If there was a happy pill, would you take it every day?
Happiness is a feeling that is talked about a lot, sometimes underestimated, and, so to speak, too rosy. But whether we admit it or not, we all live to find it. However, happiness should not be a goal but a part of life.
Although happiness is one of the topics that are consumed quickly in the media, one of the purposes of existence of us coaches is to accompany individuals on their journeys so that they can live happier and more fulfilled lives. In recent years, there has been such a need to experience and share this feeling more so that after 1980, a new sub-branch of Psychological Science emerged and under the leadership of Martin Seligman, it began to be investigated how societies or people would feel better. In addition to positive psychology, which is a young science, neuroscientists continue to investigate what really makes human beings happy.
*Here are tips proven by neuroscientists:*
**Ask yourself when you feel bad**
Asking powerful questions that will raise awareness in the client comes at the beginning of the coaching skills.
Sometimes it's like our brain doesn't really want to be happy, and there are even moments when we feel ashamed or guilty about being happy. I wonder why?
Alex Korb, in his book “The Upward Spiral”, explained the effects of the senses on our brain. He stated that negative emotions such as shame and guilt feed similar neural circuits with a positive emotion such as pride. As you can see, not only positive emotions but also negative emotions activate the reward center in the brain.
Just as we feel busy when we worry. Yes, you heard right, when we worry, our brain feels that it has at least done something about the problem it is dealing with. It turns out that this is why mothers involuntarily worry when their children have no control over them. If I can't do anything about this problem right now, our subconscious mind chooses to say let's worry and creates a busyness for itself.
Since living with negative emotions such as shame and guilt will not help, scientists suggest asking yourself the following questions at such moments:
**What am I grateful for now?**
Gratitude is one of the practices suggested by positive psychology to improve human life. Experts say that listing the little things you enjoy, even the ordinary behaviors such as being able to yawn in the morning, hearing the voice of a loved one on the end of the phone, can help you concentrate on the positive side of life.
It is also worth noting that gratitude causes the release of dopamine, one of the neurotransmitters that are the enemy of depression, and serotonin, which increases our happiness level. Sometimes the process of looking for things we are happy with before we find them is enough to change our perspective.
**Label negative emotions**
Have you heard that emotions leave our body in 45 seconds to 1 minute?
You see, we are not our emotions, so I may feel sad for a moment, but that doesn't mean I'm a sad person.
Identifying negative emotions makes it easier to deal with them. For example, if you feel bad, give a true definition of feeling bad. Sad, angry, worried? Studies have shown that the brains of subjects who are asked to describe their negative emotions are minimized because of the emotion created by that emotion while describing the emotion.
I started to apply this method to my children with the emotion cards we developed as No Limit Coaching. At a moment when I feel that my 6-year-old daughter is angry with her brother, when I put the deck in front of her and ask which one she is feeling, my daughter, who visually activates her brain, can get out of the effect of that emotion faster.
Science has also proven that emotions are contagious. An anxious student can infect classmates with anxiety, while someone laughing on the sidewalk can infect passers-by with happiness, even if they don't know why they're laughing. What emotion do you choose to infect?
**Hug, hug, touch**
Not the first to arrive!
As human beings we need love and acceptance.
Now that relationships are known to fuel happiness activity in the brain, why don't we hug each other more?
Experts recommend that parents hug their children at least 7 times a day so that children feel safe and happy. It is known that oxytocin, the hormone that allows adults to relax, is activated by touch. Shaking hands, gently touching someone's shoulder while appreciating, and hugging while thanking those you are close to increase the power of positive emotions.
It has been proven that touching, holding or hugging a loved one reduces pain and sadness, and the stronger the bond, the greater the effect in married couples.
Then the last suggestion is to hug someone you love today and every day and give him and yourself a gift of happiness!
Yes, as one positive psychology professor said, if there was a pill that said "Happiness", would you continue to take it every day?
In our coaching workshops, we repeat this sentence many times when participants determine the steps they will take in their lives. Some practices seem so simple to people that we cannot imagine the impact of choosing to practice them will make a difference in life, so we choose not to pursue them. Whereas turning a behavior into a habit takes a minimum of 21 days, why not give a positive behavior a chance?
For example, although pressing the shutter button is an extremely simple activity, you cannot imagine the effect of the photo you take years later… 20 years later, you look at that frame and you have tears of happiness in your eyes.
It's up to you, not neuroscientists, to decide which square of happiness to include in your life, after all, realizing is the beginning of change.
Types of introversion: 4 different introvert personality types and traits
How do you feel in social situations, relaxed or bored? Or do you enjoy being in large groups or spending time with a core group of two or three? Maybe you just like to be alone… Although our answers vary, our preferences to be included in social environments, namely our introversion and extroversion traits, carry clues about our personality.
Carl Jung, one of the first names to come to mind in the field of psychology, explored the effects of people's social preferences on their energies by revealing the concepts of introversion and extroversion in the 1900s. Jung defined one's being introverted or extroverted as increasing or decreasing their energies according to their social preferences. That is, he revealed that while introverts prefer to turn inward to collect their energy, that is, to stay with themselves, extroverts need to interact with others to recharge themselves. Immediately after this short definition, you may have started to determine the answers in your mind whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. But it is not limited to this.
In 2011, psychologist Jennifer Grimes divided introversion into 4 different types: social introvert, thoughtful introvert, anxious introvert, shy or restrained introvert. In this article, we will talk about the four different types of introversion, their personality traits and tips that will make them happier in social life.
**Social introvert personality traits**
When most of us think of introversion, the first thing that comes to mind is actually social introversion. People who like to spend time alone and enjoy their own friendships are social introverts. They attach great importance to solitude. They do not like crowded environments, parties, large gatherings, but they do not avoid getting together with their families, close friends, and small groups. Being with them makes them happy. This group, which can be confused with social anxiety, prefer to be alone, unlike people with social anxiety; They do not run away or are not shy because they are worried about being in social situations. They choose to be alone because they enjoy it. They often need to be alone, especially in romantic relationships.
Socializing tips for social introverts: Don't tire yourself out by attending crowded events to make others happy. Take time for your introverted nature to recharge your energy. Keep in touch with your family and close friends who understand and accept you as you are.
**Thoughtful introvert personality traits**
It is possible to consider thoughtful introverts as those who like to be both alone and thinking. Thoughtful introverts (thinking introverts) prefer to think when they are alone in order to be able to reflect and present themselves more creatively. They approach themselves with a critical way of thinking; They enjoy spending time in their inner fantasy world. Thoughtful introverts also consider themselves intellectual introverts. They spend time alone with themselves, deep in thought. They are also known as “Daydreamers”, dreamers.
Socialization tips for thoughtful introverts: Always trust your thoughts. Make time for yourself to escape into your mental haven. Express that you need to think so you don't make hasty decisions or answer questions hastily. Engage in activities that improve your creative thinking skills, such as reading books, writing, listening to music.
**Anxious introvert personality traits**
Anxious or anxious introverts, unlike social introverts, tend to avoid crowded environments because they do not feel comfortable around other people. They like to be alone because they do not have much confidence in their social skills. Their anxiety usually does not subside when they are alone; because they overthink everything that didn't go well in the past or that could possibly go wrong right now, and this triggers their anxiety even more. They do not attend invitations, meetings, big events that need to be in crowded environments. The high anxiety they experience builds their thought patterns more harshly regarding their low self-perception. They withdraw into their shells because they feel awkward and shy around people.
Socializing tips for anxious introverts: Find activities you can do without stepping too far from your comfort zone, but without getting trapped inside your shell. In order to strengthen your social relationships and build romantic relationships, ask your close friends to be included in the environments you want to be in. Change your focus when you start thinking about past events that you can't change.
**Moderate introvert personality traits**
In order to understand the restrained introverts, we can think of the times when we just put our feet on the shore before going into the sea and wait. Restrained introverts, unlike anxious introverts, want to be with people and are not afraid of social interaction. They're just pretty picky. Before they can fully reveal themselves, they stay in the background and do warm-up laps. They enjoy being with people who have managed to gain their trust. They need to think before they act, so they do not make decisions on a whim, it takes a long time to take action.
Socializing tips for restrained introverts: Don't worry if you seem boring at first to people you just meet, if they manage to gain your trust, they may discover your passionate and playful side too. Although you like to be in control, sometimes you can speed up your actions by keeping the thinking part a little short.
If you think you have an introvert personality trait, but you are not sure which type best describes you, “Which type of introvert are you?” You can solve the test and reevaluate your features according to the result.
What are the 3 periods in our lives where we are the most alone?
Science has determined three periods in the lives of people struggling with loneliness that should pay attention to the most.
Loneliness represents one of the greatest risks to human health. So much so, that past research has revealed that lonely people experience much more health problems and even have a shorter lifespan.
Let's underline how sensitive the issue is by briefly touching on recent research:
Research on isolation and loneliness conducted by Brigham Young University in 2015 revealed that both factors "caused a 50% increase in premature deaths," in line with data from thousands of people. It was understood that both elements also cause high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and depression. It was determined that if isolation and loneliness could not be overcome, the situation worsened and perception problems and Alzheimer's started.
The above information is enough to summarize how terrible it is to be alone. But the situation is getting worse, according to science. In fact, loneliness has become a bigger health problem than obesity in the USA. Marriages around the world are declining, people are becoming more and more digital and anti-social. After all, we can say that those who confine themselves to loneliness shorten their lives with their own hands.
For non-believers, here's the results of the most comprehensive study of "loneliness", published in 2010 in the journal PLOS Medicine: Analysis of data from 148 studies involving 308,849 people revealed that people with strong social relationships were 50% more likely to live longer than those who wasolate themselves.
A study of 340 people between the ages of 27 and 101 by Dilip Jeste, a neuropsychiatrist at UC San Diego, and his team disproved the notion that loneliness is a problem that occurs with age.
According to the results of the psychological health assessments, three periods of peak loneliness were identified: late 80s, mid-50s, and late 20s.
Which Ages Experience Which Crises?
While the researchers were unable to identify the exact factors, they noted that the loneliness that occurs during these periods is predominantly due to the difficulties and stress associated with age. Jeste explains why loneliness can be at its peak in your late 20s:
“This period usually represents the years when one makes critical decisions. You think your peers make better decisions than you do, and you feel guilty about regretting your decisions.”
In their mid-50s, people go through a "midlife crisis." Health problems experienced during this period increase people's awareness of death.
When it comes to the late 80s, the psychological effect of loneliness can reappear strongly. Along with physical exhaustion, memory loss and the death of a friend and partner make the situation worse.
The point to be noted is how "severe" the loneliness is rather than when it occurs. Unfortunately, this period is increasing. While the US-based past studies ranged from 17% to 57%, the most recent study from 2018 found the persistence of loneliness to be 76%. This result frightened the researchers because none of the subjects suffering from such severe loneliness had suffered from serious mental problems such as severe depression or schizophrenia. The results indicated that loneliness is becoming an increasingly serious illness among normal people.
Read Lots of Books!
In the last part of the research, Jeste and her team wanted to consider loneliness from a different perspective. The test, called the "San Diego Wisdom Scale", correlates certain regions of the human brain with social behaviors, emotional patterns and reflections, and abilities such as tolerance and self-understanding.
In experiments, researchers discovered an inversely proportional relationship between intelligence and loneliness. In short, it turned out that wiser, wiser people suffer less from loneliness.
According to Ellen Lee, who took part in the research, this result can be explained as “traits such as empathy, passion and emotional management that express wisdom create resistance to loneliness”.
Ultimately, the researchers stated that they “need to deal with loneliness in different ways”, noting that this problem is not just caused by social isolation. Jeste said, “A person may be lonely but not feel that way, on the other hand, someone who is among people may feel lonely. The important thing is to be able to connect people.”
Isn't that the most important thing?
The spiral of silence: Why are we afraid to express our opinions?
How often do you feel that you can freely share your true ideas? How often do you bury sentences inside because you know you hold an unpopular opinion? How often do you refrain from voicing any opinion out of fear of misjudgement of the situation?
Even in societies with a well-founded freedom of expression, most people often fail to speak their minds, instead taking care to weigh the situation and adjust their views accordingly. This state of our auto-suppression has been the subject of a communication theory and was put forward by researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1970s: The Spiral of Silence. The theory tries to explain how societies form collective ideas and how we make decisions about complex and deep issues.
Let's take a look at how the spiral of silence works and how understanding it can give us a more realistic picture of the world.
According to Noelle-Neumann's theory, our desire to express an idea is related to how "popular" or "unpopular" we perceive the idea to be. If we think an idea is unpopular, we avoid expressing it. If we think it's popular, we're dying to show that we think the same way as others.
Our perception of how “safe” it is to express a particular opinion comes from conscious or unconscious cues we receive about what others believe. We do an internal calculation based on responses to mainstream media news, what our colleagues talk about during coffee breaks, what our high school friends write on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook, or what we've said before. We also continue to make these calculations based on factors such as whether our statements can be recorded.
Being liked and socially accepted is basically a good thing because this “desire for approval” allows us to bond with each other, develop confidence, and collaborate together to achieve things we could never have done on our own. But we also contribute to the creation of unhealthy standards and norms because of this desire for validation. When we try to be “adapted” blindly, we disregard our own selves. A common example of this is when we have friends who all wear “X” shoes, we decide to buy ourselves a pair of shoes from the same “X” brand just to fit in. In this process, we don't buy shoes because we absolutely like them and think they are the best, we buy them to be accepted and approved by our peers. This example of ours is rather naive; Of course, the same mechanism applies to politics, religion, culture, fashion, hobbies and other social norms that make up all other areas of our lives. Everything we do, say, and think is influenced, at least in part, by social pressures.
Of course, we have good reasons to realize whether voicing an opinion is bad. We have lived as groups since primitive times, and groups always tend to hold similar views. Anyone expressing an unpopular opinion risks exclusion in a particular context or in general. In the modern world, if these situations are against the social order, we are faced with legal penalties, dismissal, etc. sanctions arise. When social awkwardness occurs, there may not be many people around who are willing to engage with you. When we have an unpopular opinion, we can suppress our thoughts to avoid that social isolation.
Avoiding social isolation is a basic instinct for all of us. From an evolutionary biology perspective, being part of a group is essential for survival, so we need to at least appear to share the same views as everyone else. The only times someone will feel safe to express a different opinion is when they think the group will either share that view or accept their difference, or underestimate the result of rejection. But evolutionary biology doesn't just dictate our individual behavior. These behaviors integrate and eventually become the rules that shape communities. This is exactly why it is almost impossible for us to go beyond the need for acceptance. Decades of feedback push the minority views further and further down, and it turns into a cycle. This is why Noelle-Neumann used the word "helical".
Whenever someone expresses a widely accepted view, he receives such overwhelming approval that a feeling is reinforced in us that it is safe to do so. Whenever someone receives a negative response for voicing a minority view, this gives us plenty of pressure to refrain from sharing our views.
***The effects of the spiral of silence***
The end result of the spiral of silence is that people are not able to publicly voice an opinion that stands out from the usual. When we get to this point, we may first think that the picture we have of what most people believe is not always true. What is certain is that everyone, without exception, has ideas that they can never express to their friends, family, or social media followers. If we want to measure what people really think about something, we need to eliminate the negative reactions they get when they express their opinions about it.
Sometimes what is acceptable to say can be transformed by the free speech of well-known or experts in their fields, which inspires many people and expands the scope of freedom of expression. Sometimes, a legal change in legislation stretches the spectrum of admissibility. In the face of such a change, a subject that cannot be discussed can suddenly be reflected in the mainstream views.
Thanks to the Internet, many minorities who can make their voices heard are also able to make their views much more widespread and therefore more acceptable than they actually are. Indeed, the most extreme views of any spectrum can now appear to be the most normal considerations online. In fact, anonymity-dominated virtual media sometimes reverses acceptability, and the ideas that are supposed to be the most contradictory can turn into the most talked about. As in all cases, there will be many levels in front of us that can develop both for the benefit and the detriment of humanity.
We all know from experience that some people with minority views openly speak up and share their opinions, regardless of the consequences. Researchers have revealed that in these situations, individuals usually decide to voice their opinions when the issue is very important to them, when they care deeply about the issue, when they are sure of their attitudes and that they have real knowledge. When people are led to share under the influence of these factors, they break the spiral of silence. Have you ever shared your true views on a subject even though there are opposing views around you? If you remember that moment, no matter how frightened you were or what scale the repercussions of your post were, you shared it with the belief that you had your own truth in that moment.
Some opinions seem unpopular simply because it has become taboo to talk about. This is exactly where the “spiral of silence” theory comes from; that is, most people actually own an idea, but no one speaks it out loud.
This is why we need healthy opposition in our culture. Because when individuals decide to oppose, they may discover that their views are more popular than they initially thought. This encourages other like-minded people to start expressing themselves as well.
If you personally think you have a less popular opinion and have trouble expressing your opinion on a topic, you can use the results of some research to find your own voice.
@blueniX
