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There is a mountain of self-help books, online gurus and social media trends telling you how to improve your mental health, but do they actually work? While some of the tips you might have heard can make a real difference to your day-to-day mental health, there are equally those that are more fiction than fact.
"When people immerse themselves in a hobby, they often find an escape from daily pressures, creating a calming space where they can unwind and recharge," says Patricia S. Dixon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Florida. "As they hone their skills, they may experience a boost in self-confidence. Additionally, if the hobby presents a challenge, it encourages cognitive growth and problem-solving. And participating in a shared interest can lead to meaningful social interactions, enhancing feelings of belonging and connection." And that's just the beginning of the benefits of grandma hobbies.
The United States is continuing its downward path on the global World Happiness Report, having dropped to a record low on the global rankings list.
Last year, the U.S. fell out of the top 20 for the first time in the report's history, landing at No. 23. The 2025 report, published Thursday, shows Americans dropping another level down to No. 24.
Several organizations conduct the annual report that ranks countries from the most to least overall happiness. Once again, Nordic countries lead the list, dominating the top 4 spots.
The World Happiness Report also shares illuminating information such as the fact that declining joy and social trust is a contributor to a rise of political polarization in the U.S. and parts of Europe.
You’ve undoubtedly heard the adage that you are what you eat. It turns out that it may apply to brain health nearly as much as physical health. Research increasingly supports the idea that eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones may improve your mood and emotional well-being over time.
“Just as we recognize that diet plays a role in conditions like heart disease or diabetes, we now understand that food choices can affect brain function, mood, and mental health disorders,” says Wolfgang Marx, deputy director of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Australia and president of the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research, a growing field that explores how diet influences mental health and brain function.
“Diets high in ultra-processed foods and low in nutrient quality are consistently associated with a higher risk of depression and anxiety,” says Marx. Indeed, a study by Marx and colleagues in a 2024 issue or BMJ found that people who consume high amounts of ultra-processed foods have a 48 percent increased risk of anxiety and a 22 percent increased risk of depression.
By contrast, research has found that improving your diet can improve major depression. And a review of 13 studies published in the February 2025 issue of Nutrition Reviews found that the Mediterranean diet could reduce the risks of depression, anxiety, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children and teenagers.
What is happiness? Is it feeling good all the time? Having a sunny disposition? Feeling like you are where you want to be in life?
People who want to be happier often think about what it means, says Gretchen Rubin, author of several books on the subject, including The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, and host of the podcast Happier. But the emotion can be hard to describe.
Instead, Rubin says to ask yourself: "Will this make me happier?" People usually have a lot more clarity on the answer. Making choices that can make you happier in the long or short run can move you "in the right direction" toward a life filled with more joy and contentment.
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably tried to follow a new big habit just to find yourself faltering a few days later. Maybe you made it a goal to follow a plant-based diet only to find yourself reaching for bacon at breakfast. Or maybe you promised yourself you’d read four books a month only to scroll social media instead.
There’s a reason it’s hard to adhere to a new behavior. “Many people struggle with motivation because they set goals that are too ambitious or require drastic lifestyle changes,” said Israa Nasir, a therapist and author of “Toxic Productivity.”
This is where a certain type of approach ― known as a micro-habit ― comes into play.
“Micro-habits remove that overwhelm,” Nasir said, noting that they “improve well-being by reducing the gap between intention and action.”
Can you drink your way to a better mood? Not exactly, but there are certain nutrients in healthy beverages that can help give your mood a little boost. (And no, a glass of wine isn't among them!)
So if you're feeling the winter blues or experiencing a lot of stress right now, consider taking a sip of one of these nutritionist-approved, mood-enhancing drinks to help you feel a little better.
Katie, a 40-year-old woman in the county of Devon in England, has battled depression most of her life. She’s received lots of treatment, including with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The latter approach did help, she says. “I am prone to catastrophizing, and CBT helped me reduce those fears and some self-harming behaviors,” Katie adds, “But I never felt joy.”
CBT is the gold standard therapy for treating depression and anxiety, one or both of which will afflict around 20 percent of people during their lifetime. It may be the best remedy we have, a growing number of scientists say, but it doesn’t help everyone. Research shows that only half of patients benefit and that only half of those who do benefit do so long-term. CBT does reduce symptoms such as low mood and fearfulness. For many, however, it doesn’t restore positive feelings such as happiness or excitement.
“We had always assumed that by reducing negative emotions—anger, fear, anxiety, sadness—the natural consequence would be for positive emotions to rise on their own,” says clinical psychologist Michelle Craske of the University of California, Los Angeles. “And they don’t—well, not reliably.”
Feeling the pressing need to do better, Craske and other scientists are developing new treatments to fill this gap. They are using elements of CBT but turning it on its head. Instead of working to reduce patients’ unrealistic worries or self-defeating beliefs, the researchers focus on helping them identify and enlarge their positive emotions, no matter how transient or tiny. These new approaches are now being tested in large-scale clinical trials in the U.S. and the U.K. and are showing great promise.
Is it enough to feel indifferent towards our jobs, or do we need to love what we do every day? Research says yes, and two workplace experts explain the importance of career satisfaction, plus how to foster more of it.
New research has confirmed a common-sense conclusion — with some important takeaways.
People with a more positive outlook on life came through the COVID pandemic better than others did, scientists found. Not only that, adults with high levels of "playfulness" showed stronger resilience during the lockdowns compared to more serious individuals.
Everyone experiences stress at some point, from minor setbacks to major issues and traumas. While some people navigate these stressors with ease, it can be debilitating for others.1
Stress shouldn't be ignored or pushed aside. Chronic (long-term) stress can cause inflammation, weaken your immune system, and increase your risk of digestive issues, heart disease, weight gain, and stroke.2
For this reason, it's important to know how to reduce your stress levels in meaningful and practical ways.
These days the internet is crowded with videos, articles and hacks promising the route to reset your brain's reward system and rediscover the joy in life's simple pleasures. One method, in particular, has gained traction and is being touted by influencers as a quick fix for restoring focus and lowering your level of stimulation.
It's called dopamine detoxing, and its advocates claim it can quickly help reset your brain's neurochemical balance.
How? They argue that temptations like social media, video games, junk food, online shopping, coffee and alcohol have burnt out your brain's dopamine-based reward system. In other words, we’re so used to the near-constant buzz of these hits that our dopamine levels become depleted, leaving us unable to focus on what matters or appreciate the finer things in life.
The basic idea behind dopamine detoxing is to cut out all the quick and easy pleasures in our lives for a set period, with some programmes suggesting starting with a single day and then building up to weeks at a time. This, proponents claim, will help your dopamine levels reset to a healthier balance.
At first glance, this might seem like straightforward biology, but how much real evidence supports it? Well, as with many pop psychology fads, there’s a grain of truth to the idea, but it’s often oversimplified –sometimes to the point of cartoonish neuroscience.
Ever feel like you’re three steps behind on everything you want to do? We know how it feels to be completely overwhelmed while trying to juggle a zillion things at the same time. Between staying on top of work, trying to have some semblance of a social life, and wanting to eat something that isn’t takeout, it’s no wonder we’re all teetering on the edge of burnout.
Enter the Eisenhower Matrix—a productivity hack that can help us sort our chaos into manageable chunks. It’s a tool for understanding our priorities and addressing them based on how important and urgent they are, says Aimee Daramus, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at Clarity Clinic, Chicago.
This simple yet powerful matrix can help us prioritize tasks, ditch the distractions, and focus our energy on what really matters.
Remaining healthy and sharp are goals for most people as they age. But one group of people — known as “SuperAgers” — is said to have this all down as they go through life, even into their later years.
The term SuperAgers was created by researchers at Northwestern University, who define it as “adults over age 80 who have the memory capacity of individuals who are at least three decades younger.” Northwestern University is one of just a handful of institutions in the country that have SuperAging research programs.
Experts stress that SuperAgers are not the same as people with good longevity, with the main difference between them being one’s brain. Studies show that SuperAgers’ brains resemble those of much younger people.
Specifically, less brain volume loss is seen in SuperAgers in comparison to a person who just has good longevity, according to Northwestern Medicine, an affiliate with Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. For example, someone who is, say, 87 years old with good longevity, may have a brain that also matches their age.
Regardless of whether romance is on the menu for you this Valentine’s Day, your brain is always trying to reward your investment in social interaction or motivate you to bond with others when human connection is in short supply.
In platonic or romantic love, there's no getting around the body's need for human-to-human interaction.
"Love is a biological necessity that is as vital to a person’s wellbeing as fresh water, food, and exercise," says Stephanie Cacioppo, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon and the author of the book Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection.
While the heart usually gets the credit, most of the benefits associated with love originate in the brain which is evolutionarily programmed to produce and release hormones when we experience attraction, affection, and attachment.
The actions we take every day—whether dopamine-boosting or energy-depleting—have a direct impact on our mental health. In fact, a 2023 study showed that certain creative activities, such as gardening and arts and crafts, were associated with enhanced life satisfaction, especially during the five months of quarantine most of us remember clearly. Similarly, in winter, feelings of dissatisfaction and a lack of energy play a significant role in how we feel, according to licensed psychologist Dr. Leah Kaylor.
The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, a correctional facility located on the shoreline of the San Francisco Bay, seems an unlikely place to find happiness.
But the Rev. George Williams, a chaplain there, is flourishing. He leads Catholic masses for about 200 incarcerated men on Sundays in English and Spanish and offers pastoral support during the week. Sharing his faith with inmates has been a source of joy for the bespectacled and soft-spoken priest.
“I look forward to going to work every day,” Williams, who has served as a prison chaplain for 30 years (and at San Quentin for about half that time), told me. It’s like “drinking grace from a fire hose.”
Researchers have found a strong link between faith and happiness—a relationship Williams has experienced at San Quentin as he practices his faith by serving those behind bars. In recent years, social scientists have surveyed people around the world to ask how happy they are. In many cases, they’ve found meaningful correlations between people’s self-reported rankings of happiness and whether they take part in organized religious services.
The life expectancy among Native Americans in the western United States has dropped below 64 years, close to life expectancies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti. For many Asian Americans, it’s around 84 — on par with life expectancies in Japan and Switzerland.
Americans’ health has long been unequal, but a new study shows that the disparity between the life expectancies of different populations has nearly doubled since 2000. “This is like comparing very different countries,” said Tom Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations and an author of the study.
Called “Ten Americas,” the analysis published late last year in The Lancet found that “one’s life expectancy varies dramatically depending on where one lives, the economic conditions in that location, and one’s racial and ethnic identity.” The worsening health of specific populations is a key reason the country’s overall life expectancy — at 75 years for men and 80 for women — is the shortest among wealthy nations.
Between doomscrolling social media, replacing breakfast with coffee and not getting any fresh air, we are certainly aware of the behaviors that are harmful to our physical and mental health. But, unfortunately, it’s easy to fall into these behavior traps.
What seems to be harder is following habits that actually help you feel better and set you up for a more well-rounded, supportive and fulfilling life.
Positive psychology experts, who focus on the strategies and behaviors that help people flourish, say there are definitive, research-backed habits that can let you do just that. And these are practices they personally swear by, too.
The behaviors they follow are likely things you’ve heard before, but the good they do for your emotional and mental state cannot be overemphasized.
There’s a reason why the sounds of nature — chirping birds, flowing streams, falling rain — are often sound options for white noise machines and meditation apps: They’re calming.
A new small study published in Molecular Psychiatry further underscores this. The study found that a one-hour nature walk reduces stress when compared to a one-hour walk in a bustling city environment.
The study followed 63 people who were randomly assigned a nature walk or an urban walk. The nature walk took place in a forest in Berlin and the urban walk took place on a busy street in the city.
Participants were instructed not to check their phones or stop in stores while on their walk. They were given a bagged lunch and a phone with a 30-minute timer that instructed them to turn around.
Before the walk, participants filled out a questionnaire and then underwent an fMRI scan that measured two tasks.
The first task measured brain activity during a “fearful faces task,” in which participants were shown 15 female and 15 male faces that either had a neutral or scared expression. The second task measured was brain activity during an “Montreal Imaging Stress Task,” which is designed to create a level of stress in participants. During the task, participants had a set amount of time to solve challenging arithmetic problems.
After the walk, participants filled out another questionnaire and underwent another fMRI scan that measured the same tasks they conducted before their walk.
The results showed that nature significantly improved people’s stress levels.
In a culture of toxic positivity, it can feel particularly bad when you wake up and aren’t feeling totally happy. This is likely exacerbated when you open up your Instagram or Facebook feeds only to see smiling friends on vacation or at their wedding.
It’s easy to feel like you just should be happy, but experts say it is much bigger than that ― and there are probably some behaviors and beliefs that keep you from feeling your best.
When it comes to happiness, it’s well-known that the Nordic countries regularly score high on surveys of life satisfaction. In fact, Finland has held the top spot in the World Happiness Report’s list of happiest countries for years — even as the country deals with cold weather, long winters and no daylight for part of the year in certain parts of the country. (For reference, the United States was 23rd on the World Happiness Report’s list.)
Even with these things seemingly against the country, the people of Finland thrive when it comes to their life satisfaction for a myriad of reasons, according to mental health experts.
A huge part of that is because Finland has systems in place that make aspects of life less stressful — education is largely free, time off of work is plentiful and health care coverage is guaranteed. Plus, the country is much, much smaller than the U.S. (the population is smaller than the population of New York City), which also makes certain things easier.
Beyond these systems, though, there are habits and beliefs that Finnish people hold that help them regularly secure the top spot on the World Happiness Report’s list. Below, Finnish mental health experts share why they think people in the country are happier and how you can use some of the country’s tools for happiness, too.
Your personality reflects your habits of thought, behaviour and emotions as they play out over the longer term. It’s distinct from moods or emotional states that vary over shorter timescales of minutes or hours.
According to the most evidence-based and widely endorsed OCEAN model of personality, the five main trait dimensions are:
Together these are known as the ‘Big Five’ traits. Your scores on them are incredibly consequential, predicting your career success, happiness and even your longevity. For instance, strong extraverts tend to live shorter, happier lives. Highly conscientious people tend to do better at work. And people who are highly open-minded are less vulnerable to dementia.
When a task isn't urgent, it's easy to keep procrastinating. Scheduling a doctor's appointment or dusting your bookshelf can end up sitting on a to-do list for days, even weeks, despite taking only a few minutes to complete.
The benefits of tackling just one of these chores extends beyond finally having it done. Finishing a task you've been avoiding can boost your mood and increase your happiness immediately, says Vienna Pharaon, a therapist and author of "The Origins of You."
"Addressing something you've been ignoring lightens the load and allows you to accomplish something that's been weighing you down," she says.
Still, motivating ourselves to actually do some of these tiny to-do's can be challenging.
Feeling that there is more to cope with as you get older? Well, it turns out that how you deal with life’s challenges could make the difference to your lifespan. That’s because new research has revealed that being more resilient to life’s ups and downs as you age might actually cut your risk of death.
The new study showed that adults with the highest levels of mental resilience had the lowest chance of dying, cutting their risk of death by a whopping 53 per cent. Published in BMJ Mental Health, the study collected information about mental resilience and health from a large study of US adults aged 50 years and above. Over time, the scientists followed 10,569 adults for around 12 years or until they died (whichever happened soonest).
In 2021, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, through the University of Montana, awarded the Montana Happiness Project a $150,000 grant to support the state’s K-12 public schoolteachers, counselors, and staff.
Like most medical offices, the small suite of exam rooms at the PhiferCares Clinic fills daily with patients seeking help with bumps and bruises, sore throats, and stuffy noses.
But there’s an important difference about this clinic in central Alabama: No one gets a bill, including for prescriptions.
That’s because the clinic is owned by a manufacturing company with a specific agenda. “We don’t want you to spend money on health care,” said Russell DuBose, vice president of human resources at Phifer.
Phifer, a global manufacturer of window screens, opened the clinic five years ago in a bid to control its health care costs and stop big medical bills from driving its workers into debt. The strategy has paid big dividends. Phifer has saved so much on health care that the company was able to open a free summer camp for the children of employees.
Like most medical offices, the small suite of exam rooms at the PhiferCares Clinic fills daily with patients seeking help with bumps and bruises, sore throats, and stuffy noses.
But there’s an important difference about this clinic in central Alabama: No one gets a bill, including for prescriptions.
That’s because the clinic is owned by a manufacturing company with a specific agenda. “We don’t want you to spend money on health care,” said Russell DuBose, vice president of human resources at Phifer.
Phifer, a global manufacturer of window screens, opened the clinic five years ago in a bid to control its health care costs and stop big medical bills from driving its workers into debt. The strategy has paid big dividends. Phifer has saved so much on health care that the company was able to open a free summer camp for the children of employees.
The constant pursuit of work-life balance is admirable, but can be daunting. Fortunately, there is a new outlook that offers a more realistic and attainable way to live.
Jeff Karp, a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard Medical School and MIT, is using his scientific background to liken the back and forth movements of a pendulum to the ebbs and flows of daily life.
In his book, LIT, which stands for Life Ignition Tools, Karp encourages readers to use nature as a playbook for creating ideas and springing into action. One tool he suggests is following the "pendulum lifestyle."
You know that little jolt of happiness you get when you finally finish a big project or simply check off a task on your to-do list? That feeling comes from dopamine, a neurotransmitter that acts like your brain’s internal reward system by giving you a good feeling.
While dopamine is a natural result of accomplishment, you can harness it for sustained success if you understand how it works, says Molly Fletcher, author of Dynamic Drive: The Purpose-Fueled Formula for Sustainable Success.
“When dopamine levels are low or inconsistent, we experience decreased motivation and reduced pleasure from achievement—this is where physical fatigue and burnout come into play,” she says. “But when we set and achieve goals and dopamine is released, it reinforces our behavior and encourages the further pursuit of that goal, which is integral to sustaining it.”
Americans are notoriously bad at taking PTO. Like, shockingly bad. In fact, according to one survey, only 26% of workers used all their paid time off (PTO). And according to another, 47% of people feel guilty if they don’t work while on vacation. Over the years, we’ve published dozens of stories about the importance of taking PTO and unplugging on vacation.
Still, especially in an uncertain environment where many are afraid of layoffs, it’s understandable to feel like you can never fully step away.
There is a cost to never leaving work behind. Taking both physical and mental space away from work, in fact, makes you better at your job. People who don’t take breaks are less productive and engaged; they’re also at a higher risk for burnout and other health issues, and are less creative. The costs for always-on employees are so high, in fact, that some forward-thinking companies offer employees a cash bonus for taking a vacation and not checking in with work while they away.
As for the guilt? While you should set up colleagues to handle questions or cover for core responsibilities when you’ll be away, it’s not your job to keep things running while you’re on vacation. If your company isn’t able to survive without you for a week, there’s something wrong with the structure of the business that needs to be addressed, says Celeste Headlee, author of Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.
Do you often find yourself scrolling out of boredom? Having a dopamine menu on hand can help you steer clear of never-ending screen time and make your days all the more joyful for it. Here, neuroscientist and author Nicole Vignola shares how to create one.
Growing older gets a bum rap. In our youth-obsessed culture, landing on the AARP mailing list can feel like the beginning of the end. But science consistently shows that the opposite is true. After quantifying data on well-being from hundreds of thousands of people in 145 countries, Dartmouth College economist David Blanchflower, PhD, reported in 2021 that most people, regardless of educational, marital, or employment status, experience high levels of happiness when they’re young adults, followed by declining happiness that bottoms out in their late 40s, then, beyond that, steadily increasing happiness.
How to explain this U-shaped happiness curve, wherein seasoned 60-somethings turn out to be as joyful as 18-year-olds? Positive changes in personality, due to growing more socially mature, may contribute to the upswing: Studies of personality traits have shown that over time, we tend to become more emotionally stable, conscientious, and agreeable. Blanchflower, who is 71, theorizes, too, that adults tend to get happier after about age 50 because they’ve become more realistic, having accepted that they aren’t going to be president or the next Aretha Franklin. They may also appreciate gentler pastimes—dancing, swimming, or, in Blanchflower’s case, whiling away a summer afternoon fishing with his grandchildren—than they could at, say, age 45, when they still craved the rush of a rough tennis match or the challenge of a triathlon but mourned the fact that their knees were shot. As people grow older, “they care less about excitement but then find other things they enjoy. Your life patterns change. Activities that didn’t make me happy at 32 made me happy at 52,” Blanchflower says.
And to some extent, getting happier later in life may be hardwired. Researchers have found in observational studies that chimpanzees and orangutans also get cheerier after their midlife shallows. In humans, the neural chemistry that helps people sustain strong relationships, generosity, and religiosity—all well-established hallmarks of fulfilled lives—may strengthen with age. A study of adults aged 18 to 99 published last year in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience found that the release of oxytocin—a neuromodulating brain hormone shown to reduce stress and anxiety and influence positive social behaviors, such as kindness and generosity—increased with age and was positively associated with greater life satisfaction among the study’s older participants.
All this is great news, and here’s more: There are things you can do to amplify this natural shift. Read on for four ways, backed by hard data and wise souls, to swing upward in your second half.
Remember when Elmo went viral in January by asking folks on the Internet how they were doing and briefly became the unofficial therapist of X?
"The world is burning, Elmo," an X user who goes by Not the Bee told the usually upbeat "Sesame Street" character. "No amount of tickles can fix this."
"This world is full of pain, anger, violence, disease, power grabbing despots and poverty," a user with the handle LiveLifeLikeSomeoneLeftTheGateOpen added in a long post. "The chasm is widening as HG Wells put it, between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’"
And those were just two of the 20,000-plus replies.
Everyone has encountered them: people who always appear to know what they are doing. They gladly take control of a situation, express their opinions as if they were established facts or plunge into a project believing they are going to succeed — with or without the required experience.
What magic dust was sprinkled on their breakfast cereal to give them this superpower?
“Confidence — it is probably the most important resource in human well-being and human performance, I believe,” neuroscientist and psychologist Ian Robertson told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast Chasing Life.
If you look around at your friends and family — and even at yourself — it is apparent that some people perceive the glass to be half full, while others view it as half empty.
“Some people are just happier than others. They don’t have to work at it, right? They just are,” social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. “(They’re) kind of like people who are thin naturally, and they don’t have to work hard at it.”
Lyubomirsky, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, has been studying happiness for more than 35 years. She has also written a few books on the topic, including “The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want.”
As an abstract concept that is subjective, happiness is a slippery topic to study: The emotional state is hard to define, let alone measure objectively.
“Happiness has two components,” Lyubomirsky said, noting that you need both aspects to be a “happy” person. “The experience of positive emotions — so people who are happy are more likely to experience fairly frequently like joy, enthusiasm, calm, curiosity, affection, pride — that’s one component. The second component is sort of having a sense that your life is good, that you’re satisfied with your life.”
Researchers measure those components by asking people questions such as “How frequently do you experience joy, calm, curiosity?” and “How satisfied are you with your life?” Some aspects of happiness can be quantified by examining brain structures and facial features and even doing a voice analysis. Rather than having a happiness set point, Lyubomirsky said, individuals have a set range.
Money is the No. 1 source of stress for most Americans today, and that's a big problem.
Too much or prolonged financial stress can hurt your health and relationships, and if you don't address it, your existing financial troubles can snowball.
Appreciating the little things in life can leave a lasting impact on your health.
Experiencing gratitude is beneficial for physical health and emotional well-being, past research has shown. Now, a new study has found those who experience more gratitude also have a lower risk of dying. The report is the first to examine the effects of gratefulness on longevity, experts say.
The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which included nearly 50,000 women between ages 69 and 96 who completed a six-item gratitude questionnaire in 2016. By asking participants to rank how strongly they agreed with statements such as “I have so much in life to be thankful for” and “I am grateful to a wide variety of people,” the research team was able to determine the percentage of women who had the highest and lowest feelings of gratitude.
When the researchers reviewed the data three years later, they found the women who had the highest levels of gratitude experienced a 9% lower risk of death of any cause, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disease, according to the study published July 3 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
The Japanese art of kintsugi involves repairing broken pottery with gold leaf to produce something more valuable and beautiful than the original.
Imperfections form part of the character and the beauty of the new piece of art (Ayuda, 2018).
How we live, personally and professionally, can also become fractured.
Another Japanese practice, ikigai, can help us heal and find purpose. Like kintsugi, it produces a more fulfilling, complete, and valuable whole (García & Miralles, 2018).
In this article, we look at how to find your ikigai and uncover self-knowledge and meaning along the way while increasing balance and happiness in your life.
For decades, Harvard researchers have been studying what makes people happy --- and what they found surprised them.
“This guy that we call Leo – he went off to World War II, as all the Harvard undergrads did. And when he came back, his mother was ill, and he needed to take care of his mother. So, he went home, he found a job teaching history. And that's where he stayed his whole life. George, my predecessor, thought he's so boring. And then later on, George agreed that he was our happiest person in our study," says Bob Waldinger.
It wasn’t big adventures or accomplishments. What was Leo's secret?
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our unalienable rights include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, he had a very specific definition of happiness in mind. He believed that happiness was the result of living virtuously — that becoming a fully happy human required devoting yourself to service to your fellow beings.
His words galvanized generations of Americans to seek out their own personal well-being. Yet the happiness we pursue today is a far cry from that which Jefferson envisioned. It’s putting us in conflict with ourselves, and with others.
Darren DeMatoff, 57, had an interesting realization a few years ago: Many of his close friends were up to 30 years younger. And then it dawned on him why: They’d met in a running group.
“Running is a great equalizer. It is a place where people find common ground, face similar challenges, overcome similar obstacles, and achieve personal milestones,” DeMatoff, the owner of a Chicago interior accent design and manufacturing company, tells Fortune. “When meeting runners and running together, age doesn’t even enter the equation.”
It’s a valuable lesson he’s learned through his involvement in the Chicago Area Runners Association (CARA), a group he has been involved with since he decided to run his first marathon in 1995. Now he’s the vice president, and believes strongly that running, when done with others, can be a particularly salient—if surprising—antidote to the loneliness epidemic, currently affecting nearly one in two people in the U.S.
Because while running is by definition a solo activity, it can also be done with others—which in turn brings layer upon layer of physical and mental health benefits.
Often, centenarians, people ages 100 and up, say their purpose in life keeps them going, which is why some never retire.
Deborah Szekely, 102, still runs her fitness resort and spa and shows up to work three days a week. She walks every day, sticks to a pescatarian diet and values her friendships.
"My life is healthy, and it is structured to be healthy," Szekely tells CNBC Make It. "You don't get to be 102, like, 'Oh, well, I'll make an exception here, an exception there.' I don't do exceptions. I enjoy my healthy life."
Happiness is predicted by social relationships in general and contact frequency in particular. This study aims to examine if the relative importance of social contacts with the closest family/relative, friend, and neighbor in happiness changes with advancing age. We used data for all participants aged 19 years and older (n = 229,099) in the 2019 Community Health Survey, which measured the frequency of contact with the closest relative/family, neighbor, and friend among a representative sample of Koreans between August 16 and October 31, 2019. The Shapley value decomposition method was used to measure the relative importance of each predictor of happiness. Overall, contact frequency was positively associated with happiness (p<0.001). The relative importance value of contact with the closest family, neighbor, and friend to happiness increased from 4.70%, 3.98%, and 7.35%, respectively, in the 19–29 years group to 8.09%, 4.44%, and 11.00%, respectively, in the 60 years and older group. Frequent interactions with the closest friend could have a greater impact on happiness in old age than those with the closest family and neighbor.
If you feel consistently lonely, you certainly aren’t the only one. Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy declared a loneliness epidemic in the United States because of the high prevalence of loneliness among adults and youth.
Loneliness plays a role in health for a multitude of reasons: It’s linked to mental and physical health issues, including depression, heart disease and dementia, making it an important issue to manage. Now, a new study out of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found that people who are chronically lonely are also more likely to have a stroke.
Researchers used data from 8,936 people in the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement study; all were 50 and older with no stroke history. Participants reported their loneliness level via a loneliness scale at two points — between 2006 and 2008 and 2010 and 2012.
Researchers established four groups based on this data — “consistently low” for people who reported low loneliness at both times; “remitting” for folks who reported high loneliness the first time and low loneliness the second; “recent onset” for those who reported low loneliness first and high loneliness the second time; and “consistently high” for those who reported high levels of loneliness at both times.
People who reported loneliness at both times were 56% more likely to have a stroke when compared to those who did not report loneliness at either time.
Finland is the happiest country in the world, and at one Finnish company, worker happiness comes down to one major benefit: flexibility.
That's the case at Framery, a manufacturing company that makes soundproof pods for office spaces. Every year, the company surveys its roughly 400 employees about the most important things that keep them happy and engaged at work.
The concept of work-life balance is always No. 1 or No. 2, says Anni Hallila, Framery's head of people and culture.
And in order to provide that balance, she says company leaders actively support flexibility in their employees' work schedules and break times.
When the Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne hit rock bottom in 2004, she found salvation after discovering what she calls ‘the secret’ – the title she gave to her multi-million-selling book and film released a couple of years later.
Apparently known and guarded by highly successful people for generations, the secret is that your thoughts shape your life.
“Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything,” Byrne wrote, citing the ‘Law of Attraction’ as the underlying mechanism, which is the notion that your thoughts communicate with the cosmos and, in return, it gives you what you want.
Through a process of ‘manifestation’ or ‘manifesting’, if you devote time to imagining that you already have what you want and even feeling grateful, as if you already have it, then “you will attract everything that you require,” Bryne wrote.
Byrne cites an early 20th-century book on getting rich as among her influences, while the roots of manifestation go back at least as far as the late 19th-century New Thought movement, which placed an emphasis on the power of the human mind to influence external events.
After 20 years of interviewing centenarians and visiting "Blue Zones," the areas in the world where people tend to live the longest, Dan Buettner learned something that he didn't expect.
"When you take worldwide data on happiness, and you control for everything else, you find that people who live next to water are...happier than people who [don't]," Buettner says.
In fact, four of the five Blue Zones — Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya, Costa Rica — are on the water.
While there are various theories about why this is the case, the end result is clear.
"It may be the tranquilizing effect of water or it may be that the climate is moderated because of the water," Buettner says. "But it seems to make us happier."
And happiness isn't the only positive side-effect of living by the water. A 2017 systematic review published in BMJ Open found that spending time near coasts, lakes or rivers can "promote health and well-being and prevent disease."
Many factors can make you decide it’s time to leave your job. From micro-managing bosses to gruelling working hours, there often comes a moment when you think enough is enough.
And, it seems that feeling may be more common than you’d think. New research conducted by St James’s Place Financial Adviser Academy and Indeed found that one in four UK workers say they’re dissatisfied with their career, with a third saying they’re looking to change roles in the next 12 months.
The difference between satisfaction among age groups varied greatly, too. 27% of Generation X reported being unhappy in their jobs, as did 23% of millennials. On the opposite side of the spectrum, those over the age of 60 were overwhelmingly happy in their careers, with more than four in five reporting they felt satisfied at work.
When it came to why people are dissatisfied with their roles, almost four in 10 said it was due to limited earning potential. However, the search for an ‘ideal’ salary differed vastly between men and women, with men setting this at £54,771 compared to £45,624 for women.
Whether you want to find a new sense of fulfilment in your current role – perhaps via a better work/life balance, more enjoyable tasks or a pay rise – or if you have your heart set on moving roles, Stylist asked Gee Foottit, partnerships manager at St. James’s Place Financial Adviser Academy, and Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed, for their advice on what steps to take next.
In old movies, it’s often depicted with a patient lying on a couch, talking to a stony-faced, note-taking analyst who never speaks. Critics sometimes derisively describe it as navel-gazing. Therapists are offhandedly called “shrinks,” a throwback to the ancient practice of shrinking the head of a conquered enemy.
And let’s face it, the practice still carries a stigma for many; acknowledging you see a therapist is akin to admitting you are weak or “crazy,” especially in some professions.
When it comes to physical health, most of us don’t hesitate too long to get help for injuries such as a broken bone or a burn. But when it comes to emotional health, there often is a delay, possibly resulting in a bigger mental health crisis.
Tossing and turning in the wee hours. A low but constant buzzing in the brain that thwarts concentration. A feeling of tense restlessness.
Most have experienced this sort of anxiety — not clinical anxiety, which might result in a full-on panic attack, but the run-of-the-mill kind that leaves you feeling uncomfortable.
“Anxiety is this simple definition: that feeling of fear or worry that comes in situations of uncertainty,” neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. “That’s my simplistic definition of everyday anxiety.”
That experience is not pleasant. “The general feeling is, ‘I just want to get rid of it,’” said Suzuki, a professor of neural science and psychology at New York University as well as dean of the school’s College of Arts and Science. She is also the author of “Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion.”
“The misunderstanding is that it is valuable,” Suzuki said. “It’s a warning system that we all need. It is a tool that helps us figure out what we hold dear. If we don’t have that, I think something important will be taken away from our lives.”
When you see someone you have an initial attraction to, what is happening in the brain?
And how does that change when you are in a long-term, serious relationship with someone?
Falling in love can not only change your life — it can also change your brain chemistry. With this holding true, it's no wonder such strong emotions are felt when you develop a true, deep love with another person.
When you first feel a romantic connection with someone, you could very well feel an initial spark. When you're getting ready for a date, you may feel butterflies in your stomach. When you experience deep feelings of love, it can be all-consuming.
When Los Angeles-based Teri Slaven, 78, starts knitting, she immediately enters what she calls “the zone.” “I feel busy, focused, and content,” she tells SELF. For Carolyn Barnes, 33, from Tempe, Arizona, it’s crocheting. She started her new hobby after a death in her family and a stressful phase of parenthood. (Her sons were 1 and 3 at the time.) “I was grieving and really tired from motherhood," she tells SELF. “I didn’t have anything left to give. But I knew I couldn’t give what little I had left to my phone.”
She bought a beginner’s crocheting kit, called Woobles, and although there was an initial learning curve, she recognized a sharp change in her brain right away. She was alert. “I felt a sense of purpose,” she explains.
If you’re on the hunt for a hobby that’ll potentially relieve stress, calm you down, and help you feel productive and fulfilled, knitting, crocheting, cross-stitching—any goal-directed pursuit you can do at home—might be worth looking into. Research suggests that manual tasks like these may help improve your attentiveness overall and boost your mood, for example. Other studies have found that learning new skills that require hand-eye coordination (like quilting or digital photography) seem to help combat cognitive decline in older age.
When I was planning my wedding, I was absolutely determined not to get caught up in the “perfect day” of it all, and to have a relaxed, informal celebration. I more or less managed, and my husband and I ended up having a lovely time. But I can’t say the same for our honeymoon.
Perfectionism has a weird reputation; the only confessable “weakness” in a job interview, an eccentric character trait and the secret of Steve Jobs’ success.
But I think it’s much darker than that. It’s a kind of psychological fascism that can take over the sufferer’s mind, draining their world of colour and light, spontaneity and joy. Deep down, I think many of us are driven by the unconscious wish that if we could just have the perfect body, the perfect kitchen, the perfect job, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect family – if we could just rid ourselves of every flaw – then we would, finally, be happy. For that reason, it can be one of the most significant obstacles to happiness we encounter in life.
Aging: We all do it. In fact, you’re doing it right now. It’s a lifelong process, but when a certain number of candles appear on the cake — for some, maybe it’s 60, while for others, 70 — a feeling of dread may start to creep in. Nearly half of Americans fear getting older, according to a recent Forbes survey. But there’s some comforting news: Research and the survey show that the older we get, the less we fear aging. And increasingly, experts are focusing on extending people’s “health span” — the years of a healthy, high-quality life — rather than just their lifespan.
The secrets to aging well, experts tell Yahoo Life, don’t necessarily require a strict diet, a hard-core exercise program or expensive medical care. In fact, it’s easier than you might think. Here’s how experts on aging have learned to age well.
Holding a grudge against someone is common for most of us. A neighbor insults us, our boss criticizes us or a friend betrays us, and we begin to resent them. While it’s human nature to get upset at being treated badly, holding on to ill will can hurt our mental health.
In one small study of 20 grudge holders, researchers found that harboring resentment could reinforce upsetting thoughts, lower self-esteem and make negative feelings fester. Another study linked bearing a grudge with an increased risk of heart disease and chronic pain.
Despite these downsides, putting a grudge to rest isn’t always easy. As a psychologist, I know they can drag on for months or even years.
A patient I worked with years ago held a grudge, well into adulthood, against a former friend who had publicly teased her when they were at a camp in the seventh grade. She recognized that her resentment kept her stuck, but she didn’t know how to shake it.
There’s no shame in holding a grudge. But if you’d like to set your grudge free, here are four tips I share with my patients.
Learning how to be more positive can lead to faster recovery from stressful events—like a home renovation—among other benefits. To help us see life through a more positive lens, we can gain inspiration from how optimistic people think, live, and make decisions—especially during difficult times.
Here, mental health experts share why positive thinking is helpful, along with a few things you can do differently to be more positive. To start your journey into thinking more positively, try incorporating these optimistic practices into your daily life.
Jodi Wellman, a positive psychology expert, was an executive leader for 17 years but realized that achieving the pinnacle of success wasn't bringing her any joy.
"I was, like many people, achievement-oriented. I tied my sense of self-worth to what I was doing, how much I was producing, what the name on my business card said, and I felt like I was stuck in the trappings of success, especially at the end of my corporate career," Wellman told CNBC Make It in an interview.
Wellman recently founded the wellbeing platform Four Thousand Mondays and authored the book "You Only Die Once." She previously held executive positions at companies like The Sports Clubs of Canada and Bally Total Fitness.
Despite being in an enviable position of success, she felt like she had reached a dead-end in her last corporate role as senior president of operations at Bally Total Fitness.
Confession: I am addicted to shows and podcasts about how to be more organized. In fact, you could say I am obsessed with clean-fluencers. My social media feeds are filled with videos about organizing, decluttering, and cleaning your home. When it comes to gathering tips and ideas for how to be more organized, I truly can’t get enough.
Call it a mental massage; call it psychological relief. There’s simply nothing more soothing to me than seeing a space organized just so. In my rabbit hole of clean-fluencer content, I have learned many things: the perfect way to fold a T-shirt; the best system for hanging clothes; the ideal system for purging your old clothes. But the rule that has helped me the most—not only in terms of maintaining order, but also in finding mental peace—is the 80/20 rule.
For pro-organizers Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin of the Netflix series The Home Edit—which you better believe I’m also addicted to—the 80/20 rule is the golden gospel for putting order into a home. On the podcast Lipstick on the Rim with actress Molly Sims, the duo fervently recommend applying it to homes large and small, explaining that it’s all about filling your space 80% at most and leaving the remaining 20% empty to “take a break.” This free space provides plenty of visual relief and allows new objects to enter your home without clutter piling up—although, of course, you must perform the occasional mini-purge in order to stay within the 80/20 rule.
My favorite thing about this rule is that it can be applied to all types of space—closets, pantries, rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, halls—and, I can assure you that complying with it offers both peace and relief in equal measures to my home and mind.
Intrigued? Read on for tips on how to be more organized using the game-changing 80/20 rule.
You might imagine that escaping from your everyday life would involve relocating to a Hebridean croft or attending a series of rejuvenating retreats. But, according to Emma Gannon’s new book project, A Year of Nothing, it could be as simple as staying at home. “I did nothing,” writes Gannon. “I stopped replying to emails. I used my savings. I slept. I borrowed a friend’s dog. I ate bananas in bed. I bought miniature plants. I read magazines. I lay down. I did nothing. It felt totally alien to me.”
For Gannon, the sabbatical was enforced after she experienced burnout, caused by chronic exhaustion from occupational stress. “All the while, I was keeping diaries,” she says. “Writing down the ‘nothingness’ of my days. I journalled all the things I noticed, the stuff I usually ignored, the people I met, the kindness of strangers, the magical coincidences – the smallest, tiniest uplifting glimmers.”
Am I alone in feeling a surge of envy reading Gannon’s litany of aimlessness? It’s not even as if I’m in need of a break. Recently I went on a relaxing holiday to Málaga. I admired the Pompidou Centre, stared out to sea at the distant blur of Morocco and guzzled bitter-orange-filled dark chocolate from the supermarket. In other words, bliss. On my return after two weeks, I plunged back into my working life recharged and raring to go. But, inexplicably, days later, I found myself intensely craving more time off, and experiencing a low-level discontentment that only intensified in the following days.
Was I having some kind of existential breakdown? I turned to the psychologist Suzy Reading, author of Rest to Reset: The Busy Person’s Guide to Pausing With Purpose, for advice. She suggested that, like many people, I probably struggle to identify what kind of rest I need. “For people who do a lot of socialising and interacting with other people for their work, they might find that what they actually need to replenish is silence and solitude.”
Nearly two decades into the smartphone era, some experts are warning of the potential dangers of being plugged in anytime, anywhere. Especially when it comes to those whose brains are still developing.
Americans under the age of 30 reported lower levels of happiness from 2021 to 2023 than those over the age of 60, according to this year's World Happiness Report.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business, lays the blame squarely on our devices.
His new book, "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness," argues that the constant access to social media that phones have given us has led to social comparison, sleep deprivation and loneliness in Gen Z.
And it's touched a nerve: his book is currently No. 3 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
Of course, as high-profile as the book has become, not everyone agrees with its thesis. Some critics argue blaming smartphones is an oversimplification and not fully supported by evidence
Zach Rausch, lead researcher to Haidt and an associate research scientist at NYU-Stern School of Business, says kids who had access to social media and iPhones in elementary and middle school are more anxious and less productive.
"The goal of technology is that it's a tool that we use to meet our goals," he says. "If it's not doing that, it ends up using us at the cost of our goals."
But, there are ways to curb these negative effects.
Employees want healthier work environments, specifically those that prioritize their mental health.
Nearly all workers polled in the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey (92%) said it’s very or somewhat important to them to work for an organization that values their emotional and psychological well-being. Yet 77% reported having experienced work-related stress in the last month, and 43% worried that telling their employer about a mental health condition would have a negative impact on them in the workplace.
When employees suffer, so, too, does business. Untreated depression, for example, has cost the U.S. economy more than $51 billion in absenteeism from work and lost productivity, according to nonprofit advocacy group Mental Health America.
But what exactly makes a workplace healthy? How can employers nurture employees’ mental well-being in ways that foster both company morale and the bottom line?
Digital devices provide unlimited access to so many things, and it can be both a gift and a curse.
Smartphones and laptops help us to stay connected to our loved ones through phone calls and video conferencing, Laurie Santos, a psychology professor who teaches Yale's most popular class ever, said in a recent podcast episode of "The Happiness Lab."
At the same time, "research shows that our screens and apps and devices are making us less social, less present and even less happy," Santos added.
During the episode, Santos spoke to Amy Blankson, a happiness expert and co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute, about ways that people can achieve a better balance when using digital devices.
In 2013, Stephanie Harrison's life looked perfect on paper, but she was deeply unhappy behind closed doors.
"Everyone had told me that I was doing all of the right things," Harrison wrote in her book, "New Happy."
"But in reality, I was unbearably lonely. I had daily panic attacks, developed a stress-induced autoimmune disease, and felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness almost every day."
During one of her saddest moments, Harrison said she developed a sense of curiosity about her unhappiness and felt inspired to find concrete answers about how she, and others, could be happier.
More than 10 years later, Harrison now has a decade of experience studying the science of happiness. CNBC Make It spoke to her about why she challenges the common definition of happiness and offers up a new one.
According to the 2024 World Happiness Survey, the United States is no longer one of the 20 happiest countries. It’s pretty glum news, but not necessarily surprising.
While some of our stressors and sources of grief are out of our control, or might constitute a “permacrisis,” there’s also a common misunderstanding about happiness that’s plaguing us. This belief often stands in the way of us truly experiencing regular, daily joy.
The misunderstanding in question: that happiness is an end goal, or something we can’t have right now.
In reality, we can cultivate happiness every day and before our goals are met. So why do we think otherwise? Why do we see happiness as an end goal? Here are a few reasons, according to therapists.
You take a vacation day, but get distracted by the thought of your work inbox filling up. Or you sit down to watch a movie and immediately feel guilty about all the tasks still on your to-do list. Or perhaps you splurge on a massage, but barely enjoy it because your thoughts are racing the entire time.
If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Relaxing may sound like the easiest thing in the world, but for many people it’s anything but.
Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, learned that a decade ago, when she helped design a study to test the effects of letting people do nothing but sit with their thoughts for a few minutes. “We had this idea that if we gave people a few moments in their busy days to just sit and slow down and be alone with their thoughts, that they’d find it really enjoyable and it would be relaxing and increase well-being,” Westgate says. The opposite happened: people were so uncomfortable doing nothing that many opted to give themselves small electric shocks instead.
Doing nothing, as Westgate’s study illustrated, can be difficult because most of us aren’t used to thinking without turning those thoughts into actions—a disconnect that can be “incredibly cognitively intense,” she says.
On the last day of my recent trip to Tuscany, as I wandered the streets of Florence, gelato in hand, the sudden urge to check my emails washed over me. It’s the ultimate out-of-office sin, I know, and as Outlook greeted me with 600 unread messages, I immediately regretted the decision. What kind of office chaos would I be returning to? How long would it take me to catch up on the five days I’d spent off? Had I left my colleagues in the lurch, needing to pick up my slack? Despite enjoying (and desperately needing) my time away, I felt sheepish, like I’d skipped a class at school or left a party early without saying goodbye.
I’m not alone in the feeling. Research from online learning platform ELVTR found that more than two-thirds of Britons continue to work on vacations, with 73% admitting feeling guilty about it, while according to Google trend data, searches for “feel bad taking time off” have risen by 126% in the last month. Combine that with the fact that there are currently over 11.5 million posts on the TikTok search “Feeling guilty for taking a day off work” and the conclusion is clear: we have a big problem with holiday guilt and enjoying the time off that we’re entitled to.
It’s no surprise that so many of us struggle to switch off during downtime. In the same ELVTR survey, one in four said they get asked to check their emails while on holiday by their bosses and colleagues and 24% are bombarded by work-related text messages while away from their desks.
It’s having such a severe impact that 35% of people in the UK are taking less time off than they used to, and 12% say they won’t be able to take holidays at all due to understaffing following company redundancies. In fact, having no one to delegate work to is the main reason people work while on vacation at 39%, with 5% saying they are afraid they might lose their job if they don’t.
If the smoke alarm in your house were beeping frantically, you’d spring into action. If your car alarm started whirring loudly, you’d investigate. And if a tornado warning was issued for your neighborhood, you'd almost certainly take cover.
Yet we’re not so fast, experts agree, to react to the alarm bells ringing in our own body, letting us know we need to slow down. “The problem is, we become conditioned early on to stop listening to our bodies,” says Jennifer King, an assistant professor of applied social sciences and assistant director of the Center on Trauma and Adversity at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. That means we might miss important signs that manifest when we’re navigating prolonged, repetitive, or unpredictable stress—the kind that affects many of us. “A cascade of changes happen in the body when the stress response is activated in a sustained way,” King says. “When the dose is too big, and there’s not a clear beginning or end, that causes wear and tear on the body.”
That’s why it’s so essential to pay close attention to changes in how we relate to others, what we’re experiencing physically, and how we’re coping mentally and emotionally—and to be open to feedback from the people around us. We asked experts to explain what to look and listen for, plus what happens if we ignore what we find instead of addressing it.
At the end of their lives, people tend to reflect on things they wish they'd done differently.
Many wish they'd expressed more love and forgiveness, and use their last words to show their appreciation for the people in their lives, oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee recently said during a commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania.
Other people regret not doing enough for themselves, according to Bronnie Ware, author of the 2011 book "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying" and a former palliative care worker. Ware spent eight years administering aid for people battling serious illnesses, many of which turned fatal.
She paid attention to the guilt and remorse people expressed on their deathbeds, and thought there was a "big lesson" people could learn from them, she told British radio program "The Chris Evans Breakfast Show" last year. Her book details the five phrases she heard most frequently:
In the shade of a tree on a warm day in Vilnius, Lithuania, I’m having coffee with the happiest twentysomethings in the world. Given the weather (perfect) and the beverage (cheap), it is hard to feel anything but happy. It is harder still if, like 23-year-old Simona Jurkuvenaite, you have just been handed €21,000 from the Lithuanian government to direct your debut short film about the country’s teenagers.
“This is a great place,” she says, gesturing around the manicured square where we’re sitting, on the edge of the city’s new town. “It’s pretty awesome that you can get these kinds of opportunities here.”
So good are the opportunities and so high is the level of optimism that Lithuania topped this year’s World Happiness Report rankings for the under-30s. The country’s gen-Zers and millennials rated themselves 7.76 out of 10 on the happiness scale, miles ahead of the UK and the US, at 32nd and 62nd respectively. While the report sounded alarm bells about young people’s welfare in the west, Lithuania’s twentysomethings could set to work meme-ifying and TikTokking about the confirmation that they had it pretty good.
Happiness is an idea that has been woven into the fabric of humanity, going back to ancient civilizations.
Roughly 250 years ago, it made its way into this country’s Declaration of Independence as an unalienable right: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Although we’ve grappled with it for millennia, the concept of happiness and how to attain it remains pretty elusive. Some might see it as having a sense of general well-being. For others, it might be feeling a spark of unadulterated joy. Yet others might find happiness chasing a dream and reaching it. It might be some combination of these – or something else entirely.
I like to think of myself as a pretty happy guy. I have three wonderful teenage daughters and a wife, Rebecca, with whom I just celebrated a 20th anniversary; I’m close to my parents, my “baby” brother and his family. I have moments of complete contentment and a career that feels meaningful to me as a practicing neurosurgeon and CNN’s chief medical correspondent.
But I also realize it’s not that simple. There are other layers to happiness and a lot of nuance within those layers.
In Finland we have a saying "kell' onni on, se onnen kätkeköön". In short, it means "whoever has found happiness, that happiness she should hide".
At first hearing, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this doesn't sound very uplifting, but it is phrases like this that I believe have contributed to making Finland the world's happiest country for the last six years.
The coronavirus pandemic upended office traditions around the world, making working from home the new normal and Zoom meetings the favored way to catch up with colleagues and clients. But millennials, often bashed by their elders as being workshy, are keen for more reforms to the work-life balance, with new polling showing the generation is considerably in favor of adopting a four-day working week.
The concept of the four-day working week is simple: employees work a day less than the standard five, which works out as 32 work hours instead of 40. Workers still have to complete the same amount of work in 80 percent of the time, while in many cases still taking home their full compensation package. Numerous major companies have introduced a reduced week either every week or just some weeks, including Kickstarter, Bolt and Dolby.
Does society suppress your true self? How can you learn to embrace your emotions fully? Does embracing your emotions really improve your life?
Author Glennon Doyle realized that she could use painful emotions to grow and evolve—to become truly alive. Doyle defines being “alive” as constantly evolving into a more authentic and fully-formed version of yourself.
Read on to find out how to embrace your emotions and why Doyle believes you must embrace your feelings fully to live a truly satisfying life.
Those who garden know it is not only a way to enjoy fresh flowers and produce at home, but it’s a fun and relaxing hobby that can help you slow down and be more in the moment.
To make the list of benefits even longer, findings from a recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders show that people who spend time gardening outdoors may have better quality sleep.
“We know that sufficient sleep is one of the three pillars of a healthy lifestyle along with nutrition and exercise,” says Dr. Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, M.D., sleep specialist and American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) spokesperson. “Insufficient sleep contributes to the risk of other chronic medical problems.”
When we don’t get enough sleep, we can experience an increase in depression, anxiety, memory problems, and our bodies are more susceptible to getting sick. Getting enough sleep every night is important to allow your brain and body to recharge and help regulate your metabolism and immune system. Good sleep hygiene can also help decrease chronic pain and the risk of cancer.
There’s lots of talk about cortisol (which is commonly referred to as your body’s stress hormone) on social media, such as how to lower it, how to regulate it and signs that it’s too high.
But those posts can confuse folks about the role of cortisol, too. Cortisol is a necessary hormone that is involved in lots of aspects of your day-to-day functioning, including your immune system, your sleep-wake cycle, blood sugar regulation, and your body’s stress response, said Saru Bala, a naturopathic doctor based in Arizona.
In all honesty, Mother Nature may find the indoor world pretty tough to compete with sometimes. After all, she can’t offer flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, or WiFi. But she might potentially offer something even more important: improved health, by way of a stronger immune system, better sleep, and reduced stress.
Spending time outdoors can boost physical and mental health in a range of ways. You don’t have to spend hours at a time outside before those benefits kick in, either.
According to a 2019 study that included data from 19,806 participants, spending at least 120 minutes in nature per week can significantly boost health and well-being. You can go for a 2-hour chunk all at once, or break it up into smaller daily segments — the benefits still hold.
Even without any greenery around, spending time in sunlight and fresh air may help you feel better in mind and body.
Research suggests that spending time in natural settings is beneficial to both mental and physical health. Some findings are based on the active practice of forest bathing, while others relate to non-deliberate time spent in nature.
The connection between nature and health is not a simple one. Engaging with the natural world is a multisensory, multivariate experience. For that reason, it can be difficult to narrow down which exact components of forest bathing support well-being.
Philosophers, bless them, are trying to understand how normal people think about morality.
Normal people, as you may have heard, hang out on the internet. And what is the internet’s biggest trove of everyday moral dilemmas? Why, it’s Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” forum!
So, why not comb through millions of comments there to find out how people make moral decisions?
This might sound like a joke, but it’s actually been the past four years of Daniel Yudkin’s life. As he was doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, Yudkin thought about how moral psychology and moral philosophy — his fields of research — mostly focus on hypothetical, contextless scenarios involving strangers.
In his latest book Come Se Tutto Fosse un Miracolo (As If Everything Were a Miracle), Daniel Lumera, an Italian natural biologist and meditation expert, recounts his own journey of death and rebirth while offering practical advice that can easily be incorporated into our daily lives. He provides a path to overcome difficult moments of crisis and live life with more serenity and lightness.
The title of Lumera’s new book highlights an attitude that allows us to break free of our common habit of sleepwalking through life. We can rediscover a sense of wonder and approach the world as if we are encountering it for the first time, enjoying the thrill of discovery. “Most of us look for intense reactions and strong emotions in our daily lives, when in fact the great wonder of life is already within us. If we become aware of the miraculous qualities of everything around us, we can feel more deeply connected to the meaning and purpose of our existence. There is an inner space where we can overcome crises and awaken happiness, wonder, and creativity, as we appreciate the gift of existence,” Lumera explains. “We need to imagine ourselves as a patras, a Sanskrit term meaning a container or bowl. Each of us must guard this bowl so that it remains intact. According to Eastern traditions, during the course of life, events and situations occur that create cracks in our bowl and that is how we lose our purity. The six steps that I call charisms, or gifts, allow us to return to that original state of purity when the bowl was intact. That bowl can hold all the beauty and happiness that escapes us when we turn away from our true selves and become trapped in our fears and expectations.”
Be honest: there are times when you have felt schadenfreude, or “delight in another’s misfortunes”. But what about vorfreude? I recently came across this lovely word, which my German-speaking friend translated as “the anticipation of joy”. It struck me as such a hopeful concept – surely we could all do with less schadenfreude and more vorfreude. So what exactly is anticipatory joy, how do we cultivate it and will it make us happier?
“The idea is to find joy in the lead-up to an event,” says Sophie Mort, a clinical psychologist and mental health expert at the meditation and mindfulness app Headspace. “For example, we often feel joy and excitement when planning a trip, thinking about going on a date or anticipating a special meal.” It’s easy to look forward to holidays and special occasions, but a joy-filled life is also about everyday occurrences. Rory Platt, a writer at the personal development company The School of Life, says: “The trick lies in filling our calendar with lots of little moments to look forward to – like tiny baubles that, when seen from a distance, combine to make a more glittering future.”
But vorfreude is not about wishing your life away and thinking you will be happy in an imagined future. “Looking forward to something can trigger joy in the present moment,” says Karen Neil, a health coach and the founder of Mindful Medicine. This can boost your mood, reduce your stress levels and help to avoid burnout. A 2017 study published in Frontiers of Psychology found that anticipating positive events activated the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with a higher level of wellbeing.
When homing in on how to be happier, it’s easier to concentrate on all the negatives you need to eliminate in your life: Toxic positivity, comparing yourself to others, those weekly phone calls from your mother-in-law.
Weeding out unpleasant things can help, but it’s just as important to take an additive approach and think of small things you could add to your life to boost your spirits. With that in mind, we recently asked our readers to share the one thing they started doing daily (or in some cases weekly) that made them considerably happier.
Last month, we posed some simple questions to Essential California readers: Are you happy? What makes you happy? Could the government help make you happier?
State lawmakers are also wondering how they can make you happier and recently held the first hearing of the state Assembly’s Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes. The committee, chaired by Rep. Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), wants to understand how happiness could be used as a metric to shape public policy in the Golden State.
The key ingredients to a happy life aren’t mysterious or complex.
According to international research (yes, there are happiness scientists out there) those who feel a greater sense of safety, freedom, mobility and community and have strong relationships are more likely to be happy.
People living in remote Indigenous communities are as happy as those in wealthy developed countries despite having “very little money”, according to new scientific research that could challenge the widely held perception that “money buys happiness”.
Researchers who interviewed 2,966 people in 19 Indigenous and local communities across the world found that on average they were as happy – if not happier – as the average person in high-income western countries.
Research points to the power of motivation to boost the brain’s response to anything. Motivation lowers activation energy, the amount of energy it takes to begin a task, and boosts overall energy, enhancing the rewards of your effort. The brawny brain becomes a happier brain, too.
We’ve all had moments when we wished we could say, “Beam me up, Scotty!”
This desire to be in a better place or time is related to a psychological strategy called temporal distancing. Imagining ourselves in the future is a way to cope with the stress and anxiety of the present.
“Just because time travel takes place inside our heads doesn’t mean it can’t change reality,” said Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making and psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management and author of the book “Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today.” “How you think about your future can have a huge impact on your present and future selves.”
Mornings can be rough for many people who tend to feel sleepy pretty regularly, which in turn makes them report feeling irritable a lot of the time. And yes, it’s hard to feel cheery when you’re overtired and stressed — much of which, alas, is outside of people’s control.
But happiness experts say there are simple habits people can practice in the morning that will that have a profound influence on how they feel throughout the day. They’re easy tweaks that can help improve overall mental well-being.
If experiencing a mental health problem were plotted like a line on a graph, it might look like a low-level shallow wave, or a dramatic fall and rise with a few roller coaster bumps scattered in between. When people who have made it through a mental health struggle describe their experience, there is often an inflection point when something “clicked” and they started to feel better.
In her book Little Treatments, Big Effects, clinical psychology professor and therapist Dr. Jessica Schleider writes about her research into single-session interventions for mental health care. Through surveying and interviewing 98 people and analyzing their stories, Schleider identified five “pathways to hope”—elements from stories of mental health recovery that represented the turning point from struggling to wellness:
The World Happiness Report is out, and once again Nordic countries are humming along with the highest scores. The No. 1 country, Finland, has held onto its top ranking for seven years straight.
This year’s report is the first to include separate rankings by age group, and it brings bad news about life satisfaction among young people in some parts of the world.
Happiness has dropped so sharply among the young in North America that young people there are now less happy than the old. Those low scores helped push the United States out of the top 20 on the overall list for the first time since the report was first published in 2012.
But the US and other countries dropping in rank was also because other nations – especially several in Eastern Europe – had welcome gains in happiness.
Can California legislate its way to happiness?
Former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon is committed to trying, though he puts his own happiness at only two out of 10 (ask him again after November, when his term ends, he told CalMatters).
After being forced to hand over his leadership post last summer, the Lakewood Democrat became the chairperson of the newly formed Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes, telling Politico last October that lawmakers “don’t take happiness seriously.”
When you're feeling a bit down, striking up conversations with strangers might be the last thing on your mind.
But such encounters may actually make you feel happier, research has suggested.
It is one of eight simple 'happiness hacks' devised by scientists at the University of Bristol.
Writing gratitude letters, conducting acts of kindness and trying out meditation are among other key measures found to improve mental wellbeing.
The four other checkpoints relate to getting sufficient sleep, exercising, savouring experiences and drawing attention to positive parts of the day, for instance writing down 'three good things' that happened.
Some of the world's happiest countries are also the most gender-equal.
Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway and New Zealand all appear in the top 10 of two key rankings: The World Happiness Report's annual list of the happiest countries in the world and the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, which ranks the world's most gender-equal countries.
While neither report has been updated since 2023, these countries have been leading the world toward achieving gender equality and boosting residents' happiness for years, ranking high on both lists since at least 2018.
We're all looking for ways to be happier, but it's just not that easy. It's not impossible either if you know the steps to take to get there.
"The biggest misconception is that happiness is natural, and there really couldn't be anything further from the truth," Floyd "Ski" Chilton, director of the Center for Precision, Nutrition and Wellness at the University of Arizona, tells CNBC Make It.
Chilton is also an evolutionary biochemist and geneticist, as well as the author of "There is Another Way to Happiness: The Four Step CAST Process that Will Transform Your Life."
Our unconscious minds are "built for protection" and "survival" from an evolutionary standpoint, according to Chilton. But we're no longer hunters and gatherers, protecting our loved ones from the whims of the wild in a literal sense; still our thoughts naturally drift to fear and anxiety as they did when that was the case.
"Almost every sad and difficult emotion that we feel, our anxiety that we feel, our stress that we feel, can be traced back to this evolutionarily primitive, unconscious mind," he adds. "In many cases, we're living in the midst of a nightmare, a nightmare that our unconscious minds create."
To combat these instincts, you must make conscious efforts to rewire your brain, Chilton says. Here are four steps you can take to break the cycle of unhappiness. Use these 4 steps to break the cycle of unhappiness
In a world full of intractable problems such as war and poverty, one tempting response—as a way of protecting your own happiness—is to stop paying attention. With good reason: Just following the news can invite a sense of powerlessness and be associated with lower mental well-being, and one of the reasons folks avoid the news is the anticipation of anxiety, perhaps because the bulk of what you see and hear is negative. On top of that, the national and global problems that the media report are out of your control. Only those with power, wealth, and influence seem to have the capacity to address those problems and the potential to make our world better. So unless you are a political hero, a world-famous entrepreneur, or a charismatic celebrity, you might as well tune out.
Although this way of looking at things follows a certain logic, it’s the wrong way to see the world. In fact, each of us has the power to address global problems in an effective way, without waiting for a powerful savior. This is a truth I learned, ironically, from one of the most influential men on the planet: the Dalai Lama.
No country in the world affords women the same opportunities as men in the workforce, according to a new report from the World Bank, which found the global gender gap was far wider than previously thought.
Closing the gap could raise global gross domestic product by more than 20%, said the report.
For the first time, the bank investigated the impact of childcare and safety policies on women’s participation in the labour market in 190 countries. It found that when these two factors were taken into account, women on average enjoyed just 64% of the legal protections men do, down from the previous estimate of 77%.
Buying someone a coffee or holding the door open for the person behind you are examples of one of the simplest ways to increase your happiness: generosity.
Consider the joy that Ruth Gottesman brought to current and future students of Albert Einstein College of Medicine with her $1 billion donation that will help them receive a tuition-free education. Research shows that that happiness is also likely to extend to Gottesman.
"l feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such a worthy cause," Gottesman said, according to CNBC.
"One of the quickest and easiest ways to get happier is to be generous," Dan Harris said in a recent episode of his podcast, "Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris."
In a small study of 50 people, published in 2017 in Nature Communications, participants were gifted a total of $100 over several weeks. Half of the group was instructed to spend the money on anything they wanted for themselves, and the other half was asked to use the money to buy things for other people.
By the end of the experiment, those who spent the money on others reported higher levels of happiness than those who spent it on themselves.
Recent advancements from Flinders University have initiated a significant reevaluation of the operational mechanisms behind antidepressants and other emotion-regulating drugs, highlighting the intricate communication between the gut and the brain.
The research introduces a notable shift in understanding the gut-brain axis, a complex network facilitating bidirectional neural interactions between the gastrointestinal system and the brain’s emotional and cognitive centers.
“The gut-brain axis consists of a complex bidirectional neural communication pathway between the brain and the gut, which links emotional and cognitive centers of the brain,” said lead author Nick Spencer, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders.
Whether it's starting a business or mastering an ambitious skill, having big career goals can be exciting but overwhelming. How do you successfully achieve them while navigating the demands and responsibilities of daily life?
I know the feeling. My dream was to write a book. It took me over 10 years, but this spring, I'm finally publishing my first book: "New Happy."
As a researcher in the science of happiness, I was lucky: I was able to learn the secrets that helped me make my journey a little easier.
I was born in Poland and grew up in Germany, but my family and I have been living in the Netherlands for the last 14 years.
When I first discovered the concept of "niksen," or the Dutch art of doing nothing, I was fascinated. I even wrote a book about it. When I applied it to my own life, my perspective about happiness shifted in a significant way.
I believe niksen is one of the reasons why the Dutch are consistently ranked as some of the happiest people in the world. Niksen might seem selfish or boring at first glance, but it's actually a service to you and your community.
Taking care of your mental health through daily actions—just like you would take care of your body by eating fruits and vegetables—may be the path forward through challenging times. A new framework suggests that mental well-being can be cultivated through practice in daily life. Essentially, we can train our brains to be happy.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison hope the new framework can help define well-being, and the parts of it that they've found can be improved with training. The December paper was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The paper acknowledges a lack of industry standards for well-being, which in turn creates a lack of common language between therapists. The researchers argue that using consistent language can help healthcare professionals with both patient outreach and research.
Is "thankful, grateful, blessed" more than just wall art? Turns out, expressing gratitude in writing could actually make you happier.
Many of us were raised to say thank you, which, yes, is an expression of gratitude, but it runs deeper than that. Gratitude can be understood as acknowledging and affirming the positive things in your life; taking a moment to appreciate the good.
A gratitude ritual is a practice through which you tap into gratitude. There are so many different types of gratitude rituals to try.
For six years and counting, Finland has been the happiest country in the world.
But it's a common misconception to think the people there are simply born with a positive outlook on life, says Frank Martela, a Finnish psychology researcher and philosopher. "It would be more accurate to say that Finland is the country that has the least unhappy people in the world," Martela tells CNBC Make It.
That's largely due to three tenets, common in Finnish society, that help foster happiness, Martela says:
If Bill Gates met a time traveler from the year 2100, his first question wouldn't be about his family, or Microsoft's stock price.
Instead, he'd ask: Are humans thriving? "In the end, it's all measured through human welfare," Gates said on the most recent episode of his podcast, "Unconfuse Me."
In the episode, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder interviewed University of Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie, whose book "Not the End of the World" offers an optimistic take on how the world can win its battle against climate change.
We know that wisdom comes with age ― and apparently so do a number of other joyful qualities.
Research shows that the older you get, the more self-assured and content you are. In fact, those in their 60s are more likely to be happier and, according to a recent study, they’re also more self-confident overall than most of those in their younger decades.
So, what’s the secret? Sadly, there’s no one answer, but rather several factors.
The first step of building a new financial budget is usually taking a detailed account of what you are spending. Recording where resources are being allocated is key to understanding what exactly you need to shift about your habits.
The same can be said if you want to change how you prioritize your time as it pertains to personal goals, says Rainer Strack, senior partner emeritus at Boston Consulting Group.
Far too often, our priorities don't align with how we spend our hours and days.
"Time is the only asset that we can't multiply," Strack tells CNBC Make It. "Time is limited here on Earth. It's a scarce resource, and therefore, you have to understand what you want to do with this kind of resource, concretely."
To help you see exactly where your time is going, Strack, Susanne Dyrchs, associate director at BCG, and Allison Bailey, senior partner and managing director at BCG, created a 2 x 2 matrix called the Strategic Life Portfolio. It mirrors BCG's growth-share matrix.
It’s World Kindness Day, when people are encouraged to make kindness the norm and commit to being kinder all year round. But, what benefits does kindness have on our body and mind? We look into the science of kindness and why being kind makes you feel good.
Why be kind?
It seems obvious to say that being in receipt of kindness makes a person feel good. But can the benefits of a kind act compare to other pleasurable experiences? Can kindness offer as many benefits as a hearty meal or a gift on one’s birthday?
While a kind act can’t provide you with any calories, it’s not simply a throwaway experience. When someone is surprisingly kind to you – a stranger holds an elevator door open, your coffee is ‘on the house’ – the kind act triggers activity in the nucleus accumbens, an area known as the brain’s pleasure centre.
One of the largest studies into kindness and its effects on a population showed that people who regularly receive kindness have higher levels of overall wellbeing. The Kindness Test, which was carried out in 2021, involved more than 60,000 participants and also showed that carrying out kind acts had benefits for wellbeing. Whether you’re giving or receiving kindness, you’re likely to feel better.
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