Your brain doesn’t know what’s best for your happiness – it’s often wrong!

Here are 20 things that your brain believes …that are wrong.

1. If I eat more I’ll be happy.
2. If I lose weight I’ll be happy
3. If I get drunk frequently I’ll be happy (in fact anything that’s good in small amounts will be eve better in large amounts)
4. I can get away with missing out on sleep
5. Money will make me happy, e.g. if I earned twice as much I definitely would be happy
6. If I can just buy that thing it’ll make me happy for more than 5 minutes
7. Laziness is more enjoyable than exercise
8. Hard work generally is bad for me 
9. Worrying will make my life better
10. It’s better to be planning for the future than living in the present moment 
11. Dwelling on the good things in the past will make me happy
12. Harking back to mistakes in the past, wishing I could change the past, will make me feel better about the past
13. Internal talking and mind wandering is better for me than savouring the present
14. Meditation is too much like hard work
15. Negative emotions like anger and hate will make me happier
16. Guilt will make me change my behaviour in the future and therefore make me happier in the end
17. Doing things for myself will make me happy, while helping other people won’t
18. I don’t need to thank other people – they already know, and anyway, it’ll be cheesy and embarrassing
19. Comparing myself with other people, and competing with them, is a good idea
20. It’s better to avoid contact with people I don’t know, in case it goes badly.

Conclusion – don’t leave it to chance and hope to be happy, because your brain, your natural reactions and habits, will tend to lead you awayfrom happiness rather than towards it.  It needs a conscious effort to make your life happier.  Work out what makes you happy, find out what makes people generally happy, and deliberately consciously work towards those.  

For example

• Work on getting rid of negative emotions like anger and guilt
• Work on living in the present rather than the past or the future
• Help other people
• Forget chasing after money in the hope that it’ll make you happy
• Force yourself to get enough exercise and sleep
• Make an effort to connect with strangers and new people

…… even if you don’t feel like it

onwards and upwards!

CC