The Science of a Happier You

What Is Positive Psychology?

Over the past few months, most of us have been affected to some degree by what's been happening around us, and it's easy for negative thoughts to surface. In this article, the Treehole team would like to share a few ways, seen through the lens of positive psychology, that can help you feel happier.

In the early days of psychology, most of the field's energy went into treating mental illness. That's because psychology came of age around the era of the Second World War. War and political instability left ordinary people anxious and on edge from morning till night, so the psychology of the time tended to focus on the more pathological side of the human condition.

It was only after the war ended that the prevailing mood gradually grew more optimistic, and psychologists such as Martin Seligman began to explore how positive psychology could help people live a good life.

Put simply, positive psychology uses scientific methods to investigate what it means to live "a good life" — and "happiness" is one of its most important topics.

Three Ways to Feel Happier

Positive psychology is both fascinating and wonderfully practical. Would it ever have occurred to you that moving house could make you happier? 

The Happiness Baseline 

The Happiness Baseline is one of the important theories in positive psychology. The idea is that for the vast majority of life events — whether they're good enough to make you blissfully happy, or bad enough to leave you in despair — your level of happiness will slowly return to its baseline. Given enough time, human beings are able to adapt to most events and carry on living, safe and sound.

That said, some psychological research points to two exceptions: noise in your living environment, and the distance between where you live and where you work.

First, people simply can't adapt to noise. Noise keeps us in a constantly alert state. Research has also found that an overly long commute can affect our level of happiness. These two situations have something in common: both meaninglessly drain our limited reserves of energy. When resources are limited, we'd all rather spend them on things that matter more. So if your home suffers from persistent noise pollution, or sits a long way from your workplace, then for the sake of your own mental health and happiness, it may be worth considering a move. Keep your precious energy for the things that are more meaningful.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a form of training that teaches us to place our attention on the present moment. Why should paying attention to the present moment be able to make us happier?

First, it can help us engage more fully with the activities of daily life and savour the little details within them.

Enjoying good food is, for many people, a favourite pleasure — especially after a hard day, when a rich and delicious meal can sweep away all the day's troubles. Even a simple home-cooked dish already holds plenty of details to delight in: its aroma, its taste, even the care of the person who cooked it for you. Each of these can remind us that the ingredients of happiness are, in fact, everywhere — it's only a question of whether we take the trouble to feel the present moment and notice that happiness is there.

Second, learning mindfulness helps us avoid being ruled by negative thinking. We've probably all had this kind of experience: you're waiting at a crossing and you just miss the lights, and then you think, "Oh no! I'm going to be late because of this, and I'm bound to get a telling-off from the boss again…" Take it a step further and you might even start to doubt your own abilities, knocking your confidence. You'll notice that these negative thoughts are like a snowball — what began as a trivial thing snowballs into something quite serious, turning into a great big problem that leaves you completely stuck.

Practising mindfulness can help you notice negative emotions and learn to respond at the right moment, so that you don't only discover, at the very brink, that things have spiralled out of control.

Learning mindfulness is very simple. Everyone can make use of the Treehole team's mindfulness audio recordings, training for just 10–20 minutes a day; readers keen to learn more can also keep an eye out for the mindfulness courses that Treehole runs from time to time.

Finding Your Role in Society

A great deal of psychological research agrees that when people find their role in society, they become happier.

First, we need warm social relationships and friends who can support us. When you receive support from others and feel needed, you sense that you are valued and that you matter.

Beyond social relationships, finding your meaning in life is another deeply important piece of the puzzle. Perhaps you and I have both wondered: what can we contribute to society or to our community? What, in the end, is all the effort we put in, and all the hardship we endure, actually for?

The renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl noted that once a person understands the meaning behind their suffering, their capacity to bear that suffering grows because it has meaning — so much so that we can endure far greater, or far more, suffering than we ever imagined.

Although this approach takes longer to put into practice, and won't yield results in the short term the way the previous two do, every journey has its starting point — a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Here are two starting points for readers to consider:

Listen More, Talk Less

Listening attentively to what others have to say is, in fact, a skill that takes practice. In communication between people, we often listen while at the same time thinking about how to respond. The truth is that in our relationships, those who know how to listen to others and respect them tend to be more easily liked. The next time you meet a good friend, why not try listening attentively to what they say, and only then slowly think about how to respond — besides making your friend feel valued, you might just come up with even better ideas to share with them!

Try New Things 

As mentioned above, finding meaning is hugely important to life. Only when we find meaning in things can we keep digging deeper to uncover our own interests and passions. So daring to try new things is absolutely the first step we all need to take. Only by trying can we reveal what we genuinely like. What's more, when you discover where your true passion lies, you'll also find your role within the community, building up a positive feedback loop that makes you happier.

Positive Psychology Beyond Happiness

Positive psychology covers a very broad range. Beyond researching how to make you happier, it also takes on plenty of intriguing topics, such as: how to improve efficiency, how to boost confidence or leadership skills, and so on.

Life is a long process of exploration. We hope the Treehole team can lend you a hand, and that together we can head towards a happier, more meaningful journey!