Less Means More Happiness

People pursue many things they think will bring them satisfaction – careers, money, success, beauty, fame, relationships. In every case, the ultimate goal is happiness. While many think that just a little more – money, success, or fame – will finally bring them that coveted happiness, the truth is – when it comes to happiness – less is more.

This is a concept that doesn’t make sense to ambitious workaholics who base their happiness on material possessions. They will have an insatiable hunger that prevents them from true contentment.

Real happiness springs from appreciating what you have and noticing and enjoying all the little miracles around you. Happiness is not around the corner with that next raise, promotion, or purchase. It is here and now.

If you are caught up in the rut, you can start redefining what is enough. Focus on friends, family, mental and physical health and doing the things you love. This new mindset will also help reduce debt caused by overspending, which will undoubtedly help increase your happiness!

Open Your Eyes To The Small Blessings

Sometimes we seem to expect that happiness is something we should feel all the time. But the reality is that we feel happiness when we are conscious about it and appreciate what’s in our lives. That’s not to say that we’re unhappy all the time, but just that we feel spikes of sheer and utter happiness for small periods of time. The question may be, not what makes us happy in the long run, but how do we find some happiness every day?

Look for Little Blessings

As we go about our day, we may simply not pay enough attention to the many little things that happen. If you start looking, there are lots of situations and happenings that could bring us joy, if we stopped to enjoy them.

We may bebop through work, doing our daily routine on autopilot, possibly without realizing the little things that our colleagues do to make us laugh or be nice to us. Too rarely do we consciously think of things we can do that would help them, or make them laugh. We are often too concerned about our little problems and ourselves.

Achieving Happiness By Investing In Others

What defines happiness? More importantly, how can you achieve it – and hang onto it? It is one of life’s oldest and most frustrating questions. Many have pursued happiness only to find themselves in the depths of the exact opposite. It is probably safe to say that most people know that happiness does not come from material items but from healthy relationships and habits.

Most of the things you can do to bring happiness to your life actually involve doing something for others. This may seem counterintuitive – how do you bring happiness to your life if you’re busy doing for others? It is a reciprocal effect, and you will soon find that bringing others happiness is incredibly self-rewarding.

Happiness and Flow

When we are involved in activities that absorb us and engage us to the extent that we lose track of time, we feel gratified. We are not conscious as to where we are. Often when we “regain consciousness” afterwards, hours have past. This can happen when we do a task we love at work. Or maybe when we do rock climbing, writing, creating something, painting art, put together a jig saw puzzle or are involved in a great discussion. This is what we call flow.

Being totally absorbed

Flow is a state of absorption in one’s work or activity that is characterized by intense concentration, loss of self-awareness, and a feeling of being perfectly challenged (neither bored nor overwhelmed). Time passes without one being aware of it, and when one notices the time after getting out of the flow, one is astonished to see that so much time has past. Flow doesn’t exactly make you feel happy, but you feel satisfied and pleased.

What is happiness anyway?

The psychological definition of happiness: “Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. “

Happiness is both pleasures and gratification, and we need both. Pleasures are bodily, external, momentary and sensory. The ancient philosophers called them raw feels. They can range from ecstasy, thrills, and orgasms, to delight and comfort; the taste of the first spoonful of ice cream, a warm bath on a cold day, a smile from a child, a bite of chocolate or sex. They were regarded as lower pleasures, because they demand no thinking to be felt.

Happiness Quotes

Why is being happy so important?

Interesting factors that research has discovered:

Happy people have better health habits, stronger immune system and fight illnesses better.
Happy people seek out and absorb more health information.
Happy people are more satisfied with their jobs and have increased productivity. Especially if the work is demanding.
Happy people have a higher income. They get higher evaluation and higher pay.
Happy people deal with difficult events better than unhappy people.
Happy people endure pain better. They take care of their health and take more safety precautions when threatened. Positive emotions undo negative emotions.
Happy people have more friends, more love and happier marriages.

Moderate Exercise Makes You Happier – If You’re Middle Aged

Have you been slacking in the exercise department in the later years?

Do you feel bad because you think you should work out more intensely? If you are middle aged, here’s the good news.

Exercising moderately rather than intensely will make you happier and improve your wellbeing. We know from before that exercising improves your health and consequently – your immune system.

Researcher Steriani Elavsky, Ph.d and Assistant Professor of Penn State University found, when she recruited 255 women between 40 and 60 years old, that moderate exercise has great importance for the lives of middle-aged women. In the study the women were parted in two groups. Half of them did vigorous exercise and half moderate (working out to the point where you still can speak short sentences).

The Miracle Cure – for an Enhanced Life Experience

You scramble up in the morning and make it to work. Then you work for a few hours before your performance is starting to go downhill. Around one or two o’clock you are feeling spent. You know that the rest of the day you’ll work at half speed. What do you do? Grab a large mug of coffee or down an energy drink? That is not so smart, since caffeine can decrease memory performance.

What if someone offered you a dose of a miracle cure, promising that one dose would do the following?

Increase your alertness
Give you a boost in creativity
Reduce your stress level
Improve your perception
Give you better stamina
Improve your motor skills
Help you become more accurate
Enhance your sex life
Help you make better decisions
Make you look younger
Help you loose weight
Reduce the risk of a heart attack
Elevate your mood
Strengthen your memory
How much would you be willing to pay?

Can we solve our problems while dreaming?

What do we really dream about? Much of our knowledge about dream content comes from 40 years of research based on a coding system for dreams (mostly from college students). The scientists found that although some dreams are bizarre, most are not. Most take place in familiar settings and often involve people we know.

One curious finding is that both men and women in equal parts populate women’s dreams while men’s dreams are more about men. My guess is that fear of competition is more at play here than secret desires. But it can be a fun fact to keep up one’s sleeve for later use in a heated discussion with men. It would be interesting to hear their theories on why.

Surprisingly, most dreams involve negative content or negative emotions. Almost 50 percent contain aggressive acts and a third involve some type of misfortune. Maybe it is a good thing that we tend to forget most of the dreams before we wake up?