If you are not happy what do you do? Do you go out to eat? Go to the movie? Theater, perhaps? Are you going shopping? Maybe you like a drink to overcome your frustration. Or do you get buzz with running or going to the gym? Whatever the scientists are in the process of proving that internal change is the only thing that can give you life and happiness. Everything else is deception. What does this mean? Your mind is the only thing that can keep you healthy and happy. Richard Davidson, a neurologist at the University of Wisconsin and Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center recently completed an interesting study that might benefit you and me and our approach to our lives. They took a group of 41 depressed, but otherwise healthy people, working for a biotechnology company in Wisconsin. 25 were taught to meditate. In this: mindfulness meditation. The group met for a 2.5- to 3-hour meditation class each week. Six weeks later they all went to a seven-hour meditation session. In addition each member was asked to meditate, at home, for one hour a day using a guided meditation tape. The other 16 were held as a control group and did not receive meditation training until the end of the course. At the end of the eight-week program, in November, they re-introduced the flu to all participants. And guess what. “Meditation group members have a significant increase in antibody titers” in other words they are less likely to catch the flu. The important thing seems to be. If you want to be healthy and overcome daily blues and maintain happiness learn to meditate. When you meditate, you change the way your brain works. In addition, they have found that the more you practice meditation, the better your daily performance will be. "What we have found is that long-term physicians are showing brain function on an unprecedented scale. ' give yourself space every day to train your mind.
Spend a few minutes each day writing about something exciting
In an interesting study, subjects were asked to spend 20 minutes every day writing about "excellent" self-esteem. The control team was immediately asked to write on a neutral topic. The team that wrote about the positive experiences reported high levels of happiness - and made a few trips to the doctor in the next three months.
So it is good to spend a few minutes each day writing about something that really made you happy. Similarly, Davis promotes entertainment as a daily practice - when someone gives you a gift or compliments, stop and focus on how much these things make you feel good. However, spend some time thinking about what happened in the past.
Celebrate your success, even small ones
You can start with the items on this list. If you have started to practice gratitude regularly (even if not every day) or have spent some time writing about the good things you know - take that as a win, and an event to celebrate. Davis says we have a tendency to diminish what we have achieved (I know I do), and that we should fight that tendency by going out of our way to commend ourselves when we do something right.
He also recommends that we stop thinking about everything or anything, which is a good way to make ourselves unhappy unnecessarily. It says you decided to write about a great daily experience last week. However he did it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Our human tendency is to blame ourselves for the three days we missed rather than brag about the four days we met our goal.
So fight those habits by congratulating or rewarding yourself for the four days you did rather than focusing on the three days you did not. This is the kind of success. There will be deviations and missed opportunities, and I can be very sure that you will fail to meet expectations. You probably never have a straight line from where you are to where you want to be. Making sure you enjoy the little success along the way is one surefire way to make yourself as happy as possible.
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