Happiness is so
interesting, because we all have different ideas about what it is and how to
get it. So naturally we are obsessed with it..
I would love to be
happier, as I’m sure most people would, so I thought it would be interesting to
find some ways to become a happier person that are actually backed up by
science. Here are ten of the best ones I found.
1. Exercise
more – 7 minutes might be enough
You might have seen some
talk recently about the scientific 7 minute workout mentioned in The New YorkTimes. So if you thought exercise was something you didn’t have time for, maybe
you can fit it in after all.
Exercise has such a
profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it’s actually been proven
to be an effective strategy for overcoming depression. In a study cited in
Shawn Achor’s book, The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated
their depression with exercise. The results of this study really surprised me.
Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness
levels to begin with, the follow up assessments proved to be radically
different:
The groups were then
tested six months later to assess their relapse rate. Of those who had taken
the medication alone, 38 percent had slipped back into depression. Those in the
combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31 percent relapse
rate. The biggest shock,
though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9 percent!
You don’t have to be
depressed to gain benefit from exercise, though. It can help you to relax,
increase your brain power and even improve your body image, even if you don’t
lose any weight.
A study in the Journal ofHealth Psychology found that people who exercised felt better about their
bodies, even when they saw no physical changes:
Body weight, shape and
body image were assessed in 16 males and 18 females before and after both 6 ×
40 mins exercise and 6 × 40 mins reading. Over both conditions, body weight and
shape did not change. Various aspects of body image, however, improved after
exercise compared to before.
We’ve explored exercisein depth before, and looked at what it does to our brains, such as releasing
proteins and endorphins that make us feel happier, as you can see in the image
below.
2. Sleep more
– you’ll be less sensitive to negative emotions
We know that sleep helps
our bodies to recover from the day and repair themselves, and that it helps us
focus and be more productive. It turns out, it’s also important for our
happiness.
In NutureShock, Po
Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain how sleep affects our positivity:
Negative stimuli get
processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the
hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala.
The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories, yet
recall gloomy memories just fine.
In one experiment by
Walker, sleep-deprived college students tried to memorize a list of words. They
could remember 81% of the words with a negative connotation, like “cancer.” But
they could remember only 31% of the words with a positive or neutral
connotation, like “sunshine” or “basket.”
The BPS Research Digest
explores another study that proves sleep affects our sensitivity to negative
emotions. Using a facial recognition task over the course of a day, the
researchers studied how sensitive participants were to positive and negative
emotions. Those who worked through the afternoon without taking a nap became
more sensitive late in the day to negative emotions like fear and anger.
Using a face recognition task, here
we demonstrate an amplified reactivity to anger and fear emotions across the day,
without sleep. However, an intervening nap blocked and even reversed this
negative emotional reactivity to anger and fear while conversely enhancing
ratings of positive (happy) expressions.
Of course, how well (and
how long) you sleep will probably affect how you feel when you wake up, which
can make a difference to your whole day. Especially this graph showing how your
brain activity decreases is a great insight about how important enough sleep is
for productivity and happiness:
Another study tested how
employees’ moods when they started work in the morning affected their work day.
Researchers found that
employees’ moods when they clocked in tended to affect how they felt the rest
of the day. Early mood was linked to their perceptions of customers and to how
they reacted to customers’ moods.
And most importantly to
managers, employee mood had a clear impact on performance, including both how
much work employees did and how well they did it.
Sleep is another topic
we’ve looked into before, exploring how much sleep we really need to beproductive.
3. Move
closer to work – a short commute is worth more than a big house
Our commute to the office
can have a surprisingly powerful impact on our happiness. The fact that we tend
to do this twice a day, five days a week, makes it unsurprising that its effect
would build up over time and make us less and less happy.
According to The Art ofManliness, having a long commute is something we often fail to realize will
affect us so dramatically:
… while many voluntary
conditions don’t affect our happiness in the long term because we acclimate to
them, people never get accustomed to their daily slog to work because sometimes
the traffic is awful and sometimes it’s not. Or as Harvard psychologist Daniel
Gilbert put it, “Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.”
We tend to try to
compensate for this by having a bigger house or a better job, but these
compensations just don’t work:
Two Swiss economists who
studied the effect of commuting on happiness found that such factors could not
make up for the misery created by a long commute.
4. Spend time
with friends and family – don’t regret it on your deathbed
Staying in touch with
friends and family is one of the top five regrets of the dying. If you want
more evidence that it’s beneficial for you, I’ve found some research that
proves it can make you happier right now.
Social time is highly
valuable when it comes to improving our happiness, even for introverts. Several
studies have found that time spent with friends and family makes a big
difference to how happy we feel, generally.
I love the way Harvardhappiness expert Daniel Gilbert explains it:
We are happy when we have family, we
are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make
us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.
George Vaillant is the
director of a 72-year study of the lives of 268 men.
In an interview in the
March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, “What
have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only
thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
He shared insights of the
study with Joshua Wolf Shenk at The Atlantic on how the men’s social
connections made a difference to their overall happiness:
The men’s relationships
at age 47, he found, predicted late-life adjustment better than any other variable,
except defenses. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93
percent of the men who were thriving at age 65 had been close to a brother or
sister when younger.
In fact, a study
published in the Journal of Socio-Economics states than your relationships are
worth more than $100,000:
Using the British
Household Panel Survey, I find that an increase in the level of social
involvements is worth up to an extra £85,000 a year in terms of life
satisfaction. Actual changes in income, on the other hand, buy very little
happiness.
I think that last line is
especially fascinating: Actual changes in income, on the other hand, buy very
little happiness. So we could increase our annual income by hundreds of
thousands of dollars and still not be as happy as if we increased the strength
of our social relationships.
The Terman study, which
is covered in The Longevity Project, found that relationships and how we help
others were important factors in living long, happy lives:
We figured that if a
Terman participant sincerely felt that he or she had friends and relatives to
count on when having a hard time then that person would be healthier. Those who
felt very loved and cared for, we predicted, would live the longest.
Surprise: our prediction
was wrong… Beyond social network size, the clearest benefit of social
relationships came from helping others. Those who helped their friends and
neighbors, advising and caring for others, tended to live to old age.
5. Go outside
– happiness is maximized at 13.9°C
In The HappinessAdvantage, Shawn Achor recommends spending time in the fresh air to improve
your happiness:
Making time to go outside on a nice
day also delivers a huge advantage; one study found that spending 20 minutes
outside in good weather not only boosted positive mood, but broadened thinking
and improved working memory…
This is pretty good news
for those of us who are worried about fitting new habits into our already-busy
schedules. Twenty minutes is a short enough time to spend outside that you could
fit it into your commute or even your lunch break.
A UK study from the
University of Sussex also found that being outdoors made people happier:
Being outdoors, near the
sea, on a warm, sunny weekend afternoon is the perfect spot for most. In fact,
participants were found to be substantially happier outdoors in all natural
environments than they were in urban environments.
The American MeteorologicalSociety published research in 2011 that found current temperature has a bigger
effect on our happiness than variables like wind speed and humidity, or even
the average temperature over the course of a day. It also found that happiness
is maximized at 13.9°C, so keep an eye on the weather forecast before heading
outside for your 20 minutes of fresh air.
6. Help
others – 100 hours a year is the magical number
One of the most
counterintuitive pieces of advice I found is that to make yourself feel happier,
you should help others. In fact, 100 hours per year (or two hours per week) is
the optimal time we should dedicate to helping others in order to enrich our
lives.
If we go back to ShawnAchor’s book again, he says this about helping others:
…when researchers
interviewed more than 150 people about their recent purchases, they found that
money spent on activities—such as concerts and group dinners out—brought far
more pleasure than material purchases like shoes, televisions, or expensive
watches. Spending money on other people, called “prosocial spending,” also
boosts happiness.
The Journal of Happiness
Studies published a study that explored this very topic:
Participants recalled a
previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported
their happiness. Afterward, participants chose whether to spend a monetary
windfall on themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a
purchase made for someone else reported feeling significantly happier
immediately after this recollection; most importantly, the happier
participants felt, the more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall on
someone else in the near future.
So spending money on
other people makes us happier than buying stuff for ourselves. What about
spending our time on other people? A study of volunteering in Germany explored
how volunteers were affected when their opportunities to help others were taken
away:
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall but
before the German reunion, the first wave of data of the GSOEP was collected in
East Germany. Volunteering was still widespread. Due to the shock of the
reunion, a large portion of the infrastructure of volunteering (e.g. sports
clubs associated with firms) collapsed and people randomly lost their
opportunities for volunteering. Based on a comparison of the change in
subjective well-being of these people and of people from the control group who
had no change in their volunteer status, the hypothesis is supported that
volunteering is rewarding in terms of higher life satisfaction.
In his book Flourish: AVisionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, University of
Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman explains that helping others can improve
our own lives:
…we scientists have found that doing
a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being
of any exercise we have tested.
7. Practice
smiling – it can alleviate pain
Smiling itself can make
us feel better, but it’s more effective when we back it up with positive
thoughts, according to this study:
A new study led by a
Michigan State University business scholar suggests customer-service workers
who fake smile throughout the day worsen their mood and withdraw from work,
affecting productivity. But workers who smile as a result of cultivating
positive thoughts – such as a tropical vacation or a child’s recital – improve
their mood and withdraw less.
Of course it’s important
to practice “real smiles” where you use your eye sockets. It’s very easy to
spot the difference:
According to PsyBlog,
smiling can improve our attention and help us perform better on cognitive
tasks:
Smiling makes us feel
good which also increases our attentional flexibility and our ability to think
holistically. When this idea was tested by Johnson et al. (2010), the results
showed that participants who smiled performed better on attentional tasks which
required seeing the whole forest rather than just the trees.
A smile is also a good
way to alleviate some of the pain we feel in troubling circumstances:
Smiling is one way to reduce the
distress caused by an upsetting situation. Psychologists call this the facial
feedback hypothesis. Even forcing a smile when we don’t feel like it is enough
to lift our mood slightly (this is one example of embodied cognition).
One of our previous posts
goes into even more detail about the science of smiling.
8. Plan a
trip – but don’t take one
As opposed to actually
taking a holiday, it seems that planning a vacation or just a break from work
can improve our happiness. A study published in the journal, Applied Researchin Quality of Lifeshowed that the highest spike in happiness came during the
planning stage of a vacation as employees enjoyed the sense of anticipation:
In the study, the effect
of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks.
After the vacation,
happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people.
Shawn Achor has some info
for us on this point, as well:
One study found that
people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised
their endorphin levels by 27 percent.
If you can’t take the
time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something
on the calendar—even if it’s a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you
need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.
9. Meditate –
rewire your brain for happiness
Meditation is often
touted as an important habit for improving focus, clarity and attention p, as
well as helping to keep you calm. It turns out it’s also useful for improvingyour happiness:
In one study, a research team from
Massachusetts General Hospital looked at the brain scans of 16 people before
and after they participated in an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation.
The study, published in the January issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging,
concluded that after completing the course, parts of the participants’ brains
associated with compassion and self-awareness grew, and parts associated with
stress shrank.
Meditation literally
clears your mind and calms you down, it’s been often proven to be the single
most effective way to live a happier live. I believe that this graphic explains
it the best:
According to Shawn Achor,
meditation can actually make you happier long-term:
Studies show that in the
minutes right after meditating, we experience feelings of calm and contentment,
as well as heightened awareness and empathy. And, research even shows that
regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of
happiness.
The fact that we can
actually alter our brain structure through mediation is most surprising to me
and somewhat reassuring that however we feel and think today isn’t permanent.
10. Practice
gratitude – increase both happiness and life satisfaction
This is a seemingly
simple strategy, but I’ve personally found it to make a huge difference to my
outlook. There are lots of ways to practice gratitude, from keeping a journal
of things you’re grateful for, sharing three good things that happen each day
with a friend or your partner, and going out of your way to show gratitude when
others help you.
In an experiment where
some participants took note of things they were grateful for each day, their
moods were improved just from this simple practice:
The gratitude-outlook
groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the
outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The
effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results
suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and
interpersonal benefits.
The Journal of Happiness
studies published a study that used letters of gratitude to test how being
grateful can affect our levels of happiness:
Participants included 219
men and women who wrote three letters of gratitude over a 3 week period.
Results indicated that
writing letters of gratitude increased participants’ happiness and life
satisfaction, while decreasing depressive symptoms.
Quick last fact: Getting
older will make yourself happier
As a final point, it’s
interesting to note that as we get older, particularly past middle age, we tend
to grow happier naturally. There’s still some debate over why this happens, but
scientists have got a few ideas:
Researchers, including
the authors, have found that older people shown pictures of faces or situations
tend to focus on and remember the happier ones more and the negative ones less.
Other studies have
discovered that as people age, they seek out situations that will lift their
moods — for instance, pruning social circles of friends or acquaintances who
might bring them down. Still other work finds that older adults learn to let go
of loss and disappointment over unachieved goals, and hew their goals toward
greater wellbeing.
So if you thought being
old would make you miserable, rest assured that it’s likely you’ll develop a
more positive outlook than you probably have now.
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we’ve recently launched the new Buffer for Business. Take a look, it’s the most
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Photo credit: SpencerFinnley
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