Happiness Hacks

Anita Kalnay discusses whether the state of happiness can be hacked with the support of essential oils.

Happiness Hacks

I feel lazy lately. I can’t ignore it anymore. Although I wish things could be different, they aren’t, so my ‘lazy’ state has evolved out of the COVID lockdown restrictions. As I write this it is January 2021 and we are moving into our second month of our second major lockdown since COVID began. Also complicating things is the fact that I am the only ‘essential’ visitor for my husband who lives in a nearby care home. He had a stroke in 2015 and is still non-verbal.

I kept getting memes about happiness. The challenge for me as an Aromatherapist was: could we also ‘hack’ happiness in some way? Aromatics were usually a part of these memes and using essential oils apparently produces endorphins

Is laziness a symptom of “situational depression”?

To add to the complication of circumstance, restrictions as an essential visitor require that I not travel out of my area which is Vancouver Island. My “bubble” is to only include two other singles who must also follow the same guidelines of not travelling out of the area and not associating with those who have. So, no ins and no outs without two weeks of social isolating, and that includes family and friends, too. I actually had to write it out for people to clearly understand that my rules during this time were likely very different than their rules.

The first four months of the COVID lockdown were tough; I was not able to visit my husband at all. Add to this the fact that I...