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Hi, everyone. It's Rosie.
I'm so excited to introduce therapy by Headspace.
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full. Hello, Dr. Laurie Santos here, your guest host for the week.
Welcome to Radioheadspace and to Tuesday.
This week is all about how to find happiness.
Today, I'm going to talk about self -care when we think of self -care long baths and drinking tea can come to mind but research shows that leisurely activities often don't make us feel as good as trying things that challenge us so stay tuned as I share some tips on how to take on a self -care routine that's more engaging and beneficial in the long run even when we just feel like relaxing I think our minds really really mispredict the sorts of things that are going to give us pleasure.
And this includes when we're trying to relax.
I think that there's a distinction between relaxing activities and ones that we'll really enjoy, ones that will really find fun.
There's lots of evidence, for example, that the kinds of activities we enjoy the most are the ones that give us something that's known as flow.
Flow is this state where you're feeling in the zone, where you're kind of of feeling engaged but also challenged.
And we often get those, you know, from activities in which we're learning something, learning a new language or, you know, doing something that's a little bit tricky, you know, making sourdough bread or even like coding if you're a programmer, right?
These things aren't necessarily the huge definition of relaxation, but if you look at an engaged life, it often involves a little bit more flow -based activities than just kind of chilling out?
But I think it can be hard to remember that when you're really exhausted.
Sometimes when you're exhausted, what you need is rest. But if you're trying to do something that's fun, if you're trying to engage in an activity for leisure, often challenging yourself a little bit more is the kind of thing that will bring you the most joy.
So another thing you can do to engage in your own self -care is to think about ways that you you can care for others.
There's lots of evidence that we get more of a happiness boost for doing something for somebody else than we do for ourselves.
Often when we think of self -care, we think of, you know, buying ourselves a night's chai latte or getting a massage for ourselves, but there's evidence from researchers like Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues that if you just bought that nice chai latte for a friend or you gifted a massage to a co -worker, you'd actually get more of a happiness boost for that than you would for engaging in these practices yourself.
The one caveat to that, though, is that these kinds of other -oriented behaviors need to be voluntary.
You know, if you're engaging in a job where you feel like you're forced to help other people, if you're starting to feel burned out, if you're starting to get cynical about that work, then engaging in more, like, other -oriented care might not be the best strategy forward. You might need to take the rest you need not to feel burned out and to make sure that when you're doing other oriented activities, it's kind of coming from the heart.
You're doing it voluntarily.
When you're really tired, it can be tough to remember that engaging in more active leisure is the thing you need to do to feel happier.
But one of the strategies I like to use is just to think back to the science.
Some of you listening might have decided to eat a little bit less sugar because you know it might be healthier for you or track your sleep a different way and recognize that sleep matters right?
When we know scientifically that something is good for us it can make it easier to do and that's what I've done with leisure.
You know I've recognized that like even though I know my intuition is that if I just sit on the couch and plop down like that will feel better I recognize that the science shows that if I just get up and move my body I'll feel a little bit better.
Another tip is to just pay attention to how you feel after you you engage in more active leisure.
We're often pretty mindless.
So take I'm having a really bad day, you know, I run to the coffee shop and grab a cupcake.
I often don't mindfully notice how eating that cupcake makes me feel.
I'm often like checking my email or rushing through something.
But I could ask like, what does this feel like?
What does my body feel like afterwards?
And so on. I think when we start to use mindfulness in that way, when we start to pay attention to how how different activities feel, we can actively make choices that we know are going to make us feel better.
And I think that can cause us to pick leisure that's better overall for our happiness.
We're often going to pick things that are more active because moving our bodies feel better.
We're probably going to pick things that require more of a challenge because in practice, when you're doing something challenging, you feel less apathetic.
And so mindfulness can really help us choose more engaging self -care activities activities because it can help us notice what feels good and what doesn't feel so good.
That's all for today and if you like today's episode on self -care be sure to tune in tomorrow where I'll talk about how to avoid burnout even if it feels like you don't have time to take a break.
Thanks for listening and I'll see you back here soon.
