Category: Happiness

We all carry around an instrument that can make us happy, if we practice.

Getting lost in positive thoughts about past, present and future helps us escape from ourselves and boosts our well-being, just like a good novel.

Unfortunately, most people find it hard to enjoy their own thoughts.

One infamous example of this is the study that found that most people choose electric shocks over sitting quietly for 15 minutes and thinking.

The reason is that most people are not that good at it, explains Dr Erin Westgate, first author of a new study exploring how we can all improve our daydreaming.

The first problem is that pleasant daydreams are difficult, she says:

“This is part of our cognitive toolkit that’s underdeveloped, and it’s kind of sad.

You have to be the actor, director, screenwriter and audience of a mental performance.

Even though it looks like you’re doing nothing, it’s cognitively taxing.”

The second barrier is that people intuitively go about day dreaming in the wrong way.

When instructed to think meaningful thoughts, people do not enjoy it, which stymied Dr Westgate until she looked at what people were thinking about:

“We’re fairly clueless.

We don’t seem to know what to think about to have a positive experience.

I was so confused.

Then she took a look at the topics the participants reported thinking about.

It was heavy stuff.

It didn’t seem to occur to them that they could use the time to enjoy their own thoughts.”

4 steps to positive daydreaming

Instead, in another part of the research, people were prompted with subjects to daydream about.

They were given these examples:

• “A specific memory you would enjoy thinking about (e.g., your first kiss, a family event, an academic or athletic accomplishment).”
• “Something in the future you are looking forward to (e.g., an upcoming social occasion, date, meeting with a friend, or vacation).”
• “Imagining a future accomplishment (e.g., your graduation day, your wedding day, your first day at a great job).”

The key is to think thoughts that are both pleasant and meaningful.

The results showed that people enjoyed daydreaming 50 percent more when given specific subjects than when they thought about what they wanted.

So, the first key to positive daydreaming is to have topics ready, says Dr Westgate:

“This is something all of us can do once you have the concept.

We give 4- and 5-year-olds these instructions, and it makes sense to them.”

The second key is practice, she says:

“This is hard for everybody.

There’s no good evidence that some types of people are simply better thinkers.

I’m the world’s worst person at this: I would definitely rather have the electric shock.

But knowing why it can be hard and what makes it easier really makes a difference.

The encouraging part is we can all get better.”

The third is to avoid making plans while daydreaming, she says:

“People say they enjoy planning, but when we test it, they do not.”

The fourth is to choose the right time:

“The next time you’re walking, instead of pulling out your phone, try it.”

Thinking for pleasure is something that sets us apart, says Dr Westgate:

“It defines our humanity.

It allows us to imagine new realities.

But that kind of thinking requires practice.”

The study was published in the journal Emotion (Westgate et al., 2021).

Which spouse’s happiness is most important for marital satisfaction?

When the wife is happy with a long-term partnership, the husband is happier, no matter how he feels about the marriage.

For marital quality, it seems the wife’s happiness matters more than the husband’s.

The conclusion comes from a study that looked at the marital satisfaction and happiness of older adults.

Professor Deborah Carr, the study’s first author said:

“I think it comes down to the fact that when a wife is satisfied with the marriage she tends to do a lot more for her husband, which has a positive effect on his life.

Men tend to be less vocal about their relationships and their level of marital unhappiness might not be translated to their wives.”

Almost 400 couples took part in the research, which asked them how much they argue, get on each other’s nerves, whether they are appreciated by their spouses and how much they feel understood.

The couples also kept diaries detailing how happy they were while taking part in everyday activities like watching television and doing household chores.

Along with the importance of the wife’s happiness, the researchers also found that wives got less happy when their husbands were sick, but the husbands’ happiness did not drop in response to their wife’s sickness.

Professor Carr thinks this is to do with who takes over the care-giving:

“We know that when a partner is sick it is the wife that often does the caregiving, which can be a stressful experience.

But often when a woman gets sick it is not her husband she relies on but her daughter.”

Finally, the researchers looked at the overall quality of the marriages.

They found that most rated their life satisfaction as ‘high’: a five out of six points.

Overall, husbands were slightly happier with their marriages than wives.

Professor Carr continued:

“For both spouses being in a better-rated marriage was linked to greater life satisfaction and happiness.”

“The quality of a marriage is important because it provides a buffer against the health-depleting effects of later life stressors and helps couples manage difficult decisions regarding health and medical decision making.”

The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family (Carr et al., 2014).

The boost to happiness can be seen in increased brain activity in regions critical to novelty and reward.

New and diverse experiences make people the happiest, research shows.

People living in New York and Miami, who were tracked over months, felt more positive emotions when they spent more time in locations that were novel to them.

The boost to happiness can be seen in increased brain activity in regions critical to novelty and reward.

Even relatively small changes — like walking around the block or taking a different route to the store — may have beneficial effects.

Dr Catherine Hartley, study co-author, said:

“Our results suggest that people feel happier when they have more variety in their daily routines—when they go to novel places and have a wider array of experiences.

The opposite is also likely true: positive feelings may drive people to seek out these rewarding experiences more frequently.”

For the study, people in New York and Miami had their emotions and movements tracked over 3-4 months.

The results showed that when people were in new and different places on the same day, they were more likely to report feeling happy, strong, relaxed or excited.

Dr Aaron Heller, the study’s first author, said:

“Collectively, these findings show the beneficial consequences of environmental enrichment across species, demonstrating a connection between real-world exposure to fresh and varied experiences and increases in positive emotions.”

Brain scans on a subset of these people showed a strong link between novelty and a rewarding feeling.

Some people’s brains are particularly sensitive to diverse experiences and it gives them a greater boost.

In these people there are stronger links between parts of the brain important for feeling good and for processing reward and novelty.

Dr Hartley said:

“These results suggest a reciprocal link between the novel and diverse experiences we have during our daily exploration of our physical environments and our subjective sense of well-being.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience (Heller et al., 2020).