The components of a day are fairly simple: Eat a couple of times, sleep several hours, bathe, brush your teeth and go to the washroom (and wash your hands).
Through the years, things have gotten more intricate: Drink 8 glasses of water, exercise, breathe, meditate, keep up on current events and so much more.
It can feel like things are more and more complicated in what we have to fit in a day to try to make everything work, like juggling and having balls falling to the side as you try desperately to keep them all going.
Overshare: As I write this, we are still in the Covid-crisis and I’ve been chatting with other caregivers about what they are living. It seems like everyone I speak to is having issues making things work.
Today, I would want to share a really good MiniBook with my caregiver friends and others about the 4 main happy chemicals. D.O.S.E.: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endrophins. I would want this book to be simple and encouraging about how to give ourselves a Daily Dose, every day. Let’s see if I can do it 🙂
Sidenote: I do not endorse ANY artificial chemical assistance that was not prescribed by a qualified health professional.
Let’s do this!
Sidenote: If you are already celebrating a life of pure happiness and have it all figured out, you might find that this MiniBook doesn’t have much for you, but it might have something someone you care about could use. Who knows? 🙂
Raise your hand if you want to be happy!
Keep it up if you feel like you keep trying to find that perfect recipe to live that happiness we feel is in us, somewhere, but we can’t quite seem to unlock it.
(you can put your hand down now)
The Happy Self
Have you ever went looking inside yourself for your Happy Self and didn’t find it?
Sidenote: This feeling is exactly what a lot of people I’ve been speaking to lately relate to.
They realize that happiness use to bubble up and just be there, but now, they look around and happiness is MIA. They then start the search party, looking within and through different activities that “should” wake up happiness, wherever it’s hibernating. But alas, the search party comes back empty handed.
The feeling of emptiness comes in and loss, grief, confusion and disappointment come up. Very much in contrast to what we were looking for.
It feels like it used to be so easy! Friend shows up + go out with friend = Happy! Want ice cream + get ice cream = Happy! Start a project + finish the project = Happy!
Maybe it’s not so easy anymore. But why?
Happy should be hard-wired in all of us! It should be in our basic package! Free for all!
I want us to all feel happiness, real happiness that doesn’t come from friends, ice cream or accomplishments. I want us to feel happiness in our system as though it was flowing through our veins at all times!
So, to get there, we need to understand what happiness is and where it actually comes from. Find ways to boost ourselves and keep ourselves in a happy-maintaining plan!
4 Happy Chemicals
Let’s define each of the chemicals scientists feel are responsible for our happiness: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins.
Sidenote: I highly recommend extensive learning on the subject of each of these chemicals and so many more. I can’t stress enough how important it is to know how our body works. I’m not an expert and many websites might not be reputable. It’s important to find the right sources.
Dopamine: Dopamine is all about rewards. It is a bodily system’s wide neurotransmitter that serves the body in multiple ways, particularly as a chemical messenger. The way we might notice its presence and absence the most is through how we feel about goals. From figuring out the plan, the work and drive to get there and the feeling of pleasure when we hit our goal.
Oxytocin: Oxytocin is all about relationships and connections. They are peptide hormone and neuropeptide that work through our system. Though Oxytocin is known as the Love hormone, it is much more than that. It bring social security, relaxation and peace. Oxytocin drives us towards healthy relationships and gives us the reward for them.
Serotonin: Serotonin is a complex part of the human bodily system that is responsible for us winning and celebrating our victory. It is an important neurotransmitter. Learning, memory, and mood regulation are all things that Serotonin do for us every day. We can stimulate it in many ways, but respect and feeling that we’re good at something are key boosters.
Endorphins: Endorphins are tricky. Though they are mainly known as the great feeling people can get after a great run, they are generally triggered to save our lives by reducing pain. They are neuropeptides and peptide hormones. Endorphins are considered to be essential to stress, anxiety and mood management.
Sidenote: Friendly reminder that I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist or scientist. I am just myself. The information I am sharing about brain chemicals is best understood when reading work from scientists who specialize in brain chemicals. They are fascinating reads and I highly recommend them.
I believe that children have way more figured out than we give them credit for. I like to reflect on how I did things as a child and watch how babies and kids instinctively do things. I often find a great deal of answers in that.
Children instinctively:
- Sleep a good number of hours for what they need
- Spend time creating (drawing, Lego,…)
- Spend time with friends
- Hug loved ones
- Sing
- Like to have fun and laugh
- Move and run around
Sidenote: I have not officially reviewed Habits of a Happy Brain by Loretta Grazianon Breuning, however, I would like to endorse it as an easy first book on understanding and boosting our happy brain chemicals. I read this book in June 2018 and found it to be a great way to find my own ways to boost. I wish the book had even more information, but it was a very good read.
Overshare: When I was studying the happy brain and things I can do for each of the happy brain chemicals, I noticed how many I was doing as a child without knowing. I was unknowingly possibly boosting my dopamine through drawing, playing outside and my love of music. I was possibly boosting my oxytocin through my love of being with people and chatting (I was super-chatty). I was possibly increasing my serotonin through spending a lot of time in my imagination and memories, as well as desperately trying to find something I was good at. I was possibly boosting my endorphins through all the comedies I was hooked on and my love of shower-singing.
Ojas & Ayurveda
Ojas is Ayurveda’s answer to happy brain chemicals. There are great links between how to maintain our Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins and Ayurveda’s Ojas.
Ojas is the Ayurvedic source and essence of innate happiness, joy and energy. Ojas is considered to be essential to living a happy and healthy life and should be protected and maintained through life. Ayurveda considers that having a healthy amount of Ojas protects the integrity our mind, body and Spirit.
Beyond inner joy and happiness, the most common signs of a healthy Ojas are healthy and glowing skin, hair and eyes, good bodily senses, good energy levels, the ability to manage stress, concentration, clear thinking, healthy sleeping and a sense of peace and freedom.
Like much of Ayurveda, there are many ways to increase our Ojas: Through food, activities, oil treatments and so much more. It generally takes a month to build our Ojas.
Ojas is disintegrated by stress, rushing, fear and anger.
One of the main aspects of treating people with Ayurveda is monitoring their Ojas and ensuring that they have ways to maintain and increase it through daily habits.
Protecting ourselves from eroding our Ojas through ensuring we don’t lose our essence of ourselves and over-heating or drying ourselves.
We can build Ojas through:
- Right food and drink choices
- Appropriate sleep quantity for ourselves
- Time in nature, even caring for plants
- Appropriate self-expression
- Laughter
- Self-massage
- Breathing and meditation
- Right yoga postures and mudras (hand postures)
- Gratitude
Sidenote: In all things Ayurveda, I strongly believe we are best handling what we are currently doing before adding new things. Remove what doesn’t work before adding new parts. A qualified Ayurvedic professional can guide you through the best ways to boost and protect your Ojas while complimenting your doshic blend, your needs and lifestyle.
The enemy of happiness: Stress, rushing, fear and anger
We hear so much about stress and how its effects can be devastating on our health for our body, mind and spirit. With such a bad reputation, I wonder why we keep it around!
But there it is!
Surprisingly, not everyone sleeps in a ball of stress at night! Seriously! Some people actually sleep well and without having to peel themselves back into human-shape every morning. I’ve heard reports that some people even feel refreshed when they wake up! Crazy, right?!
So, this begs the question: Why do some of us live with stress while others manage to keep it at bay?
Million-dollar question, right?!
Karine’s definition of Stress: The outcome of an accumulation of untreated stimulus and its impact on our entire Self. Though once considered to be a life-saving feature to ensure humans would remain safe, its current effects on humans is rapid aging, detrimental and weakening on all our facets.
Stress keeps us aware and on our toes, but living life on our toes with our eyes darting left and right constantly is exhausting.
But why do we feed it so much? The answer will not be the same from person to person, however will most likely have the commonality of expectations, either by ourselves or of others. Expectations = pressure. We expect a lot out of ourselves and others. We try to fit a lot in a day!
These expectations and pressure are linked to rushing, fear and anger because we can be truly attached to the stakes. Each of these emotions have a good reason to exist, but we tend to feel them far too often for far too weak a reason.
Overshare: I think of stress, rushing, fear and anger in a way that each time I feel them, I imagine that they have a physical effect on me such as aging me faster in a more detrimental way. I then react and want it out FAST. The cost is simply too high! I feel them harming me. My system deserves better, right? We all do.
What we deserve
We deserve to feel happy.
We deserve to feel this happiness come from within and not because something prompted us to feel it or a version of what we believe is happiness.
We deserve to wake up in the morning feeling happiness within ourselves, to lead our day with happiness flowing through our system and go to bed at night with happiness tucking us in.
We deserve that Happy is simply part of us.
Creating our own boosters
Even if you’re not diving into researching happy brain chemicals, you might still want to get the ball rolling on finding your own boosters.
Building on what I’ve learned on these 4 brain chemicals, I put together this table:
Making it our own
Overshare: Over the past year, I’ve been introduced to Heart’s version of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven they did with full chorus at the Kennedy Center. I’ve even shared this rendition of Stairway strangers while waiting in line! Seriously! When I started writing this MiniBook, this video came to mind and I have to share it with you. Simple reason: failing having been there during the concert, this video is the next best experience in feeling of vicariously living out all the happy chemicals at once! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do 🙂
Sidenote: This is one of my boosters, but might not be for you.
Daily DOSE, Time & Gratitude
So far, we’ve talked about the 4 brain chemicals, their link to Ojas, the things that harm our happiness and ways to boost ourselves. What we are missing, however, is remembering the importance of Time and Gratitude.
Time is irreplaceable. It passes in front of us and we cannot save it into a time account. We can’t save time for a rainy day. We try to “save” time by rushing, but rushing creates pressure and stress.
Embracing and allocating our time to care for ourselves is one of the best things we can do for ourselves on a daily basis.
In that time, we can direct our attention towards our gratitudes. By giving ourselves the space to be and connect with ourselves, we are helping ourselves boost our 4 happy brain chemicals and our Ojas.
I wish you all true happiness.
Enjoy,
Karine
