Happin…happine… Happiness!
It’s happened team, I’ve fallen in love!!! The source for my new found delight is slightly different from the norm. No I haven’t met the man of my dreams: I’ve fallen for a concept – I bet that stopped you in your tracks.
We are often told that if we have a great job, manage to procreate, get into good schools etc. then happiness will befall us. We are casualties of using external stimuli such as the above triggers for happiness. There’s a bit of an issue with this. These pesky stimuli (aka goal posts) have a tendency to move making placing the end result of continuous happiness slightly harder to achieve. This begs the question how can we achieve happiness and why is it important too? When we are happy we increase our levels of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Increased levels not only make us more creative but help open up the learning centres in our brains making us more receptive to information which is said to increase our productivity levels. So when we are all working to the grind to achieve happiness by being more successful in life maybe, just maybe we have it backwards?! How do we create a lasting positive change?
1. Write down three different things you are grateful for each day. The brain will become wired after 21 days and learn to see the good in a situation and not the bad.
2. Writing a journal of a daily positive experience every day makes the brain relive it.
3. Meditation: reduce cultural ADHD with regard to an incessant need to multi task.
4. Exercise: natural release in endorphins
5. Random acts of kindness. Begs the question, do altruistic acts exist?
These techniques aren’t only valid for the multi national business sector as a way to increase productivity and happiness within its employees, but they can be used for you, right now and applied to your own world. Like your approach to exercise for instance: Instead of needing that run to increase your happiness, flip the switch before you go out. Imagine your potential for an endorphin rush if you were happy at the mere thought of doning the trainers?? How much faster would those initial two-three kilometres would be? Think how much more open your nervous system would be to adapting to neurological changes when completing your rehab if you brain was already full of dopamine.
To surmise, there are many ways to view life. Now might be a good way to reflect on how you view it. Food for thought chums….
By Faye Burge, Senior Physiotherapist at Physio4Life