Keep a designated box for giveaways to make things a little easier and avoid creating more clutter. Use the remaining 5 minutes to do a quick walk through your living space, putting away whatever stray items end up in your path. You can do this trick once a week, once a day, or anytime you feel like your space is getting out of control.
Who do you miss? Reach out to them. Make a date to get together or simply have a long phone chat. In adulthood, it can feel next to impossible to make new friends. Try getting involved in a local volunteer group or taking a class. Both can help to connect you with like-minded people in your area. Pets can offer similar benefits, according to multiple studies. Consider volunteering at a local animal shelter to make some new friends — both human and animal.
Try sitting down at the end of every week and making a basic list for the following week. You can get a fancy planner, but even a sticky note on your computer or piece of scrap paper in your pocket can do the job. Turn off all the electronics and put those ear buds away for at least one hour once a week. If you still want them, that is. Let your mind wander free for a change.
Take a walk and pay attention to your surroundings. Be sociable. Or be alone. Just be. Spending 30 minutes or more a week in green spaces can help lower blood pressure and depression, according to a study. Your green space could be anything from your neighborhood park, your own backyard, or a rooftop garden — anywhere you can appreciate some nature and fresh air.
There are many methods of meditation to explore. They can involve movement, focus, spirituality, or a combination of all three. It can be as simple as sitting quietly with your own thoughts for 5 minutes. Even the deep breathing exercises mentioned earlier can serve as a form of meditation. Would it work here? What else can you try? Therapists are trained to help people improve coping skills. Worried about the cost? Or adopting a skin care routine that makes you feel indulgent.
Or simply setting aside a night to put on your softest jammies and watch a movie from start to finish. If you find that giving daily compliments provides a needed boost to your mood, considering making a monthly routine of giving back on a larger scale. You arrive for an appointment with 10 minutes to spare.
What do you do with that time? Pick up your cell phone to scroll through social media? Worry about the busy week you have ahead of you? When you find yourself waiting for a ride, standing in line at the grocery store, or just with a few minutes to kill, break out the list. The start of a new year is a good time to stop and take inventory of your life. Set aside some time to catch up with yourself the way you would with an old friend:.
We are unhappy with it, but once we have it, we take it for granted and do not become any happier with more of it. So keep yourself in reasonably good health so that you can enjoy life, but do not obsess over it. Psychologists and economists confirm that this simple activity increases our enjoyment and happiness in the moment. Lists like this are useful only if you take action on at least one of the 10 areas above. This is the number one thing that makes people happy. A good way to improve your relationships is to learn the 5 languages of love.
Start using these with the people you love. Doing this alone will work wonders for your happiness. And theirs too! Sometimes it makes me happy to wallow in a bit of unhappiness but then I write to get it out of my system. I feel happy when I create even if unhappiness causes the creativity. Right now, happiness is a calm ocean and a soft sunset. According to Joyfuldays. I think, you can say that smile is a reflection of happiness.
The more we smile more look happy. I believe its a good starting point to make world a happy place. Its cheerupz. There you can cheer up a sad face and park your website, blog or any third party url forever. Aw, this was a very nice post. In thought I want to write like this — taking time and actual effort to make a very good article is very rare…. I never felt it. I appreciate your honesty, and those are good questions as happiness is indeed intangible.
Given your worldview that we exist just to suffer, you may find it interesting to read up on the Four Noble Truths of Buddha:.
I just discovered this site, looking for a little something to spark a happier healthier is that a word? This is a great list and I would like to add music to it. For a long time, I stopped watching TV. However, in the recent months, I started watching some. I have to agree that a little TV is a great way to relax!! Thanks for sharing, Daphne! I have to say the open road and my favorite song on a Sunny day with the top down on my Jeep does it for me every time … without fail.
The Top 10 List. Those who felt very loved and cared for, we predicted, would live the longest. Beyond social network size, the clearest benefit of social relationships came from helping others. Those who helped their friends and neighbors, advising and caring for others, tended to live to old age. In The Happiness Advantage , Shawn Achor recommends spending time in the fresh air to improve your happiness:. 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. 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 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 that happiness is maximized at 57 degrees 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. One of the most counterintuitive pieces of advice I found is that to make yourself feel happier, you should help others.
In fact, hours per year or two hours per week is the optimal time we should dedicate to helping others in order to enrich our lives. Spending money on other people, called 'prosocial spending,' also boosts happiness. The Journal of Happiness Studies published a study that explored this very topic:. 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:. Volunteering was still widespread. Due to the shock of the reunion, a large portion of the infrastructure of volunteering e. 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.
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:. After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people. 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.
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 :.
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 often been proved to be the single most effective way to live a happier life.
According to Achor, meditation can actually make you happier long-term:. 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 meditation 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. 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:.
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