Research groups of scientists from Harvard and the University of California believe that happiness is a virus that lives according to all the laws of an infectious disease. According to them, if a person is surrounded by friendly and smiling people, then this attitude is transmitted to him. In particular, a person's chance of being happy increases by 25% if his best friend is happy.
Article on the topic Learning to be happy: how to get pleasure from life “The more often we communicate with people who are satisfied with life, the higher our chances are, if not for happiness, then at least for a positive mood,” says Olga Karabanova, Doctor of Psychology, Deputy Dean for scientific work of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University. Read more about the “contagiousness” of happiness >>
But physiologists believe that happiness depends on hormones - endorphin, serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin eliminates depression, improves mental abilities, is beneficial for internal organs, and improves the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract. But serotonin works closely with dopamine, the pleasure hormone, and GABA, which is responsible for the relaxation process.
The lack of even one of these substances affects the mood, depriving a person of a feeling of happiness. To prevent this from happening, you can make small adjustments to your diet by increasing the doses of certain foods:
- Serotonin - found in eggs, low-fat cheeses, poultry, and avocados.
- Dopamine – found in fruits and vegetables with vitamin C.
- GABA - found in eggs, dark green vegetables, seeds, nuts, potatoes and bananas.
But happiness is not only in tasty and healthy food, but also in a good mood, a positive outlook, the absence of stress, anxiety and worry, as well as psychological and physical health.
What is happiness? Try to solve the puzzle>>
What is happiness
Modern psychology has begun to seriously address this pressing issue. Gradually, scattered studies turned into science. Now it is customary to discuss satisfaction, well-being, and joy based on scientific experiments and reliable facts.
This is an unsurpassed feeling that arises in a person who is overwhelmed with delight. He glows from within, thinks positively, and protects himself from negative emotions. The source can be completely different experiences - a boat ride on the river, the birth of a long-awaited baby. There is no universal definition. Each person is happy in his own way, depending on individual values, preferences, and interests. Mental and physical health are directly affected by lifestyle and behavioral characteristics.
You can only be completely happy for a limited time. After all, at any second the unexpected can happen, the state of euphoria will be replaced by negativity.
Happiness criteria
Disputes on this issue continue among psychologists. But it is quite possible to highlight the main ones.
- Favourite buisness. If someone is doing something that brings them satisfaction, great. It’s doubly wonderful when work gives pleasure. It’s not for nothing that a highly paid hobby is considered the best activity.
- You need to live here and now. You need to be able to feel the present moment. If you only plan for the future, there will be no opportunity to experience the delights of life.
- The ability to enjoy life. It is much easier for an optimist to learn to be a happy person. He relates more simply to what is happening around him, realizes the value of existence, and enjoys it accordingly.
- The ability to make choices. People often push themselves into limits; living in society, they understand that this is important. However, one should be freed from shackles in a timely and correct manner. To make your life easier, you need to make decisions quickly, without getting hung up on the little things.
- Support and love. By far the most important criterion. Without the care and help of loved ones, it is impossible to gain confidence, determination, realize talents and many significant things that are required to feel the fullness of life.
- Getting rid of envy. By envy, a person destroys himself. This is understood by those people who know how to be happy for others. To achieve happiness, you need to love those around you.
- Determination. Anyone who does not have a goal does not know what to strive for, what to live for. Achieving our goals helps us develop and makes us better.
If you can't do it yourself
My name is Lara Litvinova, I am a psychologist, and I can help you deal with situations from the past, as well as fears and anxieties for the future. I can help you understand how to be a happy person and enjoy life. I conduct consultations on Skype, here you can sign up and see the cost of consultations, and follow the link to read reviews about me and my work.
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Truth #2: Surrogates for Happiness
Most people, when they want to shake themselves up, experience some emotions, feel better, choose a surrogate for emotions in the form of delicious food, alcohol, a TV series, a movie, a book, or funny videos on a social network feed. All of these are ways to quickly gain emotions by escaping reality. This is a good way to feel better, because it is guaranteed and quick, but it allows you not to enjoy life, but rather, on the contrary, to get away from it and enjoy something that has nothing to do with your immediate reality. Just like mentally hanging in the past and future, it allows you to escape from the problems of the present and create yourself, albeit artificial, but guaranteed joy.
The disadvantage of such a surrogate is that when you live it, your life does not move, you seem to temporarily leave it. The only change that continues to happen to your life during this time is that it is slowly but surely coming to an end.
Giving up your own life in favor of a quick and guaranteed surrogate of positive emotions is another reason for the lack of real joy in your life. Every time, making a choice in favor of living your real life and trying to get emotions from it, from your own reality, is the best way to be a happy person and truly enjoy life.
Your real life is your work, communication with friends, relatives, colleagues. Spend time with children and loved ones. Play sports, devote time to your interests and hobbies. Work on yourself, on your external and internal world. Live the present moment, enjoy it. To be in it, to be him.
As a psychologist, I can help you get rid of addictions - those very surrogates of joy - alcohol, cigarettes, TV series, social networks, dependence on another person. All these ways to escape reality run the risk of developing into addiction because of the simple and easy feeling of happiness that they give.
Both the first and second ways of escaping reality are the two main obstacles on the path to your joy. I already wrote at the beginning of the article that joy is an emotion of the present. It can only be experienced by being mentally here and now. Therefore, while you regret the past or fantasize about the future, you will not be able to enjoy life and experience sincere interest in it. Second, ways of avoiding life may give you happy moments, but they will not be real. For example, when you look back on your life when you are 70 years old, you will not remember the times when you enjoyed delicious food, drank, or watched TV shows. You will remember the moments that made you happy in your real life.
Truth #3: From Passivity to Activity
Having gotten rid of triggers from the past, starting to live in the present and not escaping into surrogates of positive emotions, you will need to learn again and again to fill your life with new, now real emotions, and lead a rich life. This will really be necessary - in all other cases you risk falling again into the pit of artificial happiness.
So how can you be a happy person and enjoy life? How to make your life rich in real ways of getting pleasure?
It is important to always make a choice towards activity, then you will not have problems with mentally returning to the past or worries about the future. You need to choose what you are afraid of. Something that requires mental or physical effort. Something that for some reason you avoid. But at the same time, deep down, you want it.
Go dancing instead of staying at home. Come up and get to know each other, and don’t fantasize that they didn’t like you. Say everything you wanted to say, instead of remaining silent once again. Finally jump with a parachute today, and don’t wait until you’re 60, when you’ll definitely decide never to do it. Admit to yourself that every day you are getting older, which means you will never dare to do what you did at 16, 20, 25... Each time choose activity instead of passivity, and then you will know the answer to the question of how to be a happy person and enjoy life.
I have a book “From Victim to Hero: The Path of a Strong Man,” after reading which you will learn to live like it’s your last day.
You will stop postponing activities for the future. You will gain the determination to change everything that does not suit you in life. You will stop allowing life and its joys to pass you by. Learn to take responsibility. You will take an active life position and will easily express everything that you do not like. All this will lead to you learning to enjoy life and get pleasure and enjoyment from it.
You can read the full description of the book and reviews of it, and also purchase the book using the link.
I want to be happy: what’s stopping me?
There are many factors rooted in a person’s subconscious that prevent him from receiving satisfaction. The strongest of them.
- Fear. Fear controls life, prevents you from rushing headlong into dubious activities, but also prevents you from doing successful things. There is a concept - sherophobia - a condition when people deliberately avoid doing things that cause positive emotions. The cause of this specific illness is the belief in the fleeting nature of happiness and the inevitability of the unfortunate events that it entails. Only by overcoming fears can you feel satisfied.
- Negative attitude. Man is the master of his own thoughts. If the negative ones prevail over the positive ones, he will not achieve well-being. The statement “I can’t become successful” will inevitably lead to low self-esteem and uncertainty. Instead of the phrases “I can’t”, “I can’t handle it”, you need to repeat more often “I’ll try”, “an attempt is not torture”.
- Echoes of the past. The main thing you need to do to be happy is to promptly let go of the bitter experiences of the past days. You should not constantly look back, revel in despair, grief due to mistakes made. It is worth leaving the past, so you can fully enjoy the present.
- Other people's dreams. Many live by the expectations of friends, parents, acquaintances, which is absolutely wrong. In trying to fulfill the desires of others, people forget about their own. They cease to understand what they want, what they really need, and only those who are able to go their own way are happy.
- Waiting for approval. Everyone wants to be loved, but some people try so hard to live up to the expectations of others that they endlessly try to please them. Unfortunately, it is impossible for everyone to like it, everyone has different ideals. It's better to focus on what makes you happy, not what makes others happy.
- Comparison. It is human nature to compare ourselves to others, but this is a huge mistake. Someone will always be more successful, luckier, smarter. Everyone has their own merits, you don’t need to live someone else’s life, you need to concentrate on yourself and constantly develop. Anyone who can give up the habit of impressing will definitely achieve success.
How to be a happy person and enjoy life - 3 truths:
Truth #1: Living in the past and future
In order to be able to enjoy life, you need to be in it mentally. The only way to live life is to be in the present moment.
If you haven’t experienced positive emotions for a long time, it means that you probably often live in situations from the past - you prove something to someone, you are still angry, you feel shame or guilt, you bite yourself for what you “should have then say it differently.” Or you live in the expected future - you are afraid, worried about possible changes, or, conversely, live in anticipation of when they will happen.
This is how you don’t live your life - you avoid it, depriving yourself of the opportunity to experience the emotions of the present moment. I will give an example from my practice that clearly demonstrates this and allows you to understand how to change it.
Recently a woman came to me for a consultation. Let's call her Lisa. She was absolutely dissatisfied with her life: she was annoyed by her work, she was not happy with her environment, the quality of her relationship with her husband was depressing, and calls from her mother were annoying. Simply put, Lisa was worried about the same question that you are now - how to be a happy person and enjoy life. We started work with the fact that I gave my client the task of recording all day long what was happening outside and inside. Write down absolutely everything that happens every five minutes. Her feelings, thoughts, emotions, as well as everything that surrounds her.
After analyzing what she did, we learned that one of her mornings went something like this: she woke up and thought about what to cook for breakfast. During breakfast, yesterday flashed through her memories: she recalled that she had not been able to make a single sale, during a telephone conversation she had embarrassed herself in front of a client, and at the end of the working day her boss lectured her for forty minutes. Having replayed the troubles of yesterday and shared them with her husband, Lisa, being in a bad mood, took the child to kindergarten and went to work, preparing in advance for the fact that something similar awaits her today.
I won’t go on, I’ll just say that by how the first hour of my client’s day went, one could judge how her whole life went. Not feeling the taste of life, she refuses to be in it, tightly closing herself from the present moment with curtains of shame and guilt for the past and worries and anxiety for the future. All this prevents Lisa from seeing what is happening to her here and now. Notice the bright pink frosty dawn sky. Feel how her lower back begins to ache from every stressful moment at work. Hear your inner readiness to do something else. Understand that her husband has not felt her presence for a long time, and it is because of this that he tries to stay late at work. Pay attention to the fact that mom is lonely and invite her to do something enjoyable.
Lisa does not feel joy from life because mentally she is almost always in another place. Her body is in one place, and her thoughts are in another. Thus, she almost never fully experiences the moment that is happening now.
Why and for what purpose does she do this? Is it possible to just take it and start being mentally in the present? Why is this so difficult?
To be fully aware and present in the present moment requires great courage to face the truth. Why doesn't Lisa live in the present? Because if she starts doing this, she will have to admit that her child lacks her attention. My relationship with my husband is a complete mess and to clear it up, you will need a psychologist and serious work on yourself and on your relationship. Plus, she hates her job and is stressed all day long.
By forcing herself to face her problems and being completely in the present moment, she will have to sort it all out. And as long as she is mentally in another time, she successfully avoids even admitting to herself that she has these problems.
This is what most people do - they live mentally in another time, so as not to solve current problems and, remaining dissatisfied with life, continue to avoid realizing the real picture of what is happening.
This is how the instinct of self-preservation works - our brain protects us from wanting to change something and leaving the “comfort zone”.
If you also caught yourself doing this, tell us about your experience in the comments. If, on the contrary, you are a rare exception who lives in the present moment, do a good deed and share in the comments with those who are still on the path to the changes that you have already managed to implement.
How to be a happy person and enjoy life - living in the present
The emotion of joy is the emotion of the present moment. You can learn to enjoy life only by facing the reality that is happening now and consciously remaining in it. To do this, you not only need to take an honest look at your problems, like Lisa, but also get rid of the triggers that pull your thoughts into the past. Triggers, as a rule, are “unfinished” situations - those that ended physically, but never ended in your head. As long as you are not satisfied with what happened, as long as you want to change it, the situation will remain unfinished and will continue, periodically popping up in your thoughts.
You can separate from the situation, complete it and let it go only if you have no negative emotions towards it.
Thus, the first and main condition for being a happy person and enjoying life is to face what is happening, admit to yourself the existing problems and begin to resolve them. The next thing is to close situations from the past and let them go. Forgive the person. Call, talk, say what they didn’t say then. Look from a different angle, change your attitude. Learn to act differently in the present. Ask yourself what could help you let go? What exactly is the trigger that keeps you going back into it? How can I get rid of it? Do it.
The ability to mentally end a situation when it has ended physically, consciously being in the present moment - these are the first steps, after which you can learn to sincerely enjoy life.
Smile, it eases the pain
A smile in itself improves your mood, but if you combine it with positive thoughts, the effect will be much better. The Michigan State University study involved two groups of customer service salespeople.
One group faked smiles all day without feeling any positive emotions, and as a result, their mood and performance remained low. The second group smiled sincerely, imagining something pleasant at that moment: their child, funny incidents, their last vacation, and their mood was much better.
PsyBlog claims that smiling can improve attention and aid mental performance. It improves mood, provides flexibility of thinking and allows you to think holistically. A 2010 study found that smiling participants performed better on broad-mindedness tasks.
In addition, smiling helps relieve pain and reduce stress. Psychologists call this feedback, when the mood changes through the tension of certain facial muscles needed for a smile.
Envy
Social media makes people unhappy. We look at our former classmates, fellow students and acquaintances and turn green with envy, feeling like insignificance.
The next time you catch yourself feeling this way, think about this: “Would I like to be the person I envy?” Surely not, you love yourself (even if somewhere very deep inside).
You are looking at someone else's life that you don't know. You have no idea what this person is thinking. Maybe when he dives into the pool of his private home, he hates himself or is wildly afraid of something? Maybe you, walking through the forest on a sunny day, experience much more pleasure than he does, basking on the snow-white sand in the Maldives?
Stop looking at others. If you feel good now, then everything is right. If not, make it good.
Think about vacation
Even if you're just thinking about vacation rather than going on vacation, it increases your endorphin levels. Research shows that feelings of happiness gradually increase over the two months surrounding a vacation and quickly decline to baseline levels afterward.
This also applies to plans for the weekend, and any other anticipation, for example, the feeling before watching your favorite movie.
A person simply thinking about their favorite movie can increase their endorphin levels by 27%.
So if you can't go on holiday just yet, there's nothing stopping you from thinking about it, planning it and enjoying it.
In the office
It's quite difficult to be attentive at work all the time. Stress comes not only from performing daily tasks, but also from the feeling of being chained to your desk.
Mindfulness expert Patrick Groneman recommends practicing breathing and walking. Set aside at least a couple of minutes an hour to turn around and stretch the muscles of your body. Look out the window or at a far wall to relax your eyes and give them a break from the computer. Take some time to have a few words with your colleagues. According to Groneman, a good psychological climate in a team really helps relieve stress.
Introspection
If a person is satisfied with himself, he will not make claims to the whole world. Often, dissatisfaction with others is hidden dissatisfaction with one’s own behavior.
| What we say to others | Questions we need to ask ourselves |
| I am tired of this! | What am I tired of about myself? |
| The whole world annoys me! | What irritates me about myself? |
| Do you understand me. | What do I not understand about myself? |
| Get a hold of yourself. | What do I need to take control of? |
| You do not love me. | What don't I like about myself? |
| How dissatisfied I am with someone! | What am I dissatisfied with about myself? |
| How tired I am of life! | Why am I tired of myself? |
Truly harmonious individuals understand that the responsibility for happiness and attitude towards life lies only with them.
In training
When you come to training with the thought “I wish this would end soon,” even the simplest exercise becomes stressful.
Exercise is the time when you should focus solely on your health. Control your actions, breathe easily and feel how your body benefits from the exercise,
– advises Groneman.
Sleep more, and negative emotions will not reach you
The book NatureShock by Poe Bronson and Ashley Merriman explains how sleep affects positivity. Negative stimuli, that is, unpleasant information, are processed by the amygdala of the brain, and positive and neutral data enters the hippocampus and is processed there. Sleep deprivation damages the hippocampus more than the amygdala, and as a result, lack of sleep affects memories: only gloomy pictures appear, and all the good things are forgotten faster .
An experiment was conducted on this topic: students were deprived of sleep and asked to memorize a list of words. 81% of the words that were remembered by sleepy students were negatively connoted.
Another study tested how employees' morning mood affected their overall day. How they perceived clients and responded to their mood in the morning depended on the rest of the day, as well as their productivity and quality of work.
In the shop
Going to the store after a working day is a separate kind of torture. Slow, clumsy people with carts, searching for the right products, which helpful consultants constantly change places to make your shopping even more fun.
Just two rules will help streamline the shopping process and minimize psychological losses: make a list and don’t go grocery shopping hungry, because it makes you weak and absent-minded.
