|
If I were to offer you an opportunity to improve your chances of living longer, immediately feel better about yourself and improve your overall general health and well-being, that was totally free - didn't cost you anything, was readily available with an unlimited resource that would never run out, would you be interested?
You should be. Think about it, why do you work? Isn't one primary reason to improve the quality of your life or the lives of those you care for, to have a happier life? If so does being unhappy at work, and continually doing something that you believe makes you unhappy, help you achieve that goal? Seems to me that's like making love to achieve virginity!!
The fact is happiness is not a destination or objective and it's not something we eventually arrive at. It is something we do. It is an attitude to life. It's our relationship to the way we feel about life not the way life makes us feel. In short happiness is something that you can achieve right now - if you want to.
The reality is that we become addicted to nothing more than our emotional state, and, believe it or not, our minds will generate the very chemicals we need to satisfy our emotional addiction, whatever it may be - anger, depression, sadness, victim-mentality or joyful, happy, positive, upbeat, etc. In essence if you need to feel bad about something your brain will produce 'bad-juice', and if you need to feel good about something your brain will produce 'good juice'. What would you rater generate - good stuff or bad stuff? The choice is actually yours.
What we focus on we get more of!
Now what is possibly interesting is that some of you who have read the above paragraphs may possibly have immediately dismissed it as being either 'too good to be true' - when in fact what that means is it is possibly too true to be good, think about it. What if it were true, wouldn't that be good? The fact is whatever you thought about in relation to the above paragraphs is simply down to your focus of attention, or to put it another way, you look for only those things which your mind and senses are attuned to find. That's why for some the glass is half-full and for others half-empty so to speak.
However, there is now an abundance of research that proves that being happy is good for your health. It is also claimed that happiness could be more important than smoking in determining your health.
Dr Derek Cox, Director of Public Health at Dumfries and Galloway NHS, suspects that for decades health professionals have been missing a big trick in improving the health of the nation.
"We've spent years saying that giving up smoking could be the single most important thing that we could do for the health of the nation. "And yet there is mounting evidence that happiness might be at least as powerful a predictor, if not a more powerful predictor than some of the other lifestyle factors that we talk about in terms of cigarette smoking, diet, physical activity and those kind of things."
"If you are happy you are likely in the future to have less in the way of physical illness than those who are unhappy."
Dr Derek Cox, Director of Public Health
Smile yourself fit!
What is also interesting is that people associate physical well-being with being happy when in effect it is the other way round! The true fact is that if you are happy you are much more likely to be in better health!! The science of happiness is increasingly suggesting a link between happiness and health.
Andrew Steptoe, the British Heart Foundation Professor of Psychology at University College London, has found that happier people also have greater protection against things like heart disease and stroke.
"We know that stress which has bad effects on biology, leads to those bad changes as far as health is concerned," said Mr. Steptoe. "What we think is happening is that happiness has the opposite effect and has a protective effect on these same biological pathways".
Talk yourself into old age!
Research in the United States has suggested a possible link between happiness and long life.
A study of nuns in Milwaukee examined the diaries of the sisters of Notre Dame when they joined back in the 1930s and counted the number of times they used positive and negative words. Some were brimming with joyful thoughts. Others were a bit gloomy. Enough for modern-day researchers to divide the intake into "happy nuns" and "not so happy nuns".
After joining the order their lives were almost exactly the same - same food, same work, same routine. But not the same life expectancy. Among the less positive nuns, two thirds died before their 85th birthday. Among the happy nuns, 90% were still alive. On average the happiest nuns lived about nine years longer than the least happy nuns.
It is a huge effect when you think that on average smoking one packet of cigarettes a day takes three years off your life.
Would you like to feel better without the need for drugs?
Being happy also helps combat depression. In one controlled study researchers looked at the effect on severe depression after the depressed patients were given only three exercises to do. What they found was that
"Depressive symptoms were substantially reduced and
happiness markedly increased."
In this uncontrolled study, 94% of severely depressed people became less depressed and 92% became happier, with an average symptom relief of a whopping 50% over only 15 days. This compares very favourably with anti-depressant medication and with psychotherapy.
Would you like to be happier?
If you are interested in attending a one-day workshop designed to show you how you can become more happier immediately simply e-mail us with the word 'happy' in the e-mail so that we can judge the response. If we get enough people interested we'll run the day.
Until then if you're feeling a bit low take two Marx Brothers Films twice a day for the next three weeks and notice the difference!! |
