What Are Your Options Now? - Happiness is Balance

By Mark Kaplan / May 27, 2020

In earliest life and early man, the one brain stimulated two basic behaviors. We were able to relax during normal activities. When danger arose, we fought to save ourselves or ran. When eating opportunities arose, we often attacked. Life was simple in a way even though there was the struggle to survive.

As we developed two new brains, life became more complex. The world remained the same, but we started interpreting everything that happened to us and worrying about the past and the future.

What is Our Brain Doing Now?

Our brain now is confused. We are on shaky ground. We interpret the external signs as being in such flux, no one knows what the future holds. We are worried about being infected by something we can’t see. We worry about our lifetime of stability being unstable. We don’t know what kind of world we will experience from now on.

What can we influence?

We can influence our daily life. We may have obligations to work from home, to seek employment or just ride out our unemployment insurance. The time in between is where our two new brains are helping us live constructively or not.

The brain has two major modes. It is either happy because of our behaviors or stressed because of how it interprets our opportunities to survive. When we are engaged in opportunities that make survival more likely our brain stimulates happiness brain chemicals that make us feel purposeful.

When we are concerned about our health or income challenges, our brain stimulates the stress hormones of cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. Unlike animals and early man, we now have the ability to remain stressed for long periods of time. This heightened state of alert soon wears out our health as though it was a battery.

What Are Our Options?

We have the power to create happiness brain chemicals and feel very purposeful and fulfilled. This is where will, drive, discipline, attitude, and hope come into play. If we engage in certain behaviors, the positive reinforcement from the brain will be stimulated. A leads to B. We have to have faith and the will to make ourselves more powerful. We have to have hope that things will be better, but the discipline to engage in the behaviors that will influence the outcome.

Examine the behaviors that science says stimulate the happiness brain chemicals. On the most basic level, learning, creating, contributing, health, and exercise can all stimulate our personal growth and enhance our chances of survival from the brain’s perspective.

Read a challenging book, take a course that could help your career or just expand your skills. Practice skills you have to increase your capabilities even if its only 4% at a time. Learn how to be creative. Art is one outlet, but so is problem solving and innovation. Businesses are asking in their assessment of new personnel if they enjoy tasks with no known solution.

Contribute with your skills, knowledge, time, or caring. It immediately stimulates oxytocin, a powerful mood enhancer. Even the intentions of beginning something or learning something that will make other lives better will stimulate a perk of happiness.

Finally, improving your health and fitness tell the brain your survival opportunities are being enhanced and it can reward you with feelings of pride and contentment.

While engaging in all these positive activities, the stress hormones have less time to plague you. You become more resilient to stress. It is less likely the external circumstances will affect you in the same way if you are constantly improving who you are.

The options are yours.

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