HOW HAPPINESS...
www.icenimagazine.co.uk
Issue 89 2020
How Happiness And Mindfulness Helps Our Health Of course, everyone wants to be happy. Who doesn’t? But it’s about so much more than this. Through the science of Positive Psychology, we can use Happiness not only to improve our lives, our businesses and our productivity but also our health. Traditionally, psychology (and medical culture unfortunately) kind of focuses on a bit of lack mindset unfortunately, what is wrong with people, how we fix them, what is wrong with situations. It is very much ingrained within our society. It’s playing out very much at the moment, as well as lack and what’s not working, there is also a lot of fear.
Because our resources are focused on fighting or running away, everything else shuts down, including our immune system, making us far more likely to be susceptible to illness. So, yes, the news is making you sick; the fear in society at the moment is making you sick; people who trigger your fight/flight response are making you sick… However, there is a different way; we can absolutely do something about this, and it all starts with turning this fear response around.
Fear is a very easy state for the human body because our brains have been designed in a way that protects us from harm. They are ready to look for danger and protect us from being attacked by that imaginary tiger. Yes, the brain doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined danger.
Positive psychology flips this all on its head and is based on the latest neuroscience and research around when we focus on what is right rather than wrong. We look at how we can elevate our levels of positive emotion and this releases amazing happy chemicals in our brain, fuelling our brain and giving it energy, reducing our fight/flight mechanism and enabling us to be creative, innovative and productive as a result.
So, as we sit and watch the news, scroll the news app on our phones or listen to recycled news from our friends and family… yep, you guessed it, the fight or flight response reacts in the brain and guess what happens then?
The shut down of the fight/flight response is essential; the brain cannot be happy and fearful at the same time. We are actually hacking our brains to move us away from fear and into really useful responses, which give us the ability
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