Why passive happiness is more effective for your well-being (and 4 places where you can find it)

when you wear your favorite song or plan a weekend in the country with your family what you do is actively build your happiness. That is, you do something concrete to create a moment of happiness. When you incorporate into your life happy habits as do exercisetake care of your social relationships either be thankfulit is said that you work on the creation of your passive happiness. Active happiness and passive happiness is one of the many classifications you will hear about happiness. Experts in positive psychology often use this differentiation to show us how passive happiness is usually more effective when we speak in terms of well-being. Because? Because it responds to an attitude, to a choice. As it explains Tal Ben Shaharprofessor at Harvard University and co-founder of the Happiness Studies Academy, you can be happy if you want to be happy. It depends on you, on your elections and of your behaviors. You decide to live calmly, enjoy your family or give yourself permission to experience all human emotions, but to benefit from it you have to become a habit routine and therefore you have to train him. This way, happiness is trained day by day and by doing so, we keep it in shape. And keeping her in shape is a lot more important than it seems naked eye.

You choose to be happy: happiness as a habit

It is precisely in one of the latest studies carried out on the human happiness where it is shown that no one can be in control of your own happiness. It is also not possible be happy all the time. It seems obvious, but the reality is that we live in a world in which two rule messages: if you are not happy it is that you are something doing wrong and the happiness is achieved and then you can relax. “We study thousands of lives. Nobody is happy all the time, no person on the planet that I have come across. The myth that you could be happy all the time if you do all the right things is not true. Happiness waxes and wanes,” says Robert Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development (HSAD). And he adds: “But it is true that there are things that we can set in motion in our lives that make us more prone to feel happy most of the time” and, above all, “they help us to better overcome unhappy timesthe challenges”.

How to train passive happiness (your best ally in bad times)

In biology of kindness daniel lumeranatural biologist, writer and founder of the International Kindness Movement, explains that “today, science is capable of giving an exact biological correspondence to optimism, kindness, forgiveness, gratitude and happinessdemonstrate to what extent they are fundamental to living a long, healthy and happy lifebut above all for the survival and evolution of the human race on our planet”. Train these muscles in the gym of life may be the key to increasing the happiness and well-being in our lives:

1. Take care of your health. When you learn to listen to your body and mind and attend to it by practicing a healthy dietrespecting the hours of sleep what you need or exercising your body doing sport and coming out of a sedentary lifestyle, it is much easier for you to be happy than if you don’t. The consequences of health in our well-being and happiness no need to prove them.
2. Practice mindfulness. Learn to focus on the present and what we are doing is a habit that gives us a lot of well-being and happiness. According to a study from Boston University, it is capable of activating the cerebral amygdala, considered the emotional center of the brainwhich allows us a better emotional management.
3. be grateful. This vital attitude that we can always practice but especially when we experience moments of calm and well-being it makes us happier. A walk through nature, a conversation with a friend, make us happier when we feel grateful.
4. Learn to forgive. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has shown that forgiveness makes us more human while revenge and hate destroy us as a society. Forgiveness is a great activator of emotional well-being.