Can happiness have anything to do with what you eat and what you drink? With what you do? With what you don’t do? We can bring happiness or unhappiness with our own hands. Here are the 23 scientifically proven steps in the path to happiness:
1.Healthy nutrition
Healthy nutrition is the most important determinant, the touchstone, of our happiness, health and our energy levels. The first requirement for a healthy diet is to remove sugar and refined carbohydrates from your life. Although all simple carbohydrates make you happy in the first half hour after consumption, in the long term they affect your serotonin and dopamine metabolisms, making you gain weight, cause sugar lows, make you hungry and unhappy. Processed products and their ingredients also help the havoc caused.
The second requirement is to consume as little as possible of saturated fats (animal fats) and fats high in omega 6 (poultry and refined seed oils), which increase inflammation. Instead consuming plenty of omega 3 and omega 9 unsaturated fats that are good for your brain and your body; using olive oil, eating fish, eating lean meat from grass-fed animals, eating nuts makes you healthier and happier.
The third requirement for a healthy diet is cooking at home. You will do something for yourself (and your loved ones), making time for yourself, and avoiding the unhealthy choices that you may face when eating out.
The fourth requirement is actually a continuation of the first requirement. Choose your healthy carbohydrate selection from gluten-free whole grains (buckwheat, quinoa, shelled rice) as much as possible. Gluten makes you unhappy by increasing intestinal permeability and through exorphins produced during gluten digestion. If you eat high quality protein, eggs, unsaturated fats, and nuts in order to increase your serotonin and dopamine levels while eating healthy, you are more likely to be happy and stay that way.
Stay as far away as possible from processed foods; due to their sugar, refined carbohydrate, saturated fat, and omega 6 and additive contents. One of the items that are overlooked are artificial sweeteners; especially Aspartame. Aspartame makes you both angry and unhappy by increasing the brain excitability and lowering your serotonin and dopamine levels.
2.Have breakfast
Having breakfast, not skipping breakfast and making healthy choices during breakfast; are types of behavior that show you value both yourself and your health. People who have breakfast get less hungry (especially if they eat a low carbohydrate breakfast), they work better and more efficiently.
3.Get moving
We know that human beings were created to move around and they can only be healthy that way. Exercise increases both serotonin and dopamine levels, making you nearly as happy as if you have taken anti-depressants. By lowering your stress hormone levels, it reduces your stress level and inflammation. By increasing your endorphin levels, it causes happiness per se. It also helps you manage your appetite, helps you lose excess weight, and allows you to act and think flexibly when faced with problems in life. We can basically say you are as happy as you much as you exercise. Outdoor exercises increase not only your levels of Vitamin D, but also raise the benefits you get from exercising by being in contact with friendly bacteria.
4.Sleep
Everybody knows how grumpy we can become when we are sleep deprived. We must sleep at least 7, if possible 8 hours every night. Adolescents and children even a little more. In sufficient sleep makes unhappy, grumpy, inefficient, careless, tired people. Sleep deprivation disrupts the serotonin and melatonin metabolisms, causes increased inflammation in the body and brain, brain self-repair capacity loss, a decrease in the brain’s growth-factor BDNF levels. All of these cause irritability, anxiety and depression.
5.Lose weight
The extra pounds you carry, or more precisely the fat tissue in the body, secretes hormones and substances that can affect the entire body. These cause widespread inflammation and problems in serotonin metabolism. When eating too much sugar and carbohydrates and little movement are added to the equation, it naturally results in unhappiness. Along with an addition of the psychological effects created by weight, unhappiness gains another level.
6.Slow down
Catching up, doing 2-3-5-8 things in a day, keeping up with the home, work, and social life…more, more, more…until when and where? This lifestyle will eventually lead you to exhaustion. But it also causes you to spend stressful and unhappy years before exhausting you. Among all this worrying and stress increases your stress hormone levels, each extra tiny stress making you ill and unhappy in the long term.
7.Stay away from social media
Spending time on social media and other popular internet content on phones and screens for long hours reduces your dopamine levels. It also contributes to your unhappiness since you lack any movement/exercise. Looking at the screens late at night (especially if night mode is inactive) also aggravates this process by disturbing your sleep quality.
8.Make time for yourself
This is related to number 6 but is related to happiness in another way. Making time for yourself is a sign that you value yourself; and your brain understands this best. Whether you’re exercising, reading, doing nothing, or doing something just because you know it will be beneficial to you, makes you happy by decreasing your stress hormone levels and raising your levels of serotonin and dopamine.
9.Make time for your loved ones
Spending time with your loved ones increases your levels of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine, which make you feel good, while decreasing the body’s stress response as well as the cortisol levels along with increasing your parasympathetic activity. As you feel better, you are more likely to be happy and stay happy.
10.Practice yoga
Practicing yoga contributes to your happiness in many ways; increasing brain growth-factor BDNF levels, serotonin and dopamine levels, reducing stress levels and increasing parasympathetic activity. In a study, without changing any other factors, patients were asked to stand and make an effort to stay upright. Depression and anxiety levels decreased significantly; the patients stated that they were happier at the end. As you know, yoga is the best activity that teaches you a good posture.
11.Meditate
Meditating calms the brain’s anxiety and panic center amygdalas, increasing central frontal lobes activity responsible for tranquility and calmness, increases brain growth-factor BDNF levels, increases serotonin and dopamine levels; resulting in happiness. When you stay in the moment, you will cease fighting with the past and worrying about the future, thus reaching happiness step by step.
12.Get some sunshine
The life energy for human beings comes from the sun. As long as you are not in a desert, being under the sun has a calming effect on humans. Vitamin D is essential for many of the biochemical and hormonal reactions in our body. You already know that you easily get depressed during the winter and in northern countries due to the lack of sunlight and vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency makes us unhappy by affecting serotonin, dopamine, melatonin, magnesium, and calcium levels.
13.Reduce coffee consumption
The caffeine contained in coffee, especially if taken in high amounts, triggers the stress response in the body, elevating both the stress hormone cortisol and adrenaline levels. It also reduces magnesium levels in the blood by increasing magnesium excretion from the kidneys. As caffeine levels drop at the end of the day you become tired and exhausted. Try not to exceed 2 cups (200 mg) of caffeine throughout the day may clear your path on the way to happiness.
14.Quit smoking
Smoking increases inflammation in the body, also affects dopamine metabolism, making you unhappy in the long run.
15.Reduce alcohol consumption
Alcohol itself is a sugar; further, extra sugar is added to all alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages increase intestinal permeability, causing extensive inflammation, especially if they contain gluten (beer) or consumed with gluten-containing foods. With their effects on the addiction and reward centers, they can double your unhappiness as a bonus. Occasional drinks (once a week-month) are ok, and contribute to your happiness.
16.Leave work at work
Bringing work home; having meetings, answering emails, completing projects…not only prevent you from resting and making time for yourself, but they also prevent your stress hormone from dropping to normal levels. This path ends either in falling into depression or exhaustion, making happiness impossible.
17.Socialize
Socializing, spending time with friends, taking walks together, drinking tea and coffee (small amounts of course), are some of the best activities for your dopamine and serotonin levels. Especially when accompanied by physical activity, socializing directly makes you happy.
18.Be grateful
Focusing on what you don’t have is the easiest way to guarantee your unhappiness. Realizing the value of our possessions, such as hot water, a comfortable bed, a full fridge, or stable roof, in our lives that go unnoticed… paying attention to the daily events that upset us in their absence, being grateful for the doctors, lawyers, teachers, guides, farmers, supermarket employees, police/security forces in our lives, realizing all of this brings us closer to happiness step by step every day.
19. Take responsibility
Taking responsibility for our lives, our time, our daily schedules, our causes of unhappiness, and the sources of stress, and solving our problems without blaming others makes us more happy, calm and flexible in the long term.
20.Help out/volunteer
Helping just to help, without any expectations or a purpose, teaches us to be thankful and appreciate the value of our possessions, while raising serotonin and dopamine levels. The small seeds we plant bring us happiness in the long term.
21.Treat yourself well
One of the worst things we can do to ourselves and one of the most important reasons for unhappiness is to judge, to dislike, to be angry, to compare with others, and to punish ourselves. First, try to notice these behaviors that lower your levels of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin and that increase your stress levels; catch yourself while you’re being mad at yourself. Then give yourself compassion and love by increasing your awareness and by staying in the moment. Over time you will master this and be able to build your own happiness.
22.Don’t think too much
There are many positive, negative and neutral thoughts in our brain. But those that constantly nag us inside without any possible end, popping up everywhere and anytime, are often negative thoughts. When negative thoughts start to spiral inside your brain, direct your attention to other things; walk, drink a glass of water, or open the window and look outside. You will find that you can cope with negative thoughts much more successfully after a while because thoughts are just in your head, not reality itself.
23.Forgive
Forgive your past, those who have mistreated you, those who have damaged you, yourselves, the you who has made wrong decisions, and the you inside who hasn’t kept promises. To forgive is not to show mercy. Even if you do not show mercy to those who have hurt you (you absolutely do not have to), face your future by leaving them in the past. Leave them and their evil ways on the dusty shelves of the past.
There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.
Thich Nhat Hanh
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
