15 Feb New Study: The Further You Wander, the Happier You Will Be
There’s no doubt we can make ourselves happier by thinking in certain ways. But cultivating hope and optimism and gratitude, even by practising solution-focused thinking faced with inevitable problems, we can reduce stress and worry and enjoy more positive emotion (including happiness).
But it’s just as true to state that sometimes, at least for some of us, thinking is not enough; even if it’s “the right type” of thinking.
Sometimes, getting up and getting out is the best medicine …
via Inc.com by Jessica Stillman
Need inspiration to get out and explore more? Science says the more new places you visit, the happier you’ll be.
The surface of the earth is nearly 200 million square miles. That’s a lot of space to explore. But according to recent research most of us just regularly visit the same 25 places over and over again.
The smallness of that number might surprise you, but it comes from a study that meticulously tracked the phone location data of more than 40,000 people over several years. Sure, every once in awhile people might take a one-off vacation to Mallorca or Miami, but for the most part we each have about 25 regular spots where we spent the vast, vast majority of our time.
The scientists behind the story suggested this tendency to stick to the familiar may be the geographical equivalent of Dunbar’s number, the social science rule that states human beings simply are not wired to handle more than 150 significant social relationships at any one time.
But whether our tendency to stick to 25 places is hardwired into us or not, new science offers strong encouragement to push back against your tendency to continually retread the same paths and visit the same old places.
Our brains crave new experiences….
As psychologist Alison Gopnik explained recently in the Wall Street Journal, in 2020 scientists conducted a different sort of phone location data study. This one didn’t just track how far people roamed; it also tracked how they felt afterwards. The findings were stark.
“The researchers analyzed the GPS data with a measure called “roaming entropy,” which captures how new, varied and unexpected your locations are, and compared it with the mood ratings. More roaming entropy predicted more well-being. What’s more, how much you wandered on a given day predicted how happy you were later on, but not vice versa. So it looks as if wandering makes you happy, not just that when you’re happy you wander more,” Gopnik writes, summing up the results.
Or to put that very simply: the further you roam, the happier you’ll be. And this seems to be especially true for young people, and especially true for wandering into neighborhoods with different characters and socioeconomic backgrounds than your own home territory.
This prompts Gopnik, who specializes in development psychology and who has written several outstanding books on the subject, to close her article with an impassioned plea to free teens from the shackles of overprotective parents and endless enrichment activities and just let them roam around being kids more…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE