Seven Ways to Create More Joy!

In his book, Spontaneous Happiness, Dr. Andrew Weil writes about lifestyle practices that can help people achieve and maintain happy lives. His practices are designed to help people reach and maintain a state of contentment and serenity. From there, a person can still experience appropriate emotional highs and lows, but knows that he or she will soon return to a balanced state.

We love his summary of 9 lifestyle practices that will greatly benefit all who follow them, and be especially helpful to those who struggle with mild to moderate depression. 

1. Exercise
“Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication. Exercise also appears to prevent depression and improve mood in healthy people.  Many exercise forms – aerobic, yoga, weights, walking and more – have been shown to benefit mood.

2. Follow an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Inflammation in the body has destructive potential. We see this when the immune system mistakenly attacks normal tissues in such autoimmune diseases as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Excessive inflammation also plays a causative role in heart disease, cancer. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. More recent research indicates that inappropriate inflammation may also underlie depression – so controlling it is key to both physical and mental health.

Perhaps the most powerful way to control inflammation is via a diet that consists of whole, unprocessed foods that provide abundant vitamins, minerals and fiber. A diet of fruits and vegetables, fatty cold-water fish, healthy whole grains, olive oil and other foods that have been shown to help keep inflammation in check. For details, see the anti-inflammatory food pyramid at my website.

3. Take Fish Oil & Vitamin D
Adequate blood levels of fish oil and vitamin D have been strongly tied to emotional health. They are so necessary and deficiencies are so common in the developed world that I believe everyone, depressed or not, should take them. Take up to three grams of a quality, molecularly distilled fish oil supplement daily – look for one that provides both EPA and DHA in a ratio of about three or four to one. I also recommend 2,000 IU of vitamin D each day.

4. Do Breathing Exercises
Conscious breath control is a useful tool for achieving a relaxed, clear state of mind. One of my favorite breathing exercises is the 4-7-8 or Relaxing Breath. Although you can do the exercise in any position, sit with your back straight while learning the exercise. 

• Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
• Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
• Hold your breath for a count of seven.
• Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
• This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

Note that you always inhale quietly through your nose and exhale audibly through your mouth. Exhalation takes twice as long as inhalation. The absolute time you spend on each phase is not important; the ratio of 4:7:8 is important. With practice, you can slow it all down and get used to inhaling and exhaling more and more deeply. This exercise is a natural tranquilizer for the nervous system.

5. Limit Media Exposure
Today, many of us are choking on “data smog,” a dense cloud of trivial, irrelevant, or otherwise low-value information made possible by the internet’s power to disseminate vast amounts of media virtually free. The result is fractured attention spans and attenuated human relationships. Monitor the time you spend with digital media (television, the web, email, text messaging and so on) in a given week, and cut that amount at least 25 percent in the following week. Use the time you free up for outings in nature, exercise, or face-to-face communication with friends.  If you like the result, keep restricting virtual life “surfing” and expanding real-life, connected, human experiences.

6. Forgive
Forgiveness is almost universally held by philosophers and saints to be a key to happiness – and modern research confirms that those who can quickly and easily forgive when appropriate enjoy better emotional health. Conversely, resentment is the fuel that feeds depressive rumination, and can quickly spiral into a self-reinforcing low mood. Fortunately, the ability to forgive can be cultivated.

7. Practice Gratitude 
Author G.K. Chesterton wrote: “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” I suspect Chesterton didn’t do this automatically. He knew that, like forgiveness, gratitude can and should be cultivated through diligent practice.

One powerful method is keeping a gratitude journal. Spending a specific time each day or week recording things for which one is grateful has been shown to boost subjective happiness levels in as little as three weeks. A less formal practice – and one that I follow – is to devote a few moments of my morning to silently give thanks for all of the good things in my life. As a result of doing this for several years, I find myself often making mental notes throughout the day of blessings such as rain here in my desert home, flowers that are opening in my garden, or a glorious sunset. Of all of the practices listed in this article, I believe learning to feel and express gratitude may be the most important in achieving and maintaining a happy life.”

We hope you enjoyed these lifestyle practices from Dr. Weil as much as we did. Our team found them incredibly helpful and inspiring! We love that he took an approach to joy that included the body, mind and spirit. If you’d like more information on health and well-being, check out his site at www.drweil.com, as he has a wealth of lifegiving insights. 

Here’s to your health and happiness,
Dee and Sean