simple pleasures Archives - The Health Sessions

21 Mini Adventures to Spice Up Everyday Life (Even If You’re Chronically Ill)

Are you hungry for adventure or longing for that rush of excitement that a first-time experience brings you?

Life with chronic illness, injury or disability can be pretty dull – with mostly unpleasant surprises instead of exciting ones. Unfortunately, backpacking through Europe, rock climbing or partying at festivals are probably not in the cards for you right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bring a sense of novelty and excitement to your day-to-day life.

When you break out of your usual routine, your brain releases the happiness hormone dopamine to store information in your memory and create new neural connections.

So if you have some energy to spare, boost your happiness by shaking things up with ‘mini adventures’.

4 Easy Ways to Pamper Yourself at Home

This article is written by Sarah Smith.

Summertime is upon us, and that means a lot of people will be spending time outdoors. However, if you are an individual with health problems, you may not be able to spend as much time outdoors as others. Therefore, you need to come up with ways to pamper yourself at home in order to keep yourself occupied during your free time.

Since many people exert a lot of time and energy into their work, coming up with leisure activities at home to occupy your time that doesn’t include rest may be challenging. If you are one of those people who can not spend much time outdoors, and are struggling to figure out what to do in your spare time at home, you have stumbled upon the right post. In this article, we will be discussing four ways to pamper yourself at home!

12 Uplifting Quotes about True Happiness

We all want to be happy. And understandably so. Happiness doesn’t just feel good, it also protects your physical and mental health and lengthens your life.

But our modern-day fixation on happiness has some downsides. When you expect to wake up with a smile every day, it can be hard to deal with the sadness and anxiety you’ll inevitably feel. Accepting negative emotions as a normal part of life may actually protect you from developing depressive symptoms. What’s more, because there’s so much focus on what you yourself can do to feel happier, our positivity culture puts a lot of responsibility on a person’s shoulders. If you aren’t jumping for joy, you must be doing something wrong.

One of the reasons why we struggle with the pursuit of happiness, is the way we define being happy.

What does ‘happiness’ mean to you?

Happiness can mean a lot of different things to different people. In the English language and positive psychology field, ‘happiness’ can refer to:

fleeting emotions of joy, excitement and pleasure;
a collection of multiple positive emotions over time;
a global assessment of your life satisfaction.

You’ve probably read plenty of headlines about “20 ways to feel happier instantly” in the past few years. And although it’s important to learn how you can cultivate more positive emotions like hope, joy and awe, we pay a lot of attention to our day-to-day fluctuations in happiness. But being cheerful all the time under tough circumstances like chronic illness, financial problems and relationship troubles is hard – and arguably not that healthy.

What if we’d focus more on happiness as an overall, long-term sense of contentment? Instead of being triggered by outside events or momentary thoughts, true happiness would be more about how satisfied you are with your life most of the time. Not that you should be happy-go-lucky every day, but that you experience an enduring appreciation of your family and friends, career or life-as-a-whole.

To ponder what true happiness means to you, take a look at these 12 uplifting happiness quotes.

45 Ways to Cheer Yourself Up When You’re Down

Life gets all of us down sometimes. And that’s perfectly normal – you shouldn’t push your sadness, anxiety or loneliness away. But it isn’t helpful to get stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts, feelings and behavior either.

Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to instantly boost your mood. You might be tempted to drown your sorrows by eating junk food, having one more glass of wine or obsessively checking your phone. Those actions might brighten your mood for a moment, but they’ll only make you feel even worse afterwards.

To really get out of your funk, take a look at these 45 ways to cheer yourself up when you’re down (that don’t involve ice cream).

Art Therapy: 44 Creative Ideas to Support Your Health and Happiness

We’ve all experienced how singing along to your favorite tunes or trusting your thoughts to your diary can make you feel better. But did you know that regularly engaging in creative activities actually boosts your happiness and health?

Art therapy is a kind of therapy that uses creative self-expression in the form of painting, drawing or sculpting to support the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems. Other creative activities like music, dancing and writing are also praised for their health benefits.

Studies show that art therapy not only provides distraction, but also relieves stress and improves your mental health. Because visual art transcends language, it helps people express emotions that are hard to put into words. Even celebrated artists like Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh probably turned to painting as an emotional outlet, to help them cope with disability and mental illness. What’s more, being creative can evoke positive emotions like joy, awe and inspiration – all of which help build your resilience.

Art in all its forms can even promote your physical health. Recent research reveal that art therapy reduces pain when offered during acute hospitalizations. Listening to your favorite music also results into requiring less pain medication after surgery and boosts your brain health. Finally, dance training turns out to be a helpful tool in rehabilitation settings, to improve the balance and gait of patients with reduced mobility.

Pretty impressive, right? So how can you apply art therapy in your own life to boost your health and happiness?

First of all, you should know that art therapy has less to do with being ‘artistic’ than you might think. It’s about expressing yourself in a creative way, for your own pleasure and self-development. You don’t need special skills or difficult techniques. So silence your inner critic and perfectionist tendencies and take a look at these 44 creative ideas to get started.