Watch out, 2024 will be your year.
New Year New chances. Do you always draw up a list of goals and resolutions that you then fail to achieve? This year you will succeed, with a little help from happiness psychologist Josje Smeets.
Learn at relaxed
Are you also someone who has difficulty relaxing, is regularly full of stress and therefore occasionally overflows? Because you always have a hundred things to do and structurally insufficient time? So it’s high time to really relax regularly. “Effective relaxation can be achieved in two ways. There are people who are good at relaxing in action, and people who are good at letting go when standing still. If you belong to the first group, you relax best through exercise. That is the way to activate all four happiness hormones at the same time, and especially to produce serotonin, which ensures that you become calm, satisfied and peaceful.” According to Smeets, the other group prefers to let go while sitting on a yoga mat, meditating or practicing mindfulness. “It has been scientifically proven that if people start exercising or meditation very effectively, after three weeks you can deal with stress better, you can more easily put aside your worries and you can also have a more positive outlook on life.”
Adjust your behavior to achieve goals
Everyone sets goals and good intentions for themselves. The problem is that you have forgotten half of those good intentions after three weeks and don’t follow through. And according to Smeets, that has everything to do with the fact that we aim far too high. “If you want to achieve your goals, you have to adjust your behavior. And behavioral change only really works if you take small steps of ten percent. Think of doing ten percent less or adding ten percent. Suppose you never exercise at all at the moment and you have planned to start running this year. Then you shouldn’t immediately download that start to run app and expect yourself to run three times a week, because your brain doesn’t understand that. Start with a ten percent increment. In this case: run for half an hour once a week.” If you notice after three weeks that you are comfortable and it is getting easier, you can add another ten percent step.
Surround yourself with energy givers instead of energy drainers
You know how: after a busy day at work you meet up with that one friend and then you come home broken and exhausted. Or you’ve become grumpy after working with that one colleague who is negative non-stop. “It starts with awareness. My tip: start journaling. At the end of the day, write down what point you give that day between 0 and 10. You often see a pattern return after a few weeks of writing. From: then I went to my mother-in-law again, or then I took on a project with that one colleague. Then this apparently costs a lot of energy. But you can’t just cut out all the people from your life who drain your energy, such as family or colleagues. Therefore, surround yourself more often with people and things that give you energy. You will see that it gives you enough energy to deal better with energy guzzlers.”
Find happiness within yourself
It is perhaps the most expressed wish: to be happy. But we often try to find that happiness in great things. More money, a nice partner, a bigger house, being healthy, a good job, lots of friends. And yes, these things provide temporary happiness, but they are no guarantee for a happy life. In fact, long-term happiness is mainly found within yourself. Therefore, start by considering what you do have, Smeets advises. “One person becomes happy from walking around outside, another enjoys cuddling with his dog and another becomes happy from taking care of grandma. Happiness is different for everyone and very subjective. That’s why a gratitude practice five minutes before bedtime is very powerful. Name three things in your mind that you were grateful for that day, that you were proud of or that went well. It activates the positive happiness network in your brain. You will notice that if you do this exercise for a few weeks, it becomes automatic and it is much easier to think about the little things that make you happier.”
