10 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Incredibly Happy

It's easy to think of happiness as a result, but happiness is also a driver.

One example: While I'm definitely into finding ways to improve personal productivity (whether a one-day burst, or a lifetime, or things you should not do every day), probably the best way to be more productive is to just be happier. Happy people accomplish more.

Easier said than done though, right?

Actually, many changes are easy. Here are 10 science-based ways to be happier from Belle Beth Cooper, Content Crafter at Buffer, the social media management tool that lets you schedule, automate, and analyze social media updates.

Here's Beth:

1. Exercise: 7 Minutes Could Be Enough

Think exercise is something you don't have time for? Think again. Check out the  7 minute workout mentioned in The New York Times. That's a workout any of us can fit into our schedules.

Exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it is an effective strategy for overcoming depression. In a study cited in Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated their depression with medication, exercise, or a combination of the two. The results of this study are surprising: Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels early on, the follow-up assessments proved to be radically different:

The groups were then tested six months later to assess their relapse rate. Of those who had taken the medication alone, 38 percent had slipped back into depression. Those in the combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31 percent relapse rate. The biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9 percent.

You don't have to be depressed to benefit from exercise, though. Exercise can help you relax, increase your brain power, and even improve your body image, even if you don't lose any weight.

We've explored exercise in depth before, and looked at what it does to our brains, such as releasing proteins and endorphins that make us feel happier.

A study in the Journal of Health Psychology found that people who exercised felt better about their bodies even when they saw no physical changes:

Body weight, shape and body image were assessed in 16 males and 18 females before and after both 6 × 40 minutes exercising and 6 × 40 minutes reading. Over both conditions, body weight and shape did not change. Various aspects of body image, however, improved after exercise compared to before.

Yep: Even if your actual appearance doesn't change, how you feel about your body does change.

2. Sleep More: You'll Be Less Sensitive to Negative Emotions

We know that sleep helps our body recover from the day and repair itself and that it helps us focus and be more productive. It turns out sleep is also important for happiness.

In NurtureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain how sleep affects positivity:

Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine.

In one experiment by Walker, sleep-deprived college students tried to memorize a list of words. They could remember 81% of the words with a negative connotation, like "cancer." But they could remember only 31% of the words with a positive or neutral connotation, like "sunshine" or "basket."

The BPS Research Digest explores another study that proves sleep affects our sensitivity to negative emotions. Using a facial recognition task throughout the course of a day, researchers studied how sensitive participants were to positive and negative emotions. Those who worked through the afternoon without taking a nap became more sensitive to negative emotions like fear and anger.

Using a face recognition task, here we demonstrate an amplified reactivity to anger and fear emotions across the day, without sleep. However, an intervening nap blocked and even reversed this negative emotional reactivity to anger and fear while conversely enhancing ratings of positive (happy) expressions.

Of course, how well (and how long) you sleep will probably affect how you feel when you wake up, which can make a difference to your whole day.

Another study tested how employees' moods when they started work in the morning affected their entire work day.

Researchers found that employees' moods when they clocked in tended to affect how they felt the rest of the day. Early mood was linked to their perceptions of customers and to how they reacted to customers' moods.

And most importantly to managers, employee mood had a clear impact on performance, including both how much work employees did and how well they did it.

3. Spend More Time With Friends/Family: Money Can't Buy You Happiness

Staying in touch with friends and family is one of the top five regrets of the dying.

If you want more evidence that time with friends is beneficial for you, research proves it can make you happier right now, too.

Social time is highly valuable when it comes to improving our happiness, even for introverts. Several studies have found that time spent with friends and family makes a big difference to how happy we feel.

Never Diet Again!

Be healthy, happy and successful… without ever dieting again. That’s right never… diet… again. Repeat three times in your mind. Feels good, doesn’t it? Now, I’m going to show you how we use Self-Compassion Therapy to beat the diet demons here at Smash Your Scale.

Step 1:

I tell the truth about diets and dieting. Dieting does not work and is one of the worst things you can do to your body and mind. Dieting harms your psychological wellbeing and ultimately causes weight gain, not loss. This isn’t just my opinion. It’s a scientific fact! Researchers at UCLA reviewed 31 long-term diet studies lasting between 2 and 5 years and concluded: “The findings reported so far give a bleak picture of the outcomes of diets… Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.” Clear enough? Medical research also shows that skinny people don’t even live longer. Why bother when there’s nothing to gain?

These are examples of the real medical and scientific truths the diet industry suppresses that I make available to our members at Smash Your Scale. Truth is what I do here. That’s why I will never accept advertising on this website. SmashYourScale.com will always remain a safe place where women are free from the constant cascade of food advertising, esteem destroying diet come-ons and photoshopped shapes that don’t exist in real life.

Many of us in the responsible medical community have been trying to stop deceitful “diet-docs” from peddling health destroying, impossible to achieve 30 pounds in 30 days promises. Regrettably, there are many unscrupulous “nutritionists,” grade D celebrities, charlatans pushing diet pills and other swindlers who will hock any bogus potion or notion for a buck. I name names, reveal their frauds, and empower you to protect yourself and your health in my Smash Your Scale, Women’s Wellness Therapy Program, Maximize Your Body, Mind, Self…And Never Diet Again.

Step 2:

Expose how and why the media and diet industries manipulate women to hate our bodies.  Here’s one example of how they do it to us. Every day you are bombarded WITH images of skinny women on TV, in movies, magazines and on the Internet. You compare yourself to these “perfect” air brushed, photoshopped images and of course are left feeling inadequate. This psychological phenomenon is called social comparison and occurs subconsciously. You don’t even realize it’s happening unless you’ve been taught how to recognize the pattern. Yes, I teach you how in my Women’s Wellness Therapy Program.

Fear not, the diet industry is there with the answer to all your anxieties… another diet! Yes, this diet will really work this time. This diet will really change your life. Everything will be better and happier if you just try one more diet… and another… and another… and another. When the diet doesn’t work you blame yourself, not the diet, and feel worse than before you started the diet. So you begin another search for the “right” diet that will work this time. And the music plays on… over and over again. It’s time to smash that song.

Once they have you on the diet merry-go-round the music never stops because the diet industry needs you to fail. Their whole business model depends on you failing again and again, throwing more dollars down the diet drain, attempting to meet some “perfect weight” or “thin ideal” defined by a man, probably pudgy. I discuss this deviant dichotomy — fat men telling healthy women to lose weight – and how to turn off their manipulative messaging in my Women's Wellness Therapy Program and during my online support sessions. 

We live in a diet obsessed, thin-centric media culture. We fixate on calories and carbs; buy millions of diet books, watch weight loss reality TV (which isn’t real at all), and devour celebrity magazines stuffed with stories about the expanding and contracting waistlines of the rich, famous and lipo-sucked. Americans spend an estimated $62 billion on weight loss annually. That’s more than we spend on pets ($53 billion), movie tickets ($10 billion) and shoes ($48 billion). While pets, movies, and shoes bring us pleasure, diets only offer false hope, despair and depression as your health erodes. It doesn’t have to be this way. By joining Smash Your Scale you can end diet depression and desperation and help change our society so no woman ever feels ashamed of her body again!

Step 3:

Reveal the truth about YOU: You are beautiful right now. You don’t have to diet and lose weight to be healthy, happy, attractive, desirable and successful. How can you be any of those positive things when diets make you miserable, stressed, tired, grumpy and ashamed when you step on the scale? And in the end diets never really work, do they? Don’t just take my word for it; remember the last time you tried a weight loss pill, potion or fad diet? You believed the lies even though you knew they sounded too good to be true. You convinced yourself this diet was going to be different than all the rest. Like problem gamblers, we women keep putting dollars into the diet slot machine hoping this time we’ll win the jackpot and finally be 5’10” and weigh 120 pounds. Sister, it ain’t gonna happen. Save your money and start investing in yourself.

Step 4:

Help you to feel better about your body and self! My groundbreaking research shows that women can heal their negative body image, reduce body dissatisfaction, shame and increase body appreciation through self-compassion. Research also suggests that self-compassion may help you lose weight by reducing the tendency to binge eat. Yes, lose weigh too, through practising self-compassion therapy. I will show you how.

Based on my research and over 20 years of experience working with women like you, I’ve put together a complete step-by step program that will finally empower you to stop dieting, curtail emotional eating and maximize your health. Let me show you how to treat your body, self and health with the kindness and care you deserve. The program is FREE with your membership. Simply join me for only 14.95 and start your diet free journey to health and happiness today.

My mission is simple: To serve the Smash Community, reveal diet deceptions and the manipulative marketing tactics that keep women on the diet hamster-wheel. I will help you dump dieting and get healthy in mind, body and spirit.

Ever see a happy dieter? I didn’t think so.

Source:- http://www.smashyourscale.com/never-diet-again