. And while we can’t know exactly what our brains have gone through over the last year, neuroscientists like me have some insight into how social isolation and resocialization affect the brain.

Social Homeostasis – the Need to Socialize

Humans have an evolutionarily hardwired need to socialize – though it may not feel like it when deciding between a dinner invite and rewatching “Schitt’s Creek.”

From insects to primates, maintaining social networks is critical for survival in the animal kingdom. Social groups provide mating prospects, cooperative hunting and protection from predators.

But social homeostasis – the right balance of social connections – must be met. Small social networks can’t deliver those benefits, while large ones increase competition for resources and mates. Because of this, human brains developed specialized circuitry to gauge our relationships and make the correct adjustments – much like a social thermostat.

Social homeostasis involves many brain regions, and at the center is the mesocorticolimbic circuit – or “reward system.” That same circuit motivates you to eat chocolate when you crave something sweet or swipe on Tinder when you crave … well, you get it.

And like those motivations, a recent study found that reducing social interaction causes social cravings – producing brain activity patterns similar to food deprivation.

So if people hunger for social connection like they hunger for food, what happens to the brain when you starve socially?

Your Brain on Social Isolation

Scientists can’t shove people into isolation and look inside their brains. Instead, researchers rely on lab animals to learn more about social brain wiring. Luckily, because social bonds are essential in the animal kingdom, these same brain circuits are found across species.

One prominent effect of social isolation is – you guessed it – increased anxiety and stress.

Many studies find that removing animals from their cage buddies increases anxiety-like behaviors and cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Human studies also support this, as people with small social circles have higher cortisol levels and other anxiety-related symptoms similar to socially deprived lab animals.

Evolutionarily this effect makes sense – animals that lose group protection must become hypervigilant to fend for themselves. And it doesn’t just occur in the wild. One study found that self-described “lonely” people are more vigilant of social threats like rejection or exclusion.

Another important region for social homeostasis is the hippocampus – the brain’s learning and memory center. Successful social circles require you to learn social behaviors – such as selflessness and cooperation – and recognize friends from foes. But your brain stores tremendous amounts of information and must remove unimportant connections. So, like most of your high school Spanish – if you don’t use it, you lose it.

Several animal studies show that even temporary adulthood isolation impairs both social memory – like recognizing a familiar face – and working memory – like recalling a recipe while cooking.

And isolated humans may be just as forgetful. Antarctic expeditioners had shrunken hippocampi after just 14 months of social isolation. Similarly, adults with small social circles are more likely to develop memory loss and cognitive decline later in life.

So, human beings might not be roaming the wild anymore, but social homeostasis is still critical to survival. Luckily, as adaptable as the brain is to isolation, the same may be true with resocialization.

Your Brain on Social Reconnection

Though only a few studies have explored the reversibility of the anxiety and stress associated with isolation, they suggest that resocialization repairs these effects.

One study, for example, found that formerly isolated marmosets first had higher stress and cortisol levels when resocialized but then quickly recovered. Adorably, the once-isolated animals even spent more time grooming their new buddies.

Social memory and cognitive function also seem to be highly adaptable.

Mouse and rat studies report that while animals cannot recognize a familiar friend immediately after short-term isolation, they quickly regain their memory after resocializing.

And there may be hope for people emerging from socially distanced lockdown as well. A recent Scottish study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic found that residents had some cognitive decline during the harshest lockdown weeks but quickly recovered once restrictions eased.

Unfortunately, studies like these are still sparse. And while animal research is informative, it likely represents extreme scenarios since people weren’t in total isolation over the last year. Unlike mice stuck in cages, many in the U.S. had virtual game nights and Zoom birthday parties (lucky us).

So power through the nervous elevator chats and pesky brain fog, because “un-social distancing” should reset your social homeostasis very soon.

[Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week. Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter.]

Kareem Clark, Postdoctoral Associate in Neuroscience, Virginia Tech

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources!

11 Must-Read Books on Happiness

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Must Read Books on Happiness

From the best books based on the science of happiness to top happiness books with the most inspirational and powerful personal journeys, here are the top 11 must-read books on happiness.  

Searching for the Perfect Book on Happiness? 

Are you looking for must-read books about happiness? Or maybe you’re searching for something different to dive into in 2021. If ever there was a time to find happiness, this would be it. Financial stress, loneliness and depression are all on the rise. Add to that the ever-increasing pressures of our modern world, social media, and general information overload it’s no wonder that burnout is also increasing.  

So, where can you turn to find your happiness? In this article, we explore the 11 all-time, must-read, best-selling books on happiness. These books not only look at different aspects of human happiness but will explain and teach you the skills needed to find your happiness. So, with a little bit of knowledge and some small changes, we can all achieve a happier, healthier life.   

Books Based on the Science of Happiness  

1. The Art of Happiness – the Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler 

“The very motion of our life is towards happiness.” – Dalai Lama

A beloved classic – the original book on happiness, with new material from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Nearly every time you see him, he’s laughing, or at least smiling. And he makes everyone else around him feel like smiling. He’s the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, a Nobel Prize winner, and a hugely sought-after speaker and statesman. Why is he so popular? Even after spending only a few minutes in his presence, you can’t help feeling happier. 

The Art of Happiness is the ultimate happiness book. Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. He explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life’s obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace.  

Based on 2,500 years of Buddhist meditations, mixed with a healthy dose of common sense, The Art of Happiness is a book that crosses the boundaries of traditions to help readers with difficulties common to all human beings. This book has touched countless lives and uplifted spirits around the world. 

2. Authentic Happiness – Martin Seligman  

An international bestseller, Authentic Happiness launched the revolutionary new science of Positive Psychology—and sparked a debate on the nature of real happiness. According to esteemed psychologist and bestselling author Martin Seligman, happiness is not the result of good genes or luck. Real, lasting happiness comes from focusing on one’s personal strengths rather than weaknesses—and working with them to improve all aspects of one’s life.  

Using practical exercises, brief tests, and a dynamic website program, Seligman shows readers how to identify their highest virtues and use them in ways they haven’t yet considered. Accessible and proven, Authentic Happiness is the most powerful work of popular psychology in years. 

3. The Happiness Advantage – 7 Principles that Fuel Success and Performance at Work. – Shawn Achor  

“Happiness is a Choice, happiness spreads, and happiness is an advantage.”  – Shawn Achor 

We’ve been taught that if we work hard, we will be successful, and then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, get a raise, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: happiness fuels success, not the other way around. 

When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive. This discovery has been repeatedly supported by research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the world. 

Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and at large companies like UBS and KPMG—to share strategies for how to fix this broken formula in The Happiness Advantage.  

Using case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive, and ultimately more successful at work. A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage at its core is about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives. 

4. Stumbling on Happiness – Daniel Gilbert

“What makes humans different from every other animal is that they think about the future.” – Daniel Gilbert 

Bringing to life scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioural economics, this bestselling book reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. 

In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. With great insight and accessible writing, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.

5. The How of Happiness – Sonja Lyubomirsky

“You can change your personal capacity for happiness.” – Sonja Lyubomirsky

Drawing on her own ground-breaking research with thousands of men and women, research psychologist and University of California professor of psychology Sonja Lyubomirsky has pioneered a detailed yet easy-to-follow plan to increase happiness in our day-to-day lives — in the short term and over the long term. 

The How of Happiness is a different kind of happiness book, one that offers a comprehensive guide to understanding what happiness is, and isn’t, and what can be done to bring us all closer to the happy life we envision for ourselves. Using more than a dozen uniquely formulated happiness-increasing strategies, The How of Happiness offers a new and potentially life-changing way to understand our innate potential for joy and happiness as well as our ability to sustain it in our lives. 

 

6. Happier – Tal Ben-Shahar  

“This fine book shimmers with a rare brand of good sense that is imbedded in scientific knowledge about how to increase happiness. It is easy to see how this is the backbone of the most popular course at Harvard today.” – Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness

Can you learn to be happy? YES . . . according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’s insightful and inspiring lectures on that ever-elusive state: Happiness. 

Grounded in the revolutionary “positive psychology” movement, Ben-Shahar ingeniously combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenment. He weaves them together into a set of principles that you can apply to your daily life. Once you open your heart and mind to Happier ’s thoughts, you will feel more fulfilled, more connected . . . and, yes, happier. 

7. The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle 

This book has been translated into 30 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. Eckhart says he receives millions of letters from people who say the book has transformed their lives – including Oprah Winfrey, Meg Ryan and Cher. Yet, in true cynic style, Eckhart admits that many people still simply don’t get it, in fact, Time Magazine wrote: “But the book, awash in spiritual mumbo jumbo (“The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind”), will be unhelpful for those looking for practical advice.”  

Cynics aside, this book has become a classic for all those looking to find joy in life. To make the journey into the Now, Tolle says we need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. Through Tolle’s book, we learn to move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.”   

Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question and answer format to guide us. A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.  

Happiness Books with Powerful Personal Journeys  

8. The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin

One rainy afternoon, while riding a city bus, Gretchen Rubin asked herself, “What do I want from life, anyway?” She answered, “I want to be happy”—yet she spent no time thinking about her happiness.

In a flash, she decided to dedicate a year to a happiness project. The result? One of the most thoughtful and engaging works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject. 

The Happiness Project synthesizes the wisdom of the ages with current scientific research, as Rubin brings readers along on her year to greater happiness. In fact, Rubin’s “happiness project” no longer describes just a book or a blog; it’s a movement. Happiness Project groups, where people meet to discuss their happiness projects, have sprung up across America—and across the world. Rights have been sold in more than 35 countries. Hundreds of book groups have discussed the book; professors, teachers, psychiatrists, and clergy assign it. The book has spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller lists, and The Happiness Project was even an answer on the game-show Jeopardy! 

9. 10% Happier – Dan Harris 

“I wrote a memoir about a fidgety, sceptical newsman who reluctantly becomes a meditator to deal with his issues – and in the process of publishing it, I occasionally, to my embarrassment, found myself failing to practice what I preach. I was kind of like a dog that soils the rug, and the universe kept shoving my face into it.” 

In 2014, Dan Harris published his memoir 10% Happier. The book—which describes his reluctant embrace of meditation after a drug problem, an on-air freak-out, and an unplanned “spiritual” journey—became an instant bestseller and Dan, to his own surprise, became a public evangelist for mindfulness.  

10% Happier is a spiritual book written for – and by – someone who would otherwise never read a spiritual book. It is both a deadly serious and seriously funny look at mindfulness and meditation as the next big public health revolution. 

10. Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert  

Eat, Pray, Love is a journey around the world, a quest for spiritual enlightenment, and a story for anyone who has battled with divorce, depression, and heartbreak. 

It’s 3 a.m., and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her 30s, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered, and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion, and balance. 

So, she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains 25 pounds; to an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor; and to Bali, where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly, happiness begins to creep up on her… 

11. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World – the Dalai Lama & Archbishop Desmond Tutu

An instant New York Times bestseller. Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question. Nobel Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would say, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet. 

In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu travelled to the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness’s eightieth birthday and to create what they hoped would be a gift for others. They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question: How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering? 
 
They traded intimate stories, teased each other continually, and shared their spiritual practices. By the end of a week filled with laughter and punctuated with tears, these two global heroes had stared into the abyss and despair of our time and revealed how to live a life brimming with joy. 
 
This book offers us a rare opportunity to experience their astonishing and unprecedented week together, from the first embrace to the final good-bye. In this unique collaboration, they offer us the reflection of real lives filled with pain and turmoil in the midst of which they have been able to discover a level of peace, of courage, and of joy to which we can all aspire in our own lives. 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources! 

Are You Really Happy?

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Are You Really Happy

Could You Honestly Say You Are Truly Happy in Life? 

Picture this. You finish up a manic period of work and dash to the airport to catch a flight for your annual holiday – seven days at a 5-star all-inclusive resort. The food is excellent, and the drinks keep flowing. You’re with your partner or best friend, wandering up and down white sand beaches, splashing in the crystal blue and turquoise waters of the ocean. You get massages and even head out for several spectacular day trips. Too soon, your time comes to an end, although you sneak in a few free drinks on the flight back to hold on to the holiday vibes for a little bit longer. 

How do you feel upon your return? Hopefully relaxed, maybe a bit zen, and more than anything happy? Maybe you bound into work on Monday morning, keen to pick up your work and chat to your colleagues about your trip. But what happens on day two or three? How about after five days or two weeks? As your tan and holiday glow begin to fade, most likely you begin to feel like your normal old self again. Most likely, you return to your normal happiness levels. 

What is the Happiness Set Point? 

Psychologists would say that you are returning to your happiness set point – a psychological concept which describes how our happiness goes up and down in response to good and bad events in our lives, but that in between those highs and lows, we each return to our own base level. This is how happy you are on a day-to-day basis. As Dr. Robert Puff explains, even if you win the lottery, your feelings of happiness will soar sky-high and then return to the same normal level they are at most of the time for you. On the flip side, in his book The Resilience Project, Hugh van Cuylenburg describes his time teaching poor kids in India, “I met a kid who was nine years old and slept on the floor like everyone else. But I remember thinking to myself, ‘I have never in my life seen joy like this before. This kid’s the happiest person I’ve ever met. I’ve never seen anything like him. How incredible. How is it this kid’s so gleefully happy?’” As Puff points out, this is because long-term happiness comes from your internal environment and not the external world. 

The average person will spend most of their time in the in between moments – not riding the highs and lows. So having a higher happiness set point is critical to living a happy life overall. It’s the difference between looking back on your life and thinking, “yes, I was truly happy in life,” or only being able to say, “there were some moments of happiness in my life.” 

We all know people who have low happiness set points: they’re the ones who are natural pessimists… the Debbie Downers of the world. Maybe you are naturally wired to be more negative or more pessimistic than most. What can you do if you sit at a four out of ten, verses say a seven out of ten? Can you raise your happiness and satisfaction levels so you are consistently happier, day in and day out? Can you raise your happiness set point?  

Thankfully the answer is yes. You can become a happier person – if not, this site wouldn’t exist!  

In 2005, researchers Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kennon M. Sheldon, and David Schkade proposed a simple pie graph which showed that there were three primary factors that influence a person’s happiness levels. They showed a person’s happiness set point is influenced by three major factors: a genetically determined set point for happiness, happiness-relevant circumstantial factors, and happiness-relevant activities and practices.  

In short, the graph shows that 50 per cent of our happiness is determined by our genetics, so it’s out of our control. Also, and 10 per cent is determined by our life circumstances, which can often be influenced but are also sometimes out of our control. Finally, 40 per cent of our happiness levels are determined by our activities. These are completely within our control and this means that what you choose to do and spend your time on can impact your happiness levels. 

Although this graph has been criticised by many (including the authors) for oversimplifying happiness, positive psychologists still tend to agree that whether it’s 15 per cent or 40 per cent that’s within our control, we still have some control. Many researchers since then have showed that introducing happiness interventions under the ‘intentional activity” category can sustainably increase happiness. 

What this means is that even though you can’t change all the determinants of happiness, you may never move from a 4 to an 8 on a happiness scale, but you might move from a 4 to a 6 – which is worth the effort in my book.  

Happiness can be successfully pursued. For some happiness may feel like a natural state, but for others it is not easy, for many people it is hard won. The key lies in our habits and behaviours. Puff writes that if you eat fast food multiple times per week and spend most of your time watching Netflix and scrolling through social media, you shouldn’t expect to feel any increase in your happiness levels.  

Happiness for no Good Reason 

To achieve that sustained happiness, it’s important not to focus on the external ‘stuff’ that many people mistake for drivers of happiness, such as getting promoted, losing 5 kilos or finding Mr or Mrs Right. Instead, we need to focus internally. Happiness comes from within.  

In her book Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff describes it as bringing happiness to the external environment rather than trying to suck the happiness from the outer environment. So, no matter what’s happening around us, maybe we’ve had a good day, maybe we’ve had a bad day, in the end, it doesn’t matter as our underlying and prevailing feelings are ones of happiness and peace. Regardless of whether you get promoted or find Mr Right, you’re happy anyway. 

To find that sustained happiness, we need to prioritise those intentional activities that positively impact our happiness levels. The person who is consistently happier than their happiness set point – the person who is just happy for no good reason – often is happy because of good habits. 

Neuroscientists who study the brain show that we start to form new neural pathways in the brain as we form new habits that increase our happiness level. As we continue to build our new happy habits those neural pathways get stronger and stronger, at the same time, the neural pathways for the old negative habits get weaker.  

Getting started on Your Happiness Journey 

So how do you get started on creating happiness habits? There are many models for happiness from Dr. Martin Seligman’s PERMA model to Dr. Tal Ben Shahar’s SPIRE model and more. In short, they all show that happier people prioritise activities in the following three broad categories: 

Meaning and Purpose: Firstly, they have meaning and purpose in their lives and this is often tied to a strong sense of identity and self. This is about having something to get you out of bed in the morning, and about having goals, plans and commitments. 

Community and Connection: Secondly, they have strong community and connection. They have a core group of people they can talk to and depend on. They also tend to have a wider community network, through activities like church, regular volunteering and practicing kindness. 

Health and Wellbeing: Thirdly, they practice and prioritise positive habits for a healthy body and mind. It could be getting out into nature for walks, going to the gym, or playing on a sports team, or it could be meditation, drinking water, and making sure they get 8hrs of sleep. The activity itself is less important, the main point is that resilient people prioritise their preferred self-care habits, even when life gets busy. 

Why not Start with Introducing a Gratitude Practice into Your Week? 

A really easy and scientifically proven activity which can start to change those neural pathways for the better is practicing gratitude. We’re all wired to look for the negative, it’s evolutionary. After all, the person who focused on the pretty flower over the stalking lion wouldn’t have lived long enough to pass on their genes. However, as stalking lions are no longer a priority in 21st century life, practicing gratitude can help you change that wiring. 

Gratitude works by helping you to find the good in your day and focus on that, rather than always or only focusing on the bad. It only takes a minute a day, but it balances out the things that went wrong that day, the negative news, the anger on social media and everything else that it just life nowadays.  

Also, it is really easy to do: A 2003 study by Emmons & McCullough showed that keeping a gratitude journal weekly for only 10 weeks, or daily for only two weeks, led to more positive moods, optimism about the future, and better sleep. 

So why not get started today? What have you got to lose? 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources! 

Please note that I get a small commission if you buy something from my site. Your support helps to keep this site going at no additional cost to you. Thanks!

5 Ways to Trick Your Brain Into Feeling More Optimistic

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Feel More Optimistic

Do you need to feel more optimistic? Are you struggling to keep your head up and stay positive? 

Recent times have made it more challenging than ever before to remain optimistic. Many of us are dealing with financial insecurity and loneliness and isolation from family and friends. Our usual go-tos for fixing a low mood have also been taken from us so we can’t visit our favorite hang-out spots. The closure of places like movie theatres, museums, gyms (or whatever floats your boat) have made it all the more challenging to find moments of joy or even just sanity. Life is tough enough in lockdown without having to also give up on the moments that could normally provide inspiration, optimism or simply make us feel human again.  

But there are ways, tricks, and tools we can use to experience joy in our lives and make ourselves feel more fulfilled. In shirt, there are ways to trick your brain into feeling more optimistic.  

Let’s look at some science-backed ways to trick your brain into feeling more optimistic: 

1. Invest in Your Social Connections 

Gone are the days of large social gatherings or dinner parties with friends and family. Yes, we can see our family and visit some people from time to time depending on where we live and provided we follow local guidelines. But we can’t quite interact with others the way that we used to. So what do we do? 

Well, thankfully, we have tools at our disposal like Zoom, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger that allow us to meet virtually. While it’s not quite the same, we can still get that face-to-face time that we all love and cherish, and that is proven to increase our happiness levels. Not to mention the fact that seeing others’ faces and reading each other’s body language is an important part of communication. It’s been commonly said that up to 90% of our communication is non-verbal.  

What if you don’t have a computer or can’t get access to the internet? Well, there is always the good old-fashioned phone. At least we can hear each other’s voices and engage in some playful banter and laughter.  

What about texting? According to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, texting does not deliver the same kind of powerful positive emotional reactions we may have been expecting. So, while the odd text here and there is good for corresponding about quick little things like appointments and so on, it is not all that helpful for building relationships and trying to be a more optimistic person. 

Don’t forget that scheduling these chats is important. If you don’t prioritise it and lock it in, it just won’t happen. 

2. Limit Social Media and the News 

While there can be positive bits of news that get posted to social media, like birthdays or other life milestones, social media and the news media are generally more focused on what’s going wrong, not what’s going right. Plus, half the stuff on social media isn’t even true anyway. Researchers have found that casually scrolling through social media often does nothing to encourage positive emotions, in fact it can make you more prone to anxiety and depression. 

And although, generally speaking, well-known mainstream news sources are diligent about fact-checking their work, that doesn’t make a true negative story feel more positive. Now that’s not to say that you should completely ignore current events altogether, but the science shows that limiting your exposure to the news and social media can help to reduce anxiety and depression. If you’ve been watching a lot of news lately, then perhaps consider taking a “news holiday.” 

3. Mindfulness and Meditation 

You could look at mindfulness and meditation as a form of self-care for the brain. Research has shown that practicing any kind of self-care is especially important for people who feel lonely or anxious. I could probably write a whole article or even a thesis on meditation, so I won’t go too far in-depth on meditation. But essentially, it involves finding a quiet place to sit (or sometimes other positions are useful) and practice repeating a mantra or listening to a guided meditation that involves stretching or breath-work. One of the first pioneers on the study of meditation, Dr. Herbert Benson, has suggested that at its most basic level, meditation relieves stress. And while some people may find it difficult to quiet their mind, regular practice can make things easier. 

When it comes to mindfulness, being mindful really just means being aware and staying in the present moment. Being aware of your thoughts and feelings is important when trying to manage your emotions. Awareness itself is a bit different from actual thoughts. As Dr. Deepak Chopra put it in a recent documentary, “Mindfulness is a terrible word because when you are practicing mindfulness, you’re not using your mind. Awareness of a thought is not a thought.”  

Being aware and present is key, and it can go a long way to helping us feel more optimistic. 

P.S. I did write that article though, so you can read more about mindfulness and mediation. 

4. Exercise and Sleep 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention exercise and sleep, as they help so much when it comes to positive emotions. Just think about how you feel in the morning when you haven’t slept well.  

Exercise and sleep also go hand in hand, and it is often easier to fall asleep when you’ve had some good exercise. Access to things like the gym or swimming pools has been impossible for most as of late, but even just a simple jog, walk, or bike ride can work wonders for your body. You can also check out the huge range of HIIT workouts, yoga sessions, and aerobics classes now available for free on YouTube. 

5. Get on the Gratitude and Kindness Bandwagon 

This may seem like a simple concept to some but it can be more challenging for others. Fredrickson and Prinzing, authors of this University of North Carolina study, say that doing good deeds for others elicits positive emotions. Helping people can be difficult during these trying times, but there are always ways to help others without breaking the rules. Try baking a dish or making care package and leaving it on your friend’s doorstep when you go for a walk. You can also donate blood (provided all health guidelines are followed) to help you feel more positive and connected to society. 

Or, why not try practicing gratitude. Practicing gratitude makes you happier and less stressed, and it leads to higher overall wellbeing and satisfaction with your life and social relationships. Gratitude is the secret that many resilient and happy people have been practicing for years – including self-help guru Tony Robins, who has promoted the benefits of gratitude for years in his seminars. 

As you can see, optimism is not just something we are simply born with. There are healthy habits, practices, and tips that we can adopt to trick our brains into feeling more optimistic. You don’t have to do all of these things all the time, but pick one and try to incorporate it as much as possible into your daily life and see how it works wonders for your mental health and optimism. 

Want to learn more about the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my email newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources! 

Is There a Happiness Equation? Here’s How We’re Trying to Find Out

by

Robb Rutledge, UCL

Most people would like to be happier. But it isn’t always easy to know how to achieve that goal. Is there an equation for happiness? Many formulas have been suggested. Get enough sleep. Exercise. Meditate. Help others. Spend time with friends and family. On average, all of these things are linked to happiness. But they don’t work for everyone.

Happiness is really complicated. It can change quickly and it’s different for everyone in ways that scientists don’t understand. In our ongoing research, we are trying to capture this subjectivity and get a more complete view of what happiness is.

Happiness surveys can only tell us so much, summarising with a few questions how people feel in general. We also don’t know what they were doing a few minutes earlier, even though we know it might be important for understanding their responses.

So we turned to smartphones, which billions of people are using almost constantly. People often believe that smartphones are bad for happiness, but many of us enjoy popular games including Candy Crush Saga, Fortnite and Among Us on our devices. How we feel can change quickly while we play games, providing an opportunity to gather detailed information about the complexities of happiness.

We recently launched a smartphone app, The Happiness Project, which anyone can download for free. In less than five minutes, you can play one of four games to learn about and contribute to happiness research. So far, thousands of people have played, answering the question “How happy are you right now?” over one million times.

Expectations

So far, we’ve managed to work out that expectations matter a lot. In 18,420 people playing a simple risky decision game on their phones, we showed that happiness depended not on how well they were doing, but whether they were doing better than expected.

Our research shows how high expectations can be a problem. Clearly, it’s not a good idea to tell a friend that they will love the gift you are about to give them. Lowering expectations at the last moment increases the probability of a positive surprise.

The problem with using this trick to hack your own happiness is that expectations about future events also influence happiness. If you make plans to catch up with a friend after work, you may be unhappy if they suddenly cancel. But expecting your friend to cancel won’t make you happy – you might be a little happier the whole day if you look forward to seeing them, even if there is some risk that things don’t work out.

Another reason that it’s hard to hack your happiness is that expectations are really important for decision making. If you always expect the worst, it’s difficult to make good choices. When things go better than expected, that’s information your brain can use to revise your expectations upward so you make even better choices in the future. Realistic expectations are generally best. In fact, we discovered that happiness is closely linked to learning about our environment.

There are times, such as on holiday, when lowering your expectations might not be a bad idea. After all, your expectations might be a bit unrealistic if you chose your holiday destination based on a friend’s rave review. You may enjoy yourself more if you don’t expect everything to go perfectly.

Tool Versus Goal

Another lesson from our smartphone games is that most events don’t affect happiness for long. This is referred to as the “hedonic treadmill”. You might think that there is something wrong with you if you don’t feel lasting happiness about a promotion, but time-limited joy is an adaptation that helps your brain adjust to your circumstances so you are ready to make your next move. In uncertain environments, including both games and real life, what happened minutes ago is often irrelevant to the task at hand.

Smartphone games can reveal how happiness works. Robb Rutledge, Author provided

The ephemeral nature of happiness means we might be better off thinking about happiness in a different way. Happiness is a tool, not a goal in itself. It can help us better understand what we care about, what we value. It can tell us whether things are going surprisingly well, which could motivate us to keep going at key moments. When our happiness drops, it may be a sign that we should try something new.

The pandemic has had a big impact on mental health. It’s never been more important to understand happiness and well-being. We don’t know why some people stay upset for longer than others. We don’t know why uncertainty is really stressful for some people but not others.

Our games aim to find out. Each of the four games focus on something that scientists know is important for happiness: uncertainty, thinking about the future, learning, and effort. In one game, you can use information about the future to make different decisions depending on whether things look good or bad. In another, you are a fisherman deciding how much effort to spend to increase your catch. By asking about happiness as you play these games, we can figure out the factors that matter for everyone.

The thousands of people playing the games in The Happiness Project will help scientists write the equations for happiness. There will never be one formula for happiness, but science can help explain the different factors that matter for happiness in each and every one of us.

Robb Rutledge, Honorary Associate Professor, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Want to learn more about the happiness equation and the science of happiness? Make sure to subscribe to my podcast Happiness for Cynics and my weekly newsletter for regular updates & resilience resources!