Why Some People Are Always Agreeing — Despite What They Really Think (M)
Do you know someone who always agrees, no matter what they really think?
Category: Happiness
Small Gifts Give Much More Pleasure Than We Predict (M)
Givers tend to focus overly on how modest the gift is, while the recipient concentrates on the warm feeling they get.
5 Advantages Of Feeling Younger Than Your Age (M)
A lower subjective than actual age is linked to a number of benefits.
Why Selfless Acts Make You Happier (M)
The activity may raise feel-good neurotransmitters and boost mood.
These Everyday Interactions Increase Sense Of Purpose In Life (M)
A sense of purpose is powerful as it is linked to living a longer, healthier and happier life.
How To Experience More Meaning In Life (M)
What gives your life meaning and how can that be enhanced?
The Best Way To Start A New Phase Of Your Life
How to move home, change job or start a new relationship with no regrets.
How to move home, change job or start a new relationship with no regrets.
Ending phases of life with a sense of closure makes people feel happier, research finds.
People who tie up all the loose ends before moving house, changing job or starting a new relationship experience fewer regrets.
When people feel they have ‘said goodbye’ properly to their old life, they experience easier transitions to their new life.
Things like going-away parties help people experience a sense of closure.
Without doing everything that could have been done, people are more likely to have regrets.
Professor Gabriele Oettingen, the study’s first author, said:
“Starting a new life phase in a positive and constructive way is often challenging, so we examined methods that could help people find a good start to a new job, a new relationship, or a new home.
We observed that how people end their previous life periods makes a difference.
In fact, the more people feel that they have done everything they could have done, that they have completed something to the fullest, and that all loose ends are tied up, the happier they are later on, the less they are plagued by regrets, and the more constructively they enter the next life phase.”
The research included over 1,200 people across seven different studies.
Participants were asked about transitions like finishing school or travelling for a period.
In one study, people imagined moving away from their hometown or leaving a best friend’s wedding.
The results showed that ending these periods in a well-rounded way — for example, by saying goodbye to friends — was linked to fewer regrets and a more positive transition.
Finishing in a well-rounded way was even linked to enhanced attention and cognitive flexibility by one study.
Professor Oettingen said:
“Ending the various phases in our lives in a well-rounded way seems to be an important building block for sustaining emotional, interpersonal, and professional happiness.”
The study was published in the journal Motivation Science (Schwörer et al., 2019).
The Income People Say They Require For The Ideal Life (M)
Who wants to be a billionaire? Most people don’t.
The Simplest Way To Feel Happier Right Now
How we think with both our brains and our bodies.
How we think with both our brains and our bodies.
One of the simplest ways of feeling happier is to force a smile.
Similarly, scowling makes us feel more miserable.
Both are examples of how we think with both our brains and our bodies.
While we tend to think of smiles and scowls being the end product of our internal emotional processes, they can also be the start.
No one is claiming that forcing a smile will cure depression, but it is worth considering the implications of even a small effect such as this one.
Imagine all the little facial expression a person makes over a day, and then over a lifetime.
Think of how the posture and dynamics of the rest of the body feeds back to the mind’s emotional state (for example, a happy style of walking).
It is not hard to imagine that routinely smiling as opposed to scowling, along with other aspects of positive body language, would make a difference to mental health in the long-term.
Nevertheless, the idea that smiling makes people happy has been controversial, explained Mr Nicholas Coles, the study’s first author:
“Conventional wisdom tells us that we can feel a little happier if we simply smile.
Or that we can get ourselves in a more serious mood if we scowl.
But psychologists have actually disagreed about this idea for over 100 years.”
For the study, researchers looked at 138 separate studies including over 11,000 people.
Mr Coles said:
“Some studies have not found evidence that facial expressions can influence emotional feelings.
But we can’t focus on the results of any one study.
Psychologists have been testing this idea since the early 1970s, so we wanted to look at all the evidence.”
The meta-analysis found that facial expressions do indeed have a small effect on how people feel.
Mr Coles said:
“We don’t think that people can smile their way to happiness.
But these findings are exciting because they provide a clue about how the mind and the body interact to shape our conscious experience of emotion.
We still have a lot to learn about these facial feedback effects, but this meta-analysis put us a little closer to understanding how emotions work.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin (Coles et al., 2019).
How Wisdom Makes People Happier With Age (M)
Wisdom involves accepting life’s uncertainties and being interested in its meaning.
