Science Says Do These 11 Things Every Single Day to be HAPPIER.
Try them. They work.
Obviously
we all want to be happier. But there's another reason to wish to be more light-hearted
and content: happiness is definitely a result, but happiness is also a driver.
While
I'm definitely into finding ways to improve personal productivity (whether a one-day burst of output, or a lifetime of increased effectiveness, or things you should not do
every day), probably the best way to be more productive is to just
be happier.
Happy people accomplish more.
Easier said than done though, right?
Actually,
many changes are easy. Here are 11 science-based ways to be happier from Belle
Beth Cooper, co-founder of Hello Code,
which makes Exist, a cool app that connects all
of your services to turn that data into insights about your life.
Here's
Belle Beth:
1.
Smile More
Smiling
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.
(You've seen fake smiles that don't reach the person's eyes. Try it. Smile with
just your mouth. Then smile naturally; your eyes narrow. There's a huge
difference in a fake smile and a genuine smile.)
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 reduce 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)."
2.
Exercise for 7 Minutes
Think
exercise is something you don't have time for? Think again. Check out this 7-minute workout from The New York Times.
That's a workout any of us can fit into our schedules.
Exercise
has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it is 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 medication, exercise, or
a combination of the two.
The results of this study are surprising: Although all three
groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels early on, the
follow-up assessments proved to be radically different:
"The groups were tested
six months later to assess their relapse rate. Of those who had taken the
medication alone, 38% had slipped back into depression. Those in the
combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31% relapse rate. The
biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was
only 9%."
You don't have to be depressed to benefit from exercise, though.
Exercise can help you relax, increase your brain power, and even improve your
body image, even if you don't lose any weight.
We've
explored exercise in depth before,
and looked at what it does to our brains, such as releasing proteins and
endorphins that make us feel happier.
A study in the Journal of Health 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
minutes exercising and 6 40 minutes reading. Over both conditions, body weight
and shape did not change. Various aspects of body image, however, improved
after exercise compared to before."
Yep:
Even if your actual appearance doesn't change, how you feel about your body does change.
3.
Sleep More
We
know that sleep helps our body recover from the day and repair itself and that it helps us focus and be more
productive. It turns out sleep is also important for happiness.
In NutureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain how sleep
affects positivity:
"Negative stimuli get
processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories get 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 throughout the course of a day, researchers studied how
sensitive participants were to positive and negative emotions. Those who worked
through the afternoon without taking a nap became more sensitive 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.
Another study tested
how employees' moods when they started work in the morning affected their
entire 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 performed and how well they performed it.
4.
Spend More Time With Friends and Family
Staying
in touch with friends and family is one of the top five regrets of the dying.
If you want more evidence that time with friends is beneficial
for you, research proves it can make you happier right now, too.
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.
I
love the way Harvard happiness 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 men's social connections made a difference to their overall happiness:
"Men's relationships at
age 47, he found, predicted late-life adjustment better than any other
variable. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93% 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 we would if we increased the strength of our social
relationships.
The
Terman study, 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 neighbours,
advising and caring for others, tended to live to old age."
5.
Go Outside More Often
In The Happiness Advantage, 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 good news for those of us who worry about fitting new
habits into 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 Meteorological Society 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 thathappiness is maximized at 57 degrees (13.9C),
so keep an eye on the weather forecast before heading outside for your 20
minutes of fresh air.
The
connection between productivity and temperature is another topic we've talked about more
here. It's fascinating what a small change in temperature can do.
6.
Help Other People
One
of the most counter intuitive 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 Shawn Achor'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. But 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: A Visionary 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.
Plan a Trip (Even If You Don't Ever Take It)
As
opposed to actually taking a holiday, simply planning a vacation or break from
work can improve our happiness.
A study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life showed that the highest spike in
happiness came during the planning stage of a vacation as people enjoy 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%."
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.
8.
Meditate
Meditation
is often touted as an important habit for improving focus, clarity, and
attention span, as well as helping to keep you calm. It turns out it's also
useful for improving your 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 life.
According to 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.
(For
more on the subject, here's what happened when I (Jeff) decided to try meditation.)
9.
Move Closer to Work
Our commute to work can have a surprisingly powerful impact on
our happiness. The fact that we tend to commute twice a day at least five days
a week makes it unsurprising that the effect would build up over time and make
us less and less happy.
According
to The Art of Manliness, 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."
10.
Practice Gratitude
This
is a seemingly simple strategy, but one I've 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
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 three 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."
11.
and the Easiest Tip of All: Get Older
As
we get older, particularly past middle age, we tend to naturally grow
happier.
There's still some debate over why this happens, but
scientists have 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 focus their goals on greater wellbeing.
So if you thought getting old will make you miserable, it's
likely you'll develop a more positive outlook than you probably have now.
How cool is that?
-By Jeff Haden
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Jeff Haden is a ghostwriter, speaker, LinkedIn Influencer, and contributing editor for Inc. He learned much of what he knows about business and technology working his way up to managing a 250-employee book plant; everything else he picks up as a ghostwriter for innovators and business leaders. He's written more than 50 nonfiction books, including six Amazon Business and Investing No. 1's, along with hundreds of articles and reports. And he's collected four years of tips and advice in his book TransForm: Dramatically Improve Your Career, Business, Relationships, and Life ... One Simple Step at a Time.
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