Bring micro-moments of joy into your life

As singer Ronan Keating says 'Life is a rollercoaster', and everyone has their struggles. But as a cognitive scientist and psychology professor at Yale University, Laurie Santos points out that you can always make a conscious choice to bring more joy into your life. Doing so can have significant health benefits for both body and mind...

As a child, looking for joy is something we do effortlessly, and we can find it anywhere - in a puddle, a rainbow or a song, but as grown-ups, we tend to lose that spark. The hustle and bustle of everyday life can often mean that we forget to seek out moments of joy. We often feel tired, and the more tired we are, the less of a priority ‘having fun’ becomes.

Santos explains: ‘When we add more moments of fun into our lives, we become more productive because fun by definition makes you feel alive. It adds to your energy.’ Having fun not only helps with stress and psychological problems, but it could also, according to Santos, prevent dementia - so having fun can be seriously good for us!

Micro-moments of joy

What is ‘fun’ or ‘joy’? It indeed isn’t being a couch potato or scrolling endlessly on social media. It is more active than that. Strive for simple everyday pleasures like singing along to your favourite song, dancing, or revisiting an old hobby. What made you happy as a child or as a teenager? That will give you a clue as to what direction to go in.

The biggest enemy of our micro pleasures? Santos says our inner judging can make us stop ourselves from trying new things. As grown-ups, we tend to think in all-or-nothing ways, but it’s simply about integrating some things that give you that extra special feeling. Santos points out: ‘Giving priority to fun doesn’t mean quitting your job or needing to have fun all of the time.

Simply adding more micro-joy to your day, like listening to some music or joking around with colleagues, makes every day just that little more enjoyable.’ Try factoring in these little micro-moments of joy into your week:

• surprise and delight the person in the queue behind you by paying for their coffee

• do some cloud-spotting on your walk to the office - the sky is beautiful in all weather

• text your partner or friend to tell them that you love and appreciate them

• do a stretch and five jumping jacks right now

• smile at the people who walk past you on your jog or walk around the park

Good for you

Tip: Research has shown that loneliness can be just as harmful to the body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, so try to spend your micro-moments of joy with someone else if you can (and if you want to).