Is it possible to train the brain to be happy?
We live in a time when the so-called?Industry of happiness ?, seems to want to convince us, through countless publications, that the long-awaited well-being is always at hand.
- A number of strategies would be enough to achieve this.
- But is it as simple as it looks?Is there a simple formula for breathing with more joy and optimism?.
The answer is no?. In terms of change, on this journey towards psychological well-being and genuine realization, nothing is easy or fast.
For starters, one thing we need to understand about the brain is that it doesn’t matter if we’re happy or not, in fact, all it wants is for us to be alive, so it will give it more and more value. the fears and mechanisms that put us in our comfort zone.
However, the fact that we have a climate-resistant organ does not mean that we cannot change, we are a species that has evolved to generate remarkable advances, advances that help us to better adapt to our complex environments.
Similarly, what we see in clinical practice is that balance-based and healing-oriented changes are possible, but require real (and active) commitment on the part of the individual.
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Training your brain to be happy doesn’t mean improving your diet, or living a more active life, playing sports or traveling every two to three months, all of course it can make us healthier, give us a unique pleasure and satisfaction that can last for hours or even days.
However, none of these strategies will allow us to better cope with stress, when life becomes difficult we will not yet know what to do and will live again with the feeling of vulnerability, fear and anxiety.
According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to lead a happy life, easy recipes don’t work and other people’s advice doesn’t work either, it’s an individual process in which everyone has to invest effort, be creative and original.
However, there are several fundamental realities that we can take as a starting point for reflection.
What neuroscience has long emphasized is that thoughts are only the product of brain activity, the brain creates them as a result of a number of electrical connections, but what we have known for a long time is that thoughts themselves also have power over the brain. : they can generate new connections and even shape them.
What is a purposeless life? At the brain level, it is the lack of dopamine, serotonin, that well-being that is in line with daily dreams and goals, if our reality does not make sense or reason, we too will be useless.
This condition leaves us suspended in an abysmal vacuum, which opens the way to mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. As Viktor Frankl once said, nothing resists us more than having a task, than remembering what is important to us and what is worth pursuing.
So, if we want to train our brains to be happy, we need to clarify not only our vital goal, each of our days must have a goal, a goal to achieve, even if it is something as simple as sleeping well, meeting someone, reading a book and walking.
No one can be happy every day. It is impossible to achieve and maintain this mental and emotional state at all times, however, there is something much more important than being happy: being well with yourself. Today, low self-esteem remains a problem for many people.
This component is fundamental to promoting well-being and is undoubtedly the secret of satisfaction and a dimension that we must take care of on a day-to-day life. John Rawls, one of the most recognized philosophers of the 20th century, used to say that any society that aspires to be happy must have citizens who respect themselves.
He defined this dimension as self-confidence to achieve what one wants, to value oneseed as free and worthy of progress and well-being. The opposite of self-resent, according to Rawls, is impotence.
In conclusion, in the face of doubt about the possibility of training the brain to be happy, the answer is yes; However, this is not an easy task. It is a daily, demanding and complex job that requires value in the day to day. Let’s start today.