7 traps on the way to happiness
The path of a happy life is full of traps. Now and then, some of these traps mess up our happiness a bit – and often we don’t even know what happened! Let’s explore them, understand our brain a bit better – and learn how to avoid them 🙂 Why would our brain want to […]
Happiness? It’s all in your head
Brain trap #6: how our thinking dictates our happiness Nothing – seriously, nothing – impacts our happiness as powerfully as our thinking patterns. The way we internalise our experiences, the way we tell stories to ourselves about events in our life, the way we assign meaning to things, the way we take (or don’t take) […]
The fragile balance of happiness
Brain trap #5: why getting just the right balance between the big picture and the moment is so damn difficult Did it ever happen to you that you are wonderfully present and enjoying the moment – perhaps on a free lazy day — just to realise that by evening you feel kind of empty, even […]
Damn you, Joneses: how comparison steals our happiness
Brain trap #4: how comparison is the best way to diminish your happiness Did you ever have an amazing day – just to get it trashed by seeing a acquaintances overly perky Facebook status?Have you ever loved your new car – until you saw your (much cooler) neighbours new car? Comparison with people who have […]
Why we fail at predicting what will make us happy
Brain trap #3 or why we are notoriously bad at predicting what will make us happy Did you know that we humans are notoriously bad at predicting what will make us happy? And that both positive and negative events in our life have much less impact – less intensity and less duration – on our […]
Why everything is great and you are grumpy anyway
Brain trap #2: hedonic adaptation or how our brain learns to get used to good things a tiny bit too fast Do you ever have a feeling that your brain stops enjoying good things tiny bit too soon? Don’t worry. It’s not just you. It’s our brains again. Hedonic adaptation (hedonic treadmill) – or why […]
How our brain is messing up our happiness….and what we can do about it
Brain trap #1: negativity bias or why our brain looks for bad stuff Our brain is all about survival. It will do anything it can to protect you from danger (even if dangers and the world very much changed since the times our brain developed) – and it will do a marvellous job at that. […]