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Title : Ten Simple Things You Can Do to Be Happier, Backed by Science
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Ten Simple Things You Can Do to Be Happier, Backed by Science

Happiness is so interesting, because we all have different ideas about what is and how to get it. I'd be happier, as I'm sure most people, so I thought it would be interesting to find some ways to become a happier person who actually are backed by science. Here are ten of the best I've found.

Exercise More

You may have seen some talk recently about the scientific 7 minutes of training mentioned in The New York Times. So if you think exercise was something I do not have time for, maybe you can fit into all.P after

The exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that has actually shown be an effective strategy to overcome depression. In a study cited in the book of Shawn Achor The Advantage happiness, three groups of patients treated his depression, either with medication, exercise, or a combination of the two. The results of this study really surprised me. Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their levels of happiness to begin with, follow-up assessments proved to be radically different:

The groups were analyzed six months after evaluating 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 relapse rate of 31 percent. The biggest surprise, however, came in the exercise group: The relapse rate was only 9 percent

You do not have to be pressed to obtain profit for the year, however. It can help you relax, increase your brain power and even improve their body image, even if no weight is lost. A study in the Journal of Health Psychology found that people who exercised better about your body felt, even when they saw no physical changes: P

body weight, body image and shape were evaluated in 16 men and 18 women both before and after 6 x 40 minutes of exercise and 6 × 40 minutes of reading. In both conditions, weight and body shape did not change. Different aspects of body image, however, improved after exercise compared with before.

We explored exercise in depth before and looked at what it does to our brain, such as the release of proteins and endorphins that make us feel happier, as you can see in the picture below.


sleep more

we know that sleep helps the body recover from the day and repair themselves, and that helps us focus and be more productive. It is also important to our happiness. In NutureShock , Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain how sleep affects our positivity: P

negative stimuli are processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits harder than the amygdala hippocampus. The result is that people with lack of sleep not recall pleasant memories, however, recall the melancholy memories very well.

In an experiment by Walker, college students sleep deprived tried to memorize a list of words. They could remember 81% of the words with a negative connotation, as "cancer". But what they remembered only 31% of words with a positive or neutral connotations, such as "sun" or "basket". P

The BPS Research Digest explores another study shows that sleep affects our sensitivity to negative emotions. The use of a facial recognition task in the course of a day, the researchers studied how participants were sensitive to positive and negative emotions. Those who have worked throughout the afternoon without taking a nap became more sensitive to the end of the day to negative emotions such as fear and anger.P

Using a face recognition task, here is a amplified to anger and fear emotions all day, without sleep reactivity is demonstrated. However, a nap to intervene blocked and even reversed this negative emotional reactivity to anger and fear, while on the other hand improving the qualifications of the (happy) positive expressions.

Of course, how well (and time) sleeps probably affect how you feel when you wake up, which can make a difference in your day. Especially this graph showing how their brain activity decreases is a great idea about how important enough sleep is for productivity and happiness:




Another study tested how the moods of employees when they started working for morning affected their work day.P

the researchers found that the moods of employees when synchronized tended to affect the rest of the day how they felt. Advance mood state is associated with their perceptions of customers and how they reacted to the moods of customers.

And most important for administrators, the mood of the employees had a clear impact on performance, including both the amount of work employees did and how well they did it.

Sleep is another issue that I have looked forward, exploring how much sleep you really need to be productive .


Move closer to work
Our trip to the office can have a surprisingly strong impact on our happiness. The fact that we tend to do this twice a day, five days a week, makes it surprising that its effects accumulate over time and become less and less happy. According to The Art of Manliness , which has a long journey is something we often do not realize that we affect so dramatically: P

... while many volunteers conditions do not affect our happiness in the long run because you become acclimated to them, people never get used to work hard every day to work, because sometimes the traffic is horrible and sometimes it is not. Or as Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert said, "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 do not work:

Two Swiss economists they studied the effect of movements in happiness found that these factors could not compensate for the misery created by a long journey.

spend time with friends and family

Keeping in touch with friends and family is one of top five regrets of the dying . If you want more evidence that it is beneficial for you, I found some research shows that it can make you happier at this time. social time is highly valuable when it comes to improving our happiness, even for introverts. Several studies have found that time spent with family and friends makes a big difference in how happy we feel, generally.P

I love the way expert happiness Harvard Daniel Gilbert explains:

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 really just ways to get more family and friends.

George Vaillant is the director of a study of 72 years of the life of 268 men.

In an interview in the newsletter of March 2008 for the subjects of Grant study, was asked Vaillant, the answer Vaillant "What have you learned men of the Grant study? "" that the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people. "

He shared views studio with Joshua Wolf Shenk in The Atlantic on how social relations of men made a difference in their overall happiness:

relations of men at age 47, was found, they predicted the final adjustment better than any other variable, except defenses life. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful. 93 percent of the men who were flourishing at age 65 had been close to a brother or sister when she was younger

Indeed, a study published in Journal of Socio-Economics states that their relationships are worth more than $ 100,000:

Using the British Household Panel Survey, it seems that an increase in the level of social commitment is worth up to an extra £ 85,000 per year in terms of satisfaction with life. Actual changes in income, on the contrary, they buy very little happiness.

I think the last line is especially fascinating: Actual changes in income, on the contrary, they buy very little happiness. Therefore, it can increase our annual revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars and still not be as happy as if we increase the strength of our social relations.

The Terman study, which is covered in Project longevity , it was found that relationships and how to help others were important to live a long and happy life factors:

we realized that if a participant Terman sincerely felt he or she had friends and relatives to tell when you have a hard time, then that person would be healthier. Those who felt very loved and cared for, we predicted, would live longer.

Surprise: our prediction was wrong ... Beyond the social network size, the clearest benefit of social relations came from helping others. Those who helped his friends and neighbors, counseling and care of others, tend to live to old age.

go out

in The advantage of happiness Shawn Achor recommends spending time outdoors to improve their happiness:

Making time to go outside on a nice day also offers a great advantage; one study found that spending 20 minutes outside in good weather, in addition to promoting the positive mood, but broadened the thinking and improved working memory ...

This is very good news for those of us who are concerned about the new habits to fit into our schedules and busy. Twenty minutes is a short enough to move outside that might fit into your travel or even lunch time. A UK study of University of Sussex also found that being outdoors made people happier:

Being outdoors, near the sea, in a warm and sunny afternoon weekend is the perfect place for most. In fact, it was found that participants to be substantially happier outdoors in all natural environments than they were in urban environments.

The American Meteorological Society published an investigation in 2011 found the current temperature has a greater effect on our happiness that variables such as wind speed and humidity, or even the average temperature in the course of a day. It was also found that happiness is maximized at 13.9 ° C, so keep an eye on the weather forecast before you leave for your 20 minutes of fresh air.


Help Others

One of the most counterintuitive advice I've found parts is that to feel happier, you should help others. In fact, 100 hours per year (or two hours per week) is the optimum time we devote to helping others in order to enrich our lives. If we Shawn Achor's book again, he says this about helping others: P

... when researchers interviewed more than 150 people about their recent purchases, they found that the money spent on activities such as concerts and group dinners, was taken much more pleasure than buying materials such as shoes, televisions, or expensive watches. Spending money on other people, called "pro-social spending," also increases happiness.

The Journal of Happiness Studies published a study who explored this topic:

participants recalled a previous purchase by themselves or someone else and then informed his happiness. Participants then chose whether to spend a monetary gain in themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a purchase made by someone else reported feeling happier significantly immediately after this memory; Most importantly, participants felt happier, more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall of someone else in the near future.

So spend money on others makes us happier than buying things for ourselves. What about spending our time on other people? A study volunteering in Germany explored how were affected when volunteers were taken away their opportunities to help others:

Shortly after the fall of the wall Berlin, but before the German meeting, the first wave of data GSOEP in East Germany was collected. Volunteering was still widespread. Due to the shock of the meeting, a large part of the infrastructure of volunteering (eg, sports clubs associated companies) collapsed and people lose their random volunteer opportunities. Based on a comparison of the change in subjective well-being of these people and the people of the control group had no change in their volunteer status, the hypothesis is supported by that volunteering is rewarding in terms of increased satisfaction with the life.

In his book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and well-being , professor at the University of Pennsylvania Martin Seligman explains that helping others can improve our own lives:

... that scientists have found that doing good produces the most reliable single momentary increase in the welfare of any exercise we've tested.

Practice smiling

Smiling itself can make us feel better, but is more effective when we back it with positive thoughts, according to study

a new study led by a researcher at University business state of Michigan 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 considering a child-improving your mood and withdraw less.

Of course it is important practice "real smiles" which uses its eye sockets. It is very easy to spot the difference:


According to PsyBlog smiling can improve our attention and help us perform better on cognitive tasks: P

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 in tasks requiring attention to see the whole forest rather than just the trees.

A smile is also a good way to relieve some of the pain we feel in disturbing circumstances:

The smile is a way to reduce the pain caused by an upsetting. Psychologists call this the facial feedback hypothesis. Even with a forced smile when we feel no is enough to lift our mood slightly (this is an example of body knowledge).

plan a trip

Unlike reality 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 Research in Quality of Life showed that the largest increase in happiness occurred during the planning stage of a holiday as employees enjoyed the feeling of anticipation:

in the study, the effect of temporal anticipation of increased happiness for eight weeks. After the holidays, happiness quickly fell back to baseline levels for most people.

Shawn Achor has some information for us at this point, as follows:

One study found that people who only thought about seeing your favorite movie actually raised endorphin levels by 27 percent. If you can not take the time for a vacation at this time, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar, even if it is a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.

Medite

Meditation is often regarded as an important habit to improve focus, clarity and attention span, as well as help maintain calm. It is also useful improving their happiness : P

In one study, a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, brain scans were examined 16 people before and after participating in a course of eight weeks of mindfulness meditation. The study, published in the January issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, concluded that after completing the course, the parts of the brain of the participants associated with compassion and self-awareness grew, and the parts associated with reduced stress

.Meditación literally clears his mind and to calm down, which has been often proved to be the most effective way to live a happier life. I think this graph is best explained:




According to Shawn Achor, meditation can actually do more long-term happiness:

studies show that in the minutes immediately after meditation, we experience feelings of calm and satisfaction, as well as taking awareness and empathy. And, although research shows that regular meditation can replace permanently the brain to increase levels of happiness.

The fact that we can actually alter our brain structure through mediation is more surprising and somewhat reassuring to me that however we feel and think today is not permanent.



The practice of gratitude

This is a deceptively simple strategy, but I found personally to make a big difference in my outlook. There are plenty of ways to practice gratitude, keep a diary of things you are grateful share three good things that happen every day with a friend or partner, and go out of their way to show gratitude when others help you.

in an experiment where some participants took note of the things they were grateful for every day, their moods improved only this simple practice:

groups thank-perspective, showed high levels of well-being among several, but not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, in relation to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. The results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.

The Journal of Happiness Studies published a study using letters of appreciation to test how to be grateful can affect our levels of happiness:

Among the participants were 219 men and women who wrote three letters of thanks for a period of 3 weeks. The results indicated that writing letters of appreciation increased happiness and life satisfaction of participants, while decreasing depressive symptoms.

Quick Ultimate Reality: Getting older will make you happier

As a point Finally, it is interesting to note that as we age, especially middle-aged, who tend to grow naturally happier . There is still some debate about why this happens, but scientists have gotten some ideas: P

The researchers, including the authors, have found that older people face images shown or situations tend to focus on and remember the happier and more negative less. Other studies have found that as people age, look for situations that will lift their moods, for example, pruning social circles of friends or acquaintances who could take them down. Still other work finds that older adults learn to let go of loss and disappointment over unmet goals, and styling their goals toward greater well-being.

So if you thought that being old would feel very bad, you can be sure that most likely is that it will develop a more positive than it probably has now perspective.

By Belle night of his life, Lifehacker
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