Our short advice list is for those who feel upset for a long time. Hope the recommendations from our greatpaper.co.uk authors below to help you overcome your sadness.
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1. Smile!
Our emotions, thoughts and mimic muscles are connected between each other: psychologists proved that long ago. When you’re in a good mood, you smile, don’t you? The opposite is right, too: while you smile, your brain could signal your muscles something like “Hey, what the hell are you doing? Why do you look like you’re happy?” And there’s nothing to do with it for your mind, it can only equalize your thoughts and emotions with your appearance.
Once you try to seem being happy, you’ll feel happy a few moments later, because your brain doesn’t like being confused. Just try it, and you’ll feel better!
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2. “I’ve Told You That!”
Get some profit from this phrase. This is the way you should like surely. Our brain is made to wish a social acknowledge. Once it gets what’s needed – serotonin, a happiness hormone, is produced. That’s what we’ll use.
Give yourself a short break in order to mark how useful you are to the others. Point this out in your mind. We’ve named this way “profit from “I’ve told you that” phrase”, but it’s only for you, not for people around you. Don’t pronounce statements like that aloud – this could hurt the others. Just find any small signs of respect for yourself, and feel satisfied with them.
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3. Listen to Your Favorite Song
Music brings pleasure to humans, because their brains try to predict what’s going to happen next while hearing it. What will be the next note? And every fulfilled prediction stimulates dopamine (another happiness hormone) production. So, find your favorite recordings and get satisfied with happiness.
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4. Master a Routine Meditation
Conscious meditation is the easy way to bring joy and calmness into one’s life. By the way, it’s not obligatory to sit in the lotus pose and to sing “Om-m-m”. You need 2 to 5 minutes daily on routine meditation. And no one will even notice you do that.
Meditation is useful, because it can teach you to concentrate on what you need (feeling of happiness and not stresses, for instance) through the activation of your parasympathetic neural system. This is confirmed with researches on a human brain (they scan it specially). By the way, the same effect is being used in psychotherapy and hypnosis methods.
How to get a routine meditation done? That’s simple. Watch your breaths (this decreases your heartbeat frequency and helps you to calm down), concentrate on it and try to interrupt your internal dialogue. You’ll do that better and better from time to time. It can be done during the dinner, while washing the dishes or resting from studying near the monitor.
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5. Use “Involving Questions” Technique
The feeling of happiness is directly connected to what you feel. Are you in response for your life in general and for every separate moment, or you aren’t? It is needed only to concentrate on the ways to make your life better on your own, and not on how long you’ve got to wait for the world to bring some joy into your life. Properly formed questions (involving ones) might become an aid here.
Write the next question on a list of paper: “Did I do every possible thing in order to reach happiness today?” And put yourself a mark from 1 to 10. You probably didn’t do that on 10. That is why your next move is thinking out the way to make your mood better right now. You can put this question according to your job, studying, relationships, life goals and short-term wishes. This is how you get back in control of your today’s day. And that is how you can feel yourself better at once.
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6. Hug Someone You Love
Homo sapiens is a totally social creature. This is the effect of some neurons, hormones, and even some natural opiates, which activate your brain while you communicate with people who are pleasant for you (that’s what neurophysiologists think). That’s why support received from the others helps you get a good mood rapidly.
Positive relationships with other people sometimes are even called social medicine. So, once you feel sad, go and take some: call your mom, talk to your friend, hug the younger brother or sister. Besides, this not only gives you the feeling of happiness, but strengthens your immunity, lowers anxiety feeling and even a cholesterol level. Pure, real medicine!
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7. Don’t Just Sit Still
What’s your behavior once everything gets bad? There’s no any mood, you want nothing. You only dream to get under the warm coat and not to answer any phone calls or social media messages. But your brain works in another way: you really need to act, to do something in order to at least try changing the situation. This could help you activate your optimism.
So, just start doing something once you feel despair and a wish to become a bit happier. Concentrate on the mood you want to get first. Then, you’ll need to put some efforts in order to move to a positive side. Try doing something you really don’t want to do: go to the cinema with your friends even if your only wish is to sit at home with no mood at all. That is the way to feel happier right at the moment, and the additional motivation for your future as well: the more active you are – the more ways to feel happiness will appear.
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8. Go for a Walk
Or do some active moves as well.
While having physical activities, you supply your organism with a large dose of oxygen. It gets into your brain as well. Additionally, exercises (especially if they train different muscle groups) cause endorphins to be released. This is the one of the fastest ways to “get happy”. 5 to 7 minutes is enough for your mood to go up.
Here is the moment when your laziness and desperation started whispering: “Hey, you don’t really need all that. You’re fine. It’s all good with your life.”
Don’t let it dominate you! If you never practiced physical exercises before, absolutely new kind of feelings is guaranteed for you. And if you were a sport’s friend already, stop worrying about how good you are! Get some pleasure from your exercises and relax!
If you constantly feel your “little happiness”, it’s easier to look at your irritation from a bad weather or rude groupmates from the right angle and to free yourself from those harmful emotions. Every day can be full of pleasure. Everything depends on you.