Researchers Reveal 4 Rituals to Ensure Happiness

[MysterionMuffles]

Here's an amazing article I read this morning about Researchers Revealing 4 Rituals to Ensure Happiness.

 

In a nutshell:

1. Ask What You Can Be Grateful For
2. Put a Name to Your Negative Feelings
3. Make Your Choices and Take Action
4. Touch People (But Not In No No Areas...unless they want you to)

Summed up and from my own musings:

 

1. Being grateful for things, even if you don't have much at the moment, is important for retraining your brain to think positively. Plus, Socrates did say that "he who cannot be contented with what he has will not be contented with what he would like to have." Thinking what you don't have is going to make you happy while completely neglecting what you have right here, and right now, sets you up for having an unsatiable black hole that just sucks everything up. Be thankful, and even if you can't find anything specific, the searching is more important than the stating.
2. Once you name your emotions and put some reason and evidence behind why you feel a certain way, the less you identify with it. This is why journaling and therapy help a lot. Expressing what's locked in your heart sets it free, thus setting you free. You are no longer that feeling. You're no longer sad. You have sadness in you, but it doesn't define who you are. Defining your feelings also activates you prefrontal cortext and shuts down your limbic system so that your brain can start functioning from a higher level.
3. Sometimes anxiety is built around a myriad of choices we need to make in our lives. Can't stop weighing those pros and cons? Make a choice and take action, and even if it doesn't turn out in your favour, you're at least one bad choice away from the right one. Ever heard of paralysis by analysis? That's what you suffer from being in a constant state of ambivalence. Once you make a choice, you train your brain to search and create for solutions to your problems instead of just dreading either outcome.
4. We are social beings and physical contact reminds our genes and DNA that we are not alone. Hugs are also known to release euphoric endorphins in our brains because it's one of the truest ways to literally feel acknowledged. But you don't have to go so far as to hug or make love to someone, a simple rub on the back or arm, it's just good to validate you exist from knowing you can feel others. (I tried my best not to be pervy with this one. How did I do?!)

[Guest Gee]

Rituals? What an odd descriptor.

 

Thanks for the link (and the summation!).

[dsayers]

Self-knowledge accomplishes all of the above The article kind of hints to this by prompting the reader to ask why. Unfortunately, the article doesn't delve further into that. For some people, "why?" might lead to a "after this, therefore because of this" error. Without tracing back further, they're chasing a symptom, not the problem. Which might make this a non-solution for some, only leading to being disenfranchised with trying.