Happiness Blog April 8, 2019

Continuing on our theme of getting out: Be a tourist in your town. I absolutely love playing tourist in my town. I am always surprised by what a quick Google search of “fun things to do” in my town turns up. Many of us already know what the “fun things” are and may have already done them. If this is the case, try the next town over. The goal is simply to find a hidden gem in your area and enjoy it. It is a lot of fun to find hidden gems and secret hideaways. Exploration reduces stress and depression while creating hope and optimism.

A fun fact about the human brain is that it is constantly changing and growing to adapt to our needs. By exploring new and novel spaces, we are teaching our brains that we need more positive emotion receptors and connections. Increasing the number of positive emotional receptors our brain has, we increase our capacity to feel positive emotions. Every time we experience something new, we create growth and development in our brain and teach it about the world. Having safe, fun, and novel experiences teaches our brain that our world can be safe, fun, and unexpected in positive ways.

Going someplace we have never been gives us the opportunity to teach our brain that things can be good. If we are happy with our life, then new experiences reinforce our happiness. If we are unhappy in our life, new experiences teach our brain that we are not stuck. Sometimes, we just need a spark of positivity to ignite the flame of “wow”, and new places can often provide just such a spark. This is true even when we must drag or push ourselves.

Posted on Monday: 08 April, 2019