Three Simple Hacks to a Happier Mindset!
Neuroscience is helping to inform mankind on how to cultivate the most treasured human resource, happiness!
Research on the biology of thought has pointed out that it is quite possible in many cases to think yourself into an improved mental state.
The thoughts and emotions which you are in the habit of experiencing become more readily available to you, so, if you deliberately practice being happy, your brain and biochemistry will adjust to perpetuate more thoughts and feelings of happiness.
To understand why this happens you will need to understand a little on the biology of thought.
How the Brain works:
Your brain has these things called synapses. These are nerve cells at the end of a neuron built for sending and receiving information. The numerous synapses of the brain are separated by empty space called the synaptic cleft. When a though occurs, broken down in physical terms, one synapse sends a chemical across the synaptic cleft to another synapse. This then creates a connective pathway which an electric signal can conduct to, bringing the electrical a charge which is the piece of information. Once these electrical charges are triggered, the synapses can grow closer together with time and repetition, which helps lessen the distance that the electrical charge needs to traverse. Our brain is actually adapting to what it believes to be our preferred way of thinking.
As Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb said in 1949, “The neurons which fire together wire together.”
The brain is physically changing and rewiring itself, to make it simpler for the most active synaptic connections to spark together, which means it is easier to think the thought, and more likely this pathway will be recalled or reactivated.This is why we forget things, such as algebra if we don't continue to operate the neural pathway after High School. The thought network becomes less easy to access, and eventually we re-write over inactive files, like an old USB stick.
In thoughts which we predominantly think, those neurons interacted together so much they have actually grown closer together, creating a well-established interaction between the synapses in the brain. The more frequently we fire these pathways by thinking the thought, the stronger the neurological connections become, and the more developed the pathway. Thus: the more likely we are to revisit this train of thought whether we are actively thinking or during moments of idle-mindedness. Hunting your mind to dust off your fondest old memories, reactivates the pathway and you will draw more attention to it and recall it more often. More practiced neurological pathways develop more neurological networks to other similar thoughts. The most powerful networks strengthen and inform our beliefs about the way life is. Therefore, the more neuronets (thought pathways) we have on subjects which make us happy, the more we practice good feeling thoughts, the happier we are, and the more positive our outlook.
So how does one simply have happier thoughts?
Keep a gratitude journal
After spending time in gratitude one finds themselves feeling happier and more content with what they have. The action of recalling happy memories or blessings brings these front of mind and reactivates the neurological pathway, making it naturally more accessible. As a result of practicing joy and gratitude one will find them self running everyday experiences through a more positive set of belief filters and naturally gravitating to thoughts for which they are happy and grateful.
Note: You can also buy my 21 Day Gratitude Program HERE
Practice FEELING happy!
It sounds a little odd, but you have the ability to conjure an emotional response simply by using your imagination, and the feelings that you are in the habit of feeling become more readily available to us. It actually does not matter if the thought is real or fantasy, so fantasy is welcome.
Because our feelings are just the product of our thoughts, focus on happy thoughts or fantasies conditions our brains to repeat thoughts which bring us happy emotions. You literally become more receptive to positive feelings, as the thought conjuring the emotion is rewriting your brain to repeat the same happy thought, and joyful relaxed feelings reset the nervous system to 'rest and digest'
Exercise:
1. Think of something which you want or that you have which you love.
2. List all the positive ways it feels to have it.
3. See, imagine and milk the positive emotion.
eg: Buying the home I live in. It feels: Secure, safe, stable, strong, bountiful, enough, content, possibility, abundance, hopefulness, clarity, ease, gentle, excited, comfortable, creative, relief etc. Spend time enjoying the feelings you are imagining.
If you begin to feel bad, change the subject.
As you have learned thoughts and emotions carry a momentum which perpetuates themselves, so if you're trying to increase your happiness it's good idea to steer away from chronically worrying without taking action. Humans are thought factories and sometimes thoughts come so fast it is hard to police each one, I would suggest that you can allow yourself to change momentum gradually, not analysing each thought, however, once a negative mental tangent has gone so far as to have elicited a strong negative emotional response, train yourself to notice, then change the subject.
If you find yourself feeling bad identify why, and what emotion you are feeling, then it's important to plan to take a specific action to resolve the stress, and not dwell on it until that is possible. If you can't or are unsure how to fix it right now, tell yourself you will come back to it once you have better access to a solution. In such a case, try saying to yourself:
"Thank you (emotion) for letting me know that there is something here which needs a resolution, I am now well aware of the problem. I wonder if I can put this issue aside for the moment and come back to it when I have a solution and it is time to act. " Interestingly, emotional stress decreases activity in the front brain, which is the part which we need to use the most when devising a creative solution. Sometimes emotional detachment can literally help you solve the problem causing you unhappy feelings. Many of us are walking around thinking thoughts by default, feeling that we have little control over our minds. We find ourselves playing various unpleasant dreamscapes and revisiting neural pathways without any intentional conscious decision on where we want to go, despite actually having control over our mental projections. Rather than a lack of ability, in many cases, the culprit is a lack of discipline
Whilst happiness absolutely requires a holistic approach with mindfulness to diet, biochemical balance, lifestyle, and emotional stressors and I do strongly advise professional support, these are some overlooked mental exercises that may help you increase your happiness right now.
With a small time investment every day on these simple exercises you can now be on your way to cultivating a brain with is more conditioned to think positive thoughts, enjoy!
E. x