Every find that you do something, you feel a surge of happiness, and then shortly after you just feel the same as before? Say you go on holiday – you feel great, really relaxed, and then within days of coming home, you feel as if you never went… Or you meditate, feel calm and at peace and then within 5 mins, BAM, you feel the same as before. I get you. It’s totally normal. But there is a way to avoid this – a way to increase your happiness LONG TERM. To understand how to do this, you first need to understand why our happiness doesn’t naturally stay elevated. It’s a concept called hedonic adaption. Heard of it? We are all born with a baseline level of happiness. And when something takes our happiness above our baseline, our mind and body try and return us to that setpoint. If you think about it, it’s actually pretty clever – it means that if we experience hardship, overtime we adapt and return to the same level of happiness as before. Unfortunately it also means that when you go on holiday or meditate, you feel an improvement in happiness, and then quite literally adapt to that new state, and go back to the how you felt before. So "How do we stop this adaption?" I hear you cry. Finally, I can tell you the three keys to long term happiness. 1) Variety, because constant differences, even if small, make it harder to adapt. Not always possible when you need to come home from holiday but you can switch up your meditation practice. And luckily, there’s two other points to come. 2) Gratitude, so you keep appreciating what you have even when it stays the same. So that’s getting home from holiday, and being SO grateful you were able to go – rather than focusing on how miserable you are to be home. 3) Mindfulness, which helps you appreciate the present moment. That means that even when you get home from holiday, or the meditation is over, you stay happy in that moment. This process blew my mind when I learnt about - it makes so much sense. What do you think? When you know this, you can apply it to EVERYTHING. Mix up your dinner times, apply gratitude for your food and be present while you eat it – and notice meal times become a moment of happiness in your day. Do a different routine at the gym, appreciate how lucky you are to be able to move your body and enjoy the feeling of doing so – and find a new level of enjoyment in exercising. Buy some new clothes – wear them in different ways, recognise how wonderful they are and feel how happy they make you when you put them on. Sure all of this takes practise, but it’s just one more reason I love mindful living.
If you give it a try, I’d LOVE to know how you get on – why not drop me an email?
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