Happiness is not just for Christmas
If you get that gift you’ve wanted for Christmas, the chances are the happiness you get from it won’t last. If something terrible happens, a bereavement or relationship break-up, before too long you’re likely to get over it and be just as happy as you were before. Even people who win the lottery are happier for a while, then go back to the same level of happiness they had before. Is it all down to fate and is there anything we can do about it?
Our moods seem to be to do with the balance of activity in our left and right prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain which sits right behind your forehead. An active left prefrontal cortex and you’ll be happy and curious about life and an over-active right prefrontal cortex and you’ll be more likely to be depressed and find life difficult. The big question is how much can we change this balance of activity from right to left? If good things in life don’t make us happy, what can we do to be happier?
Until people started looking at brains with modern scanners, it was thought that brain development was pretty much fixed in early adulthood. Ideas about this have changed. Scientists studying London cab drivers have found their brains change when they have to learn “the knowledge” of thousands of routes through the city. A bit like what happens to your muscles when you exercise regularly.
Now that we know that the brain can change if we put our minds to it, can we learn to be happier? If you’ve ever been depressed or tried to encourage someone who’s depressed to be happier, you’ll know it’s not that easy. The habits we get into are difficult to shift, whatever they are and developing new, better habits can be hard.
One way that works, even for people who suffer from depression, is practicing mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness exercises are just about paying attention to sensations, like the sensations of breathing in your nostrils, and when the mind wanders, just noticing where it’s gone and bringing it back; over and over again. If we’re going to do this we need to be kind to ourselves when we find our minds do wander because that’s just what minds do. In time we get to know our minds better and get to be more and more curious about what’s actually going on in our experience. It’s like getting to know and old friend.
As we get to notice more of what’s happening from moment to moment, the less we worry, the less we are trapped by over-thinking about things and the more we are able to feel what it’s like to be alive. Feeling what it’s like to be alive is about having the courage to feel difficult emotions as well as the courage to let go of our personal view of things. And we can’t really find the greatest source of happiness, love, without this kind of courage.
So, by just developing a habit of paying attention to the sensations in our breath, all kinds of things happen. In fact, brain scans of people who’ve done mindfulness courses show that there is a shift in activity between the right prefrontal cortex to the left, showing they’re becoming happier.We discover that the way we look at things, being open and curious, is really more important than wanting things to make us happy. Over time this makes it easier to build the habits we need for a happier life from the inside out.
Mark Leonard has played a key role in the development of the University of Oxford's 'Oxford Mindfulness Centre' and has set up a spin-off, The Mindfulness Exchange Ltd, to provide mindfulness training to corporate clients. Mark studied Zoology and then Fisheries Biology, but his primary life interest has been study and practice of meditation. He has developed his understanding of Buddhist philosophy with a friend who is a senior academic monk from the Dalai Lama's school and trained to teach Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Mark is able to combine a thorough knowledge and practice of traditional and scientifically based approaches to meditation.