So what is the secret to achieving the single most important thing in the world? Is it a holy grail is or is really quite simple?

We are actually hardwired as humans to be happy, and with a bit of work and realisation of why we do the things we do, we can all achieve a more peaceful and fulfilled 2017 and beyond…Here are a few insights that we can all take on board.

Mind wandering - That pesky chimp brain of ours often pulls away from our present situation and takes a saunter in a different direction. There has been significant correlational research gathered to show that people are substantially less happy when their mind wanders, even if the task at hand is not particularly pleasant or interesting. Why is this? When our mind wanders, we often think of unpleasant and stressful things. It is thought that as much as up to 47% of our time is spent with our mind wandering! It is proven to be a consistent cause of unhappiness. We can remedy this by noticing and redirecting our focus back to the task in hand. Be present in the moment. After all, the present moment is all we have, the future is undetermined and the past is behind us.

Gratitude – In Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, she refers to gratitude as “a kind of meta-strategy for achieving happiness. In positive psychology research, there is a direct correlation between being grateful and leading a more positive and happy life. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships. Just take a moment to simply stop, look and appreciate. Be grateful for every given moment. Life is offering up so many opportunities.

Slowing down – We are now obsessed with ‘busy-ness’, in fact if you’re not busy, there is something wrong with you! You’re seen as unproductive or lazy, rather than efficient or mindful. Rushing through life and being constantly ‘busy’ often has a negative impact on our relationships and our health leading to unhappy and unfulfilled situations. We need to break the taboo surrounding taking things slower and put the brakes on.

‘Less is more’ – Get rid of ‘stuff’! There is a whole movement now around ‘minimalism’. Not only does accruing more ‘stuff’ in your life add to debt and your environmental footprint, your happiness actually flatlines and you are less grateful for the things you have. Edit your life and give yourself more freedom and time

Impact Bias and re-framing - How we see experiences as worse than they actually are - The pre frontal cortex of our brain, amongst other things, simulates experience. We have the ability to experience in our head before we even actually do it in real life, hence our ability to progress and innovate successfully. We also often over-egg how bad an experience was or will be. We actually don’t realise how resilient we are at recovering from trauma or bad experiences. This is part of our evolutionary DNA. The processes that our brain goes through in order for us to recover from bad experiences are invisible to us and as Dan Gilbert , a Psychologist from Harvard University points out, it is important we don’t know about this process. If we were aware of it, it may be we would not take the precautions against bad things happening to us if we knew that essentially,  everything would return to a normal baseline...

These are just a few steps and explanations of how we choose to deal with our thoughts and how we can achieve happiness through making a continuous effort to stop, take a look at ourselves, check how we are feeling and be kind to ourselves. Here’s to a happy, fulfilled 2017 and beyond.