Happiness, 7

Understand that your brain is designed to react more intensely to negative events—perhaps as a safety mechanism. By actively focusing and appreciating the positive aspects of your life, no matter how tiny and seemingly insignificant, you can gradually transform perceived misery into gratefulness and happiness. Practice mindfulness. Establishing peace of mind helps you to be happy. PET Scans have shown that the left frontal area of the brain correlates with feelings of joy, happiness, and excitement. Make your own map to joy. Know your happiness. Write the word happiness in the middle of a large piece of paper. Write what and who makes you happy and why, branching out from the center. List people, places, creative activities, food, spirituality, music, beauty, holding a baby or an animal, reading poetry, attending a funny film, or exercise. How do these things connect? Keep coming back to your map and add to it with insights, a collage, or drawings. Naming your happiness can be as much a spiritual practice as an insight into your lived values, like taking an environmental inventory of your life.