The Three Happiest Times Of Your Life

the-three-happiest-times-of-your-life_300When do you feel happiest? According to scientists at Harvard, three special moments make us feel most joyful. But if you let your mind wander from being in the present, you compromise your good feelings.

We spend almost 50 percent of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we’re doing, say these researchers, and this mind-wandering typically makes us unhappy. A study that used an iPhone web app to gather 250,000 data points on people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, indicates that we’re often disconnected from our present circumstances.

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” conclude the researchers. “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn’t going on around them. They contemplate events that occurred in the past, might take place in the future, or may never happen at all. The Harvard scientists believe that mind-wandering is the human brain’s default mode of operation.

“Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities,” says researcher Matthew Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard. “This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present.”

The study showed that the three happiest moments in our lives are: while making love, exercising or conversing with others. The unhappiest were: while resting, working or using a home computer.

If you want to track your happiness with a smartphone app, go here.

Carl Lowe

By Carl Lowe

has written about health, fitness and nutrition for a wide range of publications including Prevention Magazine, Self Magazine and Time-Life Books. The author of more than a dozen books, he has been gluten-free since 2007.

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