11 Nov Happiness is…healthiness
I thought you might enjoy this interesting article from Positive Psychology News Daily linking happiness and health. In brief, those people who're happier are also, surprise surprise, healthier!
It starts like this…
“Happier people live longer,” is old news for us positive psychology fans. That happier people tend to be healthier is also something we’re now well aware of, in large part thanks to Sheldon Cohen’s research showing that happier people enjoy a stronger immune response and to happiness gurus Diener and Biswas-Diener whose research shows that happier people pay closer attention to their health habits than moodier individuals.
While it’s already helpful to identify that happiness can support good health habits, I’d like to provide more information about why that is so and about how to manage that process intentionally.
But first, an illustrative metaphor
When we watch a movie, the soundtrack gives us a lot of cues about what’s going to happen.
Imagine the following scene: a woman enters her home late at night. All the lights in her house are out. As she opens the front door, she sees a man standing by the window.
If that scene unfolds to the tune of creepy, scary music like that used in a horror movie, we imagine that she’s about to get attacked and chopped to pieces. But if the same scene unfolds to the sound of sexy saxophone, we imagine that she’s the victim of a much more pleasant kind of attack!
Well, biochemicals are to the body as soundtrack music is to a movie. As we go about our days, the events we experience generate a biochemical reaction in our body. See your self-esteem threatened in public, and your cortisol levels will spike. Connect meaningfully with a good friend, and your serotonin will rise instead…
…if you're finding this interesting you can read more about the relationship between happiness and health HERE