Hacking Happiness:The Ultimate Guide to a Happy Life
Happiness is a rewarding experience in itself. Happy people live longer, make faster decisions, feel satisfied with their jobs, have a strong immune system, have better relationships, and the list goes on.
Don't you think all we want is to be happy? Happy for you could be synonymous with reaching a goal, meeting a friend, offering help, a pleasant dinner, etc. You have been trying so many things to stay happy. But have you ever wondered what it really takes to make up a happy brain?
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The Happy Hormones
Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins are the four chemicals in our body that make us happy! Let's learn how.
Dopamine, the chemical messenger
Dopamine is made in the body and is used by the nervous system to send messages between the nerve cells. Dopamine is one of the major hormones which helps us think, plan and make things interesting.
Without dopamine, most of us would struggle to stay focused and resilient at everyday tasks. Scientists also point out that dopamine creates the feeling of anticipation, of hope, in turn keeping up our optimism.
Oxytocin, not just a love hormone
Oxytocin gets produced in the hypothalamus and gets secreted into the bloodstream by the posterior pituitary gland. The release of oxytocin is dependent on the electrical activity of the neurons in the hypothalamus.
If you are wondering, the hypothalamus is a part of the brain that controls various bodily functions such as heart rate, body temperature, sleep cycles, etc. One of its major functions is also to control the release of hormones from the pituitary gland.
Oxytocin increases happiness and reduces stress and anxiety, but that's not all. It also helps to boost trust and empathy in humans. If you are someone who is sensitive and acts on social topics like global warming, animal abuse, etc., it's your oxytocin making you so generous to fund a charity. Also, higher levels of oxytocin is what makes extroverts more social, open, and trusting compared to others.
Serotonin, the feel-good hormone
Serotonin is manufactured in the brain and helps relay signals from one area of the brain to another. Serotonin is solely responsible for the mood. When did you last have your bad mood day? Well, you can hold serotonin accountable for giving you those blues.
Serotonin ensures your overall well-being, lowers anxiety, improves digestion and sleep. The right amount of serotonin is what prevents you from entering into a state of depression. Wow, We should thank serotonin sometimes.
Endorphins, the stress relievers
Endorphins are a large group of peptides that are produced by the central nervous system and the pituitary gland.Endorphins are hormones that help in reducing stress. They alleviate pain and produce a feeling of euphoria.
Endorphins also contribute to increasing self-esteem in individuals. You feel great after a workout session due to the increase in endorphins in your body.
Happiness Myths
We learnt the science behind what makes us happy. However, at the root of happiness is the mind's intention to feel so. If you don't make that inherent choice to feel happy at an instant, how would your brain release those chemicals? It is as important to understand the underlying psychology of our brains to stay happy.
At the root of happiness, is the mind's intention to feel so.
Have you thought about what defines your happiness? Is happiness buying that house for you? Does happy mean reaching that next goal? Is happiness about achieving that perfect relationship? Well, let's consider them to be your own personalized goals for happiness.
Have you set a timeline for these goals to be met? For that house to be bought? For that relationship to unwind in the best ways? If yes, you have happiness waiting for you at different stops on the journey. It could take a few hours, a day, a month, years, or even a lifetime to reach there.
Think about it. Are you willing to wait for that stop to arrive so that you can be happy even if it means it's gonna take a lifetime? You have always thought about how you are going to be at that moment when the stop arrives. But, what about the journey? What are the emotions that you will experience during this journey? For most of us, it could be anxiousness, fear of failure, disheartened at the prolonged timeline, etc.
The problem is that we are all hardwired to attach our happiness to our goals. We live by “I will be happy when…”. That shrinks the times we could be happy to just a few moments in our entire life.
We are all hardwired to attach happiness to our goals. This shrinks the times we could be happy to just a few moments in our entire life.
Have you ever considered that by detaching our happiness from our goals, we could achieve a lifetime of happiness? Why do we need guardrails to feel happy? Can we not just experience the feeling of elation whenever?
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How to be happy all the time?
A very important understanding we need to develop is that the emotions we experience at each instant are hand-picked by us. We choose to feel happy, sad, angry, disappointed, grateful, etc. Yes, the external environment and the stimuli are always present. However, that need not be an obvious factor to trigger a certain emotion. There are no predefined rules for our reactions. It is what we have built inside ourselves.
We have mapped our emotions to the stimuli and programmed the mind. Thus, we react the same way to a certain scenario, no matter how many times it occurs. But, if we break this chain, by taking a moment to analyze the situation and responding accordingly, we can develop the habit of being mindful at every instant. This gives us the power to pick our feelings, to choose to be happy and calm, despite the ups and downs of life, making every journey a contented one.
The dark side of happiness
Happiness is a great emotion, that fills within us a sense of joy, satisfaction, and contentment. It drives us to do more and helps us stay optimistic. However, excessive happiness can wipe out the benefits and do us psychological harm.
- It is no new fact that happiness that is induced externally through a drug or a chemical is harmful. An excess of dopamine in the body develops an optimism bias which impairs a person's ability to evaluate the possible negative outcomes of a situation. The person tends to avoid any piece of information that doesn't fall in line with his expectations and chooses to take risks without judgement.
- A study conducted by psychologist Howard S. Friedman and his colleagues in 1993 suggests that excessively cheerful children can grow up to be high-risk takers and thus face a higher risk of mortality compared to other children.
- According to a Meta-Analysis conducted by Mark Alan Davis in 2008 overwhelming happiness can shut-down the creativity of a person to some extent.
Healthy happiness
Happiness is beneficial to us when experienced in the right amounts and at the right times. When happiness hits a low, a person tends to get depressed and becomes pessimistic. When happiness is excessive, he tends to be less aware of his surroundings. Thus, it is very important to strike a balance in our emotional experiences of happiness. Happiness pursued for the wrong reasons and at the cost of someone else's feelings, can never be the right path to choose. We need to cook up a perfectly balanced recipe of happiness for good emotional health.
Finally, it is also important to accept ourselves as we are and enjoy what we have instead of getting into a rat race to achieve what wouldn't bring any meaning to our lives. A true sense of happiness lies in experiencing every moment positively and in sharing that happiness with those around us.
