The physiology and psychology of happiness ..

The physiology of happiness - 

4 Hormones which determine a human's happiness. (from the Internet..)

As I sat in the park after my morning walk, my wife came and slumped next to me. She had completed her 30-minute jog. We chatted for a while. She said she is not happy in life. I looked up at her sheer disbelief since she seemed to have the best of everything in life.

"Why do you think so?"

"I don't know. Everyone tells I have everything needed, but I am not happy.

"Then I questioned myself, am I happy?  "No," was my inner voice reply.

Now, that was an eye-opener for me.

I began my quest to understand the real cause of my unhappiness, I couldn't find one.

I dug deeper, read articles, spoke to life coaches but nothing made sense. 

At last my doctor friend gave me the answer which put all my questions and doubts to rest. I implemented those and will say I am a lot happier person.

She said, there are four hormones which determine a human's happiness -

1. Endorphins,

2. Dopamine,

3. Serotonin and 

4. Oxytocin.

It is important we understand these hormones, as we need all four of them to stay happy.

Let's look at the first hormone the Endorphins. When we exercise, the body releases Endorphins. This hormone helps the body cope with the pain of exercising. We then enjoy exercising because these Endorphins will make us happy. Laughter is another good way of generating Endorphins. We need to spend 30 minutes exercising every day, read or watch funny stuff to get our day's dose of Endorphins.

The second hormone is Dopamine. In our journey of life, we accomplish many little and big tasks, it releases various levels of Dopamine. When we get appreciated for our work at the office or at home, we feel accomplished and good, that is because it releases Dopamine. This also explains why most housewives are unhappy since they rarely get acknowledged or appreciated for their work. Once, we join work, we buy a car, a house, the latest gadgets, a new house so forth. In each instance, it releases Dopamine and we become happy.

Now, do we realize why we become happy when we shop?

The third hormone Serotonin is released when we act in a way that benefits others. When we transcend ourselves and give back to others or to nature or to the society, it releases Serotonin. Even, providing useful information on the internet like writing information blogs, answering peoples questions on Quora or Facebook groups will generate Serotonin. That is because we will use our precious time to help other people via our answers or articles.

The final hormone is Oxytocin, is released when we become close to other human beings.  When we hug our friends or family Oxytocin is released.

The "Jadoo Ki Jhappi" from Munnabhai does really work. Similarly, when we shake hands or put our arms around someone's shoulders, various amounts of Oxytocin is released.

So, it is simple, we have to exercise every day to get Endorphins, we have to accomplish little goals and get Dopamine, we need to be nice to others to get  Serotonin and  finally hug our kids, friends, and families to get Oxytocin and we will be happy.  When we are happy, we can deal with our challenges and problems better.

Now, we can understand why we need to hug a child who has a bad mood.

So to make your child more and more happy day by day ...

1.Motivate him to play on the ground - Endorphins

2. Appreciate your child for his small big achievements - Dopamine

3. inculcate sharing habit through you to your child  - Serotonin

4. Hug your child - Oxytocin

Click here for an interesting article frm Huffington Post on these hormones released .. 

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The Psychology of happiness -

When I thought a little more about it, I came to the conclusion why we (and most in the western world) are unhappy in our lives leading to unhappiness, sometimes leading to suicides, divorces etc. 

We have satisfied our materialistic needs, ie. in Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, we have accomplished the bottom two needs - physiological and safety/security needs. The other three needs of love and belonging, esteem and self actualisation, need interaction with society and positive feedback. 

Throughout life, we cultivate positive relationships with our extended family, friends and accomplices and more often than not we get occasional doses of these positive feedback from them, which make us happy and contented.

The poor people never have these thoughts as they are struggling to cope with the first two needs of Maslow, physiological and safety/security.

My writing this was in fact, to get the fourth need of self esteem and recognition from you and others in this group. Hope you would give me a warm feedback so that my day is done.

My ultimate fear is going to be this - will we humans come up with chemical ways and means to release these 4 hormones (by drugs) into our body and possibly end up misusing these drugs and hormones, when actually there were physical and emotional means of generating these hormones in the human body ?

How do we ensure we change our lifestyle to a more active, physically hardworking one than just encouraging the over-use of electronic gadgets, automobiles, food and entertainment?

George..