Inner happiness
People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road, doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost. ―H.H. The Dalai Lama
👥 Serves: 1 person
🎚 Difficulty: Medium
⏳ Total time: 11-30 minutes
🥣 Ingredients: An open mind and open heart
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Positive Emotion
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Calm, Contentment, Gratitude, Joy, Optimism, Peacefulness, Reframing
Inner happiness
📝 Description
Scientifically proven methods to increase daily happiness.
Laughter, contentedness, peacefulness, lightness, calmness, smiling: all positive emotions and our body’s natural reaction to the feeling of happiness.We may know what it feels like in our bodies, but happiness can be a challenge to define, due to the variety of definitions across different cultures, values, and even personalities.One way to help us understand happiness is by understanding hedonic happiness versus eudaimonic happiness.
- Hedonic happiness is when you feel enjoyment or pleasure from things that you partake in – like going out for dinner with friends, getting pampered at a spa, or attending a comedy show. These are often considered fleeting experiences.
- Eudaimonic happiness is achieved through having a sense of purpose in life, that offers a deeper meaning to why you do what you do. Check out our recipe “The art of happiness” to find out more about eudaimonic happiness.
Both contribute to your overall well being, for different reasons. While you can plan regular events to experience hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness is something you must practise regularly. In fact, as we explore in our recipe “Hardwiring happiness”, you can learn to rewire your brain to be happy. Neuroscientists and psychologists have carved out tangible ways for you to invite hedonic happiness into your life through scientifically-proven actions that help you cultivate joy every day.
This recipe invokes the idea that happiness is an inside job and It is inspired by the work of the team at Mission Joy, led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It has been adapted by our wellbeing content creator, Marissa Del Mistro.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Acts of kindness (5’)
We can all benefit from additional acts of kindness in our life! This can be something small or something more large scale, depending on your resources. When you do multiple acts of kindness every week, your feeling of joy will increase tenfold. Quick and easy acts of kindness you can do today:
- Offer someone a compliment
- Allow someone to merge ahead of you into traffic
- Give up your seat on transportation
- Buy a warm meal for someone in need
- Buy a stranger a coffee
- Return a stranger’s grocery cart
- Donate time/flowers/money to a nursing home
- Throw away litter on the ground
- Write a thank-you note to people who deliver packages
- Bake cookies for your neighbours
- Donate to a cause
Step 2 – Practise gratitude (5’)
Being grateful leads to increased optimism and joyfulness in your every day. It has also been known to decrease stress and relieve pain. You can practise gratitude by:
- Keeping a gratitude journal with 1-5 things you are grateful for every day.
- Expressing your gratitude for others.
- Writing heartfelt letters.
- Do tasks like household cleaning or grocery shopping for someone else.
- Practice gratitude meditations.
- Volunteer for a meaningful cause.
If you’re looking for additional inspiration on ways to cultivate gratitude in your life, we have quite a few recipes for you, both for individuals and groups/teams:
- For individuals: “Three good things”, “Gratitude journal”, “Pleasure activism”, “The gratitude alarm”, and “Unexpressed gratitude letter”.
- For groups/teams: “Appreciation shower”, “Gratitude bingo”, “Gratitude fountain”, “Gratitude walk”, “Open sentences on appreciation”, “Sugar cubes”, and “What I love about you”.
Step 3 – Discover the silver lining (5’)
There are plenty of lessons to learn even through the hard times, by reframing your thoughts to consider the lesson or the silver lining. As a bonus, this practice can flex your problem solving and creative thinking skills! To help reframe thoughts to find the positive, you can:
- List three potential ‘silver linings’ to a problem you’re facing.
- Ask yourself, five years from now, will the thing that is bothering you still be an issue?
- Try to find one positive lesson you can take from the issue or problem you are facing.
- Speak to your family and friends to help rationalise the issue at hand.
- Consider a mentor, hero, or icon of yours. Can you imagine how they may handle the issue?
- Evaluate the evidence of the problem at hand, by removing your emotions for a moment and looking at it factually. Is it easier to find positivity in it now?
Step 4 – Connect with others (5’)
Connection with others is so important for humans the science used in Mission Joy tells us that “the single most significant predictor of mental and physical health is the amount and quality of human connections we have.” There are many ways you can connect with the special people in your life, including:
- Send a friend a thoughtful message that will make them smile or laugh.
- Open up to someone close about something that you’re struggling with.
- Do a kind act for someone.
- Cook someone dinner.
- Do an activity that you don’t normally do together, like hiking or painting.
- Visit an exhibition, gallery or museum and discuss the different things you saw.
If you’re looking for additional inspiration on activities to connect to others, check out our recipes “36Qs for increasing closeness”, “Connecting through music”, “Cultivating presence”, “Dialogue in the dark”, “Empathic conversations”, “Eye gazing meditation”, “Giving and receiving circle”, “Heart-to-heart hug”, “House of Wellbeing”, “Positive gossiping”, “Positive introductions”, and “Unlimited empathy”.