Month: June 2019

Can flossing make you happy? Yes. It comes down to self-care and self-respect. You know that flossing is important for your oral health and can help prevent a myriad of nasty symptoms, from bad breath to gum decay, but let’s be honest— you hardly ever floss, right? If you can’t commit to something as simple (but important!) as flossing to improve your health, then you are most likely not making yourself a priority in other areas of your life, either. Commit to your health and yourself with a little flossing, and you’ll notice you will start to prioritize yourself more. 

People have a natural desire to learn and progress. Learning something new can help you build self-confidence and self-efficacy. Learning will also fuel your creativity—learning something new in one area can often help you make connections between other seemingly unrelated things. In other words, learning something new about one topic can trigger you to think differently about something that’s already going on in your life. You’ll also get a sense of satisfaction and a boost in self- esteem for having increased your skills and knowledge. 

You don’t need to plan every minute of your day in advance—in fact, that would probably end up causing you a great deal more stress and worry than it would spark happiness—but you should try to get the most out of your workday so that you can relax and enjoy your time away from work. One of the best ways to be effective is to plan your day in intervals. For example, work for an hour, take a ten- minute break, work another hour, take a thirty-minute break, and so on. Because your brain cannot concentrate for longer than a few hours at a time, planning your day in intervals can improve your productivity. 

Overworking yourself will not bring you happiness. It is not something to be proud of or something to brag about. No one at their end of their life thinks I wish I had spent more time preparing for that presentation! In fact, workers who work more than eleven hours a day have a higher risk of depression than those who work a standard seven- or eight-hour day. Want to know what overworking will get you? Sick, stressed, off-balance, disengaged, and less smart. In a study using MRI scans, re- searchers at Yale found that people who felt stressed out on a regular basis had smaller brain volumes than less stressed-out subjects.

We are a society of worriers, but in reality most of the terrible things that we envision happening never do. We are afraid of what might happen (or not happen) with respect to things we can’t change (or won’t be able to change) and what other people think about us. We worry and we hesitate, and as a consequence, we wind up thinking longer about doing something rather than just doing it. Meanwhile, weeks, months, and years pass, and we are still worried and still unhappy. If you want to be happier, put aside fear and worry and do something! Start something; take a first step. The only thing you should worry about is wasting your days and your life and not doing what you dream about doing.

No one wants to look stupid, and you may think it’s easier to just nod your head or say that you understand something. But in reality, you will look more foolish if you pretend to understand something than if you don’t. When you’re in a workplace or faced with an intimidating person or situation, it can be difficult to admit you don’t know something. Oftentimes you may be fudging your way through a conversation and come to a point where you don’t know the answer to something. You could pretend that you do (and risk getting called out later or thrown into a situation you can’t handle) or you could just admit you don’t know. Saying you don’t know something or didn’t understand something will actually give you credibility. You might also get a better explanation of whatever you didn’t understand or more time to figure something out. 

Play with your pets! Take your dog for a walk or play with your cat for a few minutes each day. Feel the unconditional love and joy you can get from an animal. The act of caring and providing for a pet can give you satisfaction too. Pets require constant care and attention, and being able to give your pet that support can make you feel accomplished. Don’t have a pet? Stop an owner on the street and ask to pet their dog, or watch pet videos online. A recent study found that just watching cat videos online can boost a person’s energy and increase feelings of happiness. 

There are many ways that complimenting someone can lead to happiness. In addition to the good feels you’ll get by making someone else happier, a genuine compliment helps build trust between people. It also is more likely to lead to someone giving you a compliment in return, which can make you feel special. That’s not to say that you should pay someone a compliment just to get one in return, but one good reason to compliment others is that you’ll be promoting a happiness chain that can help change attitudes and build a positive rapport among your coworkers and friends. 

Treat everyone you meet the same way: don’t treat the president of your company better than her intern. And don’t treat your coworkers with kindness and respect and then come home and take your frustrations out on your significant other or family. Being consistent not only makes other people feel better about you— treating people equally makes you appear fair and open-minded—it will help you feel less critical and judgmental.