How To Feel Happy Again

Three science-backed techniques to get you back on track and have some fun along the way.

- Sarah Riley

You wouldn’t be reading this magazine if you weren’t. But what happens when life throws you a curveball and you find yourself on a downward spiral? Before you know it you’ll be asking yourself how you got there and what you can do to pull yourself back up to a place of happiness.

I had this exact experience at the age of 38. I had a major stroke while I was looking after my 2-year-old and 2-week-old girls, and then after I recovered I went back to a redundant executive position—a job I’d been doing for over a decade. At that time, life was a real struggle and I needed to discover how to feel happy again. I was down, but I certainly wasn’t out, and during that time I used the following three simple techniques to help pick me up so I could deal with everyday life.

Cleanse Your Space

From the 1980s onwards we’ve been stuck in a cycle of measuring our success by the amount of money and/or material things we have. Back then, as it still is for some today, it was all about accumulating processions.

This is like sticking a tiny Band-Aid on a wound that needs attention. Eventually the patch just won’t be enough. This materialism is a temporary fix that delivers a dose of the neurotransmitter dopamine (our pleasure chemical), and it can lead to an addiction because the more we experience the temporary fix, the more we want it...and so the cycle begins. While this is going on our space is becoming cluttered and difficult to deal with. This, in turn, creates emotional turmoil.