Happy New Year?
Happy New Year?
Happy New Year? Happiness is such a vague concept. What does it really mean? We know we can’t be happy all the time, so maybe we need to be just ‘happy enough’? Will making short-term New Year resolutions help? Probably not…
Recent research indicates that flexibility is the key to greater happiness and well-being - being open to emotional experiences and being able to tolerate and learn from periods of discomfort allow us to move towards a more meaningful existence. But what can we DO to help ourselves feel happier?
Here are 10 actions for greater happiness to get you thinking:
1. Be kind – helping others gives us a serotonin boost and takes our minds off our own problems. As social animals, being kind helps us feel ‘connected’ and useful - which is vital for our well-being and sense of belonging.
Joy in giving to others.
2. Build good relationships - positive relationships with family or friends provide love, meaning, and support, so increasing our sense of self-worth. Having a supportive social network boosts our immune system, lowers the risk of heart disease, and even reduces mental decline as we age. These connections take time and effort and there are few shortcuts to this one. Prioritise your tribe!
Cherish your tribe.
3. Mind that body – looking after ourselves physically – with exercise, rest, and healthy nourishment - impacts how we feel about ourselves and how our bodies function. Exercise is great for managing stress as well as helping us to sleep better. It even improves brain function so to get happy, get moving!
4. Be mindful - mindfulness reduces stress, helps us manage our emotions and helps us tune into how we and others are feeling. Always thinking about yesterday or tomorrow often brings regrets and anxiety. The more we can stay in the moment, appreciating the simple enjoyment of everyday things, the more enriching life will be. Everyone can learn to be more mindful – consider it training for your brain. Carpe Diem.
Mindfulness.
5. Try new things - human beings have a psychological need for mastery which gives us a sense of competence as we develop our skills and capabilities. Exploring something new fuels our creativity, generating new brain cells and neural connections, helping us to be curious, challenged and passionate about life.
Try new activites and get moving!
6. Be positive – a hopeful outlook means we are more likely to experience positive emotions, feel confident, and enjoy better physical and mental health. Hope and optimism contribute hugely to our resilience too, helping us cope with the inevitable tough times, supporting us to handle our relationships constructively and to take a more proactive approach to problems.
Gratitude and wonder.
We need to train our brains to look for the positive around us. This does not mean ignoring difficulty but noticing what is going right. Writing down three things experienced in a day that you feel grateful for, however small, for seven days, will help increase well-being and has been shown to be more effective at boosting low mood than anti-depressants.
Our brains naturally focus on what's wrong as they are still primed to face life-or-death situations. It was safer to interpret neutral signals as potential danger. Our brain still responds in this way, causing us to experience unpleasant emotions and dwell on potential negative scenarios. We attempt to avoid difficulty through the ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ response, which is usually counterproductive.
Emotions include momentary physiological changes that influence our actions, for good or bad. Positive emotions bring in a multitude of benefits - even fleetingly pleasant emotions broaden our perceptual fields, causing us to see more clearly, become more trusting of others, and more open to new ideas. These moments add up, over time building our psychological resources, increasing our sense of hope and our resilience. The trick is to stay curious, practice gratitude daily and realise that we never know what is going to happen so thinking the worst is never helpful. If this is hard, just thinking neutrally about the future can be very empowering.
7. Set goals - finding and working towards meaningful goals is a wonderful way to connect the present to our future. Taking future-focused practical actions enables us to feel more in control of our destiny and stops us from feeling ‘stuck’. Goals will also help prevent too many distractions and going down ‘dead-end’ roads which we might later regret.
Setting clear goals.
8. Build resilience – life is tough! Disappointment, grief, poor health, and sadness are inevitable. Most of us will experience traumatic events, such as the loss of someone we love, money worries, an accident, or serious illness. Being resilient means we can find ways to cope constructively, accept what has happened, and then move forward.
As concentration camp survivor, Dr. Viktor Frankl, said, “Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Active coping isn’t about ignoring our struggles but taking constructive action in spite of them. Also learning to not struggle alone is very powerful - reaching out and asking for help when you need it is often a key factor in recovery.
10 Be your own best friend - how we feel about ourselves has a big influence on how happy we are. Accepting that we all have strengths and weaknesses, we all make mistakes and sometimes fail is a key component of psychological well-being. Accepting this with self-compassion means we are more able to learn from any mistakes and move on, less likely to feel ashamed and withdraw from others. Listen to your inner dialogue and do all you can to ensure you speak to yourself with respect, compassion, and understanding - no matter what!
Looking after yourself.
Learning to be self-compassionate will help your relationships with everyone. The less we harshly judge ourselves, the less we tend to judge others too so the happiness effect is considerable!
Many of us are harder on ourselves than we are on others. Our inner critic wants the best for us but it can have the opposite effect. An overly critical inner voice activates the threat system in our primitive emotional brain, causing fear and shame, which can make us less able to learn and grow. The good news is we can train our inner voice to be more of a gentle and helpful friend who will help us to feel more supported.
But what about the search for meaning?
Looking for meaning.
Find the meaning – finding meaning in life can feel like an impossible topic, one that philosophers and psychologists through the ages have long tried to decipher. At its core, it involves a sense of being a part of something much bigger beyond ourselves. We are all connected to the world around us in a myriad of ways which means there are many ways we can make a difference.
When people are asked what happiness means to them, their initial thoughts usually describe pleasures in the moment. However, soon their thoughts turn to a different type of deeper happiness derived from love for others, learning, creative pursuits, music or art, nature, and spiritual faith – these seem to be the things that give life greater meaning. We often hear of survivors of terrible tragedies who say that their experience has given them an appreciation of what really matters in their lives.
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, described this type of happiness as more important than pleasure - ‘activities of the soul that are in accord with virtue’. These activities help us strive towards finding the best in ourselves, encouraging us to consider what we can offer the world, resulting in a firm sense of purpose.
Your own sense of meaning will probably change over your lifetime, so time reflecting on this at each stage of life is important. If there is one resolution we can all make this New Year to create happiness for ourselves and those around us, it would be to take the time to explore this aspect of yourself.
Imagine you are at the end of your life, looking back over it all. What is it you feel most proud of? What advice would you give to your current self about what matters most? How would you like to be remembered? What would you like people to say about you?
Seek Support
If you would benefit from some support in creating greater happiness in 2024 and beyond, please get in touch. I am a Quest-trained Hypnotherapist and Coach. Together, we can help you create a fresh mindset and ensure you can make the changes needed to attract more happiness your way. An emotional reboot works wonders in clearing the way for a more positive and meaningful future, enriched rather than encumbered by what has happened in the past.
It is my view that everyone would benefit from ‘therapy’ as it promotes fresh perspectives, reframes past events, and supports us to consciously explore ways to improve our experience of life.
Call 07989 535527 or email ali@alisonscotthypnotherapy.co.uk
Happiness
Happy New Year 2024!
Website - www.alisonscottcognitivehypnotherapy.co.ukTwitter - Alison Scott @AlisonS39https://www.facebook.com/alisonscottcognitivehypnotherapyLinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/alison-scott-43100a13Photo Credit (website): Cressida Murray / jwmurray@gmail.com