You can trigger more happy chemicals naturally. Here's how. You can stimulate more happy chemicals with fewer side effects when you understand the...
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Old posts can still be read at: PsychologyToday.com The Positive Psychology People WomenWorking.com
The classic posts are on this site.
Why It’s Always High School In Your Brain
Your teen self is still the core of who you are Does life sometimes seem like a high school cafeteria? It's not your imagination. Our brain is...
Why Love Is a Neurochemical Roller Coaster
Love makes your happy chemicals surge, but they always dip Love triggers dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. That's why it's so motivating. But happy...
Good Habits Make You Feel Like You’re Gonna Die
If you have a bad habit, it’s because your brain thinks it’s good for survival. If you eat a donut when you’re annoyed, for example, it’s because...
Why Is My Phone So Addictive?
Your phone triggers dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, while it relieves cortisol Our brain is not designed to release good feelings all the time...
How to Make Frustration Work for You
Overcoming obstacles is the natural way to feel good. Our frustrations are often blamed on modern society, but monkeys had the same frustrations 50...
Why Winning Feels Good
Winning doesn’t matter, we’re told, but something deep inside suggests otherwise. “Our society” creates the urge to win, we’re taught, yet monkeys...
The Sadness of Partisan Polarizing
And the choice to live without partisan goggles. I am surrounded by political anger. Everyone expects me to be on their side because they are the...
The Urge To Be Heard At Your Core
You need to express yourself to feel safe. We are born with no survival skills except the ability to express pain. When you withhold your urge to be...
How Baboons Choose Their Leaders
Patronage works in the Baboon World Every baboon troop is led by an alpha who holds power until ousted by a challenger. Brute force makes you alpha...
Feeling Good Is a Learned Skill: Dwelling on your gifts wires in good feelings.
"When I'm good no one remembers. When I'm bad no one forgets." This lament rings true for most people. How can we learn the skill of feeling good...
Score! Dopamine! Repeat! Or Not: Why goals don’t bring satisfaction.
Reaching a goal triggers dopamine. That feels great, but the spurt soon ends. Then you become who you were before the spurt. If you’re not...
Control the World or Control Yourself?
In a perfect world, ice cream would have no calories, I would win every tennis match I played, and everyone I loved would love me back. Then I...
Nature Gave Us Four Kinds of Happiness: A balanced diet of happy chemicals nourishes your brain.
Happiness is just a neurochemical spurt. Four different brain chemicals create happy feelings, and you need all of them to feel good. You miss out...
What a Let-Down! When your happy chemicals dip, your brain concocts failure.
Your brain evolved to look for problems. You get a break while your happy chemicals are surging, but when the surge ends your brain goes back to...
The Animal Urge to Leave a Legacy: Planting seeds stimulates your happy chemicals
You are hard-wired to care about what you leave behind when you're gone. Animals focus on making babies, and humans, until recently, focused on...