21 May 6 Everyday Habits to Train Your Brain to Be Happier
For several decades now, since establishing The Happiness Institute back in 2001/2002, I’ve been saying that … enjoying happiness requires little more than practising a few simple disciplines, each and every day.
Since then, I’ve talked and written a lot about habits for happiness (check out my Audible series by searching for “Habits for Happiness” or “Dr Tim Sharp”).
Creating happiness inducing habits or habits for wellbeing means that these positive benefits become part of your daily life. Which is, for most of us, a primary goal!
And along these lines, I’m happy to share with you today, 6 habits that are well worth considering if you’re looking to enjoy more positive emotions like happiness …
via Real Simple by Maggie Seaver
If you think being a happier person isn’t in the cards for you, that joy is simply out of your hands, there’s some serious behavioral neuroscience that will change your mind for good (literally). Yes, some people seem to have been born happy. Yes, others are better at “choosing” happiness, even when things are hard. And still others have the brilliant capacity to feel lousy, but then bounce back and feel happier again in no time at all.
Some of this can be chalked up to winning the genetic lottery. According to the 2022 World Happiness Report, some lucky people really are naturally happier: “[Thirty] to 40 percent of the differences in happiness between people is accounted for by genetic differences between people…Some people will be born with a set of genetic variants that makes it easier to feel happy, while others are less fortunate.”1
Really, though, it’s far more layered than that, and the differences between individuals’ unique happiness levels are best explained by a “complex interplay of….genetic predisposition and his or her environment,” the report notes.
But even outside of our DNA and external circumstances, we all have the power within us to be happier.
“We tend to believe we’ll be happy when certain conditions are met, when we’ve achieved this or that, but that’s a common myth,” says Elissa Epel, PhD, professor and vice chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, researcher and co-creator of The Big JOY Project, and author of The Stress Prescription: Seven Days to More Joy and Ease. “We don’t have to hope that we’ll feel better someday. We have more control than we think. We can take the reins and discover what we can do now—small things that can boost feelings of joy or content.“
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The Power of Habits to Feel Happier
You can be happier without a magic personality transplant. But how? “Choosing” happiness is one way of thinking about it, but that makes it sound easier and more immediate than it is for most folks. It’s not usually as simple as flipping a switch. (Try telling someone with clinical depression that happiness is a choice and see how far that gets you.)
Increasing feelings of joy and happiness in a sustainable way lies in the power of habits.
“Habits are formed when we repeat behaviors. [They] get embedded in our neural wiring, in the basal ganglia,” Epel explains. Consciously adopting habits and very mindfully paying attention to their pleasant effects harnesses the power of an existing, positive reward system in our brains. “When a behavior triggers a positive emotional response, we’re likely to remember this and do it again,” she says. “Awareness of how something makes us feel good can help us develop new positive habits.”
… keep reading the full & original article HERE