Health is such a strange thing. When you are not in good health, you are sure that all you need to be happy is to be restored to normal. When you are normal, though, it seems irrelevant to your happiness.
Low levels of serotonin and the consequent depression is like that. When you are depressed, to not be depressed is sufficient happiness. When your mood stabilizes, though, it's just business as usual, no great cause for joy.
Endorphins, or the pleasure chemical, would seem different at first sight. The name itself - derived as it is from 'endogenous morphine' or, in other words, morphine-like chemicals naturally produced by the body - seems to indicate that it would give you joyous highs. Though, in fact, the morphine-like behavior of endorphins is as a pain-killer which is how morphine was seen originally. But, yes, endorphins give you a high much like morphine does.
Unfortunately, like with Serotonin, there are people whose bodies produce lesser endorphins than others causing them to be less likely to be happy than others. As with Serotonin, other than medication to boost endorphins, they CAN do things which IMPROVE their happiness.
Endorphins seem primarily kicked off by pain. Naturally, since they seem to be Nature's painkillers. So, exercise is one of the ways to get an endorphin rush. Fast walking, running, jogging, squats, yoga, yada yada, yes, but for more than 30 minutes which is when the body feels stretched enough to feel the need to release endorphins.
Burn your mouth with spicy foods, or endure the bitterness of dark chocolate and you get an endorphin rush. If you are lucky enough to actually LIKE them, does not matter. The body still thinks you ought to be in pain and produces endorphins. (Ahem! Apparently, they have flavonols or some such which help endorphin production. Chemistry again rears its ugly head, as it does quite often with Nityananda!) Wine helps, too, apparently, but you really do not need to get falling down drunk for endorphins to kick in.
Apparently, watching drama - if you like them that is - also helps endorphin release. I do not know whether it is because watching other people in pain sets off a sympathetic response or because watching them is SO painful that the body releases its painkillers. This, perhaps, explains the addictive nature of those painful 'mega-serials'.
Strangely enough, there are some not so painful options to get an endorphin rush. Like meditation - though I suppose, for most people, sitting still and not being judgmental, even of their own thoughts, IS probably the most painful thing to do. Acupuncture, Acupressure and massage could also be seen as having their own component of pain, explaining why they set off endorphin release.
But...laughter? And NOT laughter AT you but YOU laughing. THAT sets off endorphin release too, so perhaps it is time to dust off those comedies and, even, Tom and Jerry! A long, hot bath, smells of lavender...
What role does success have in all this? Unless, of course, you are intending to become a topnotch athlete or a wine-taster or some such?
Time! If you let a pursuit of your goals to fill up all your available time so that you have no time for exercise or meditation or long hot baths; if your mind cannot set aside that pursuit and sink into that comedy or, even, that mega-serial; if you are in the 'gulp down a power-lunch and on to the next PPT' mode always...
If you have no time to smell the roses...
You will spend a lifetime chasing success by depriving yourself of your daily dose of small pleasures.
A happy life is not a destination where you arrive at with great and concerted effort. It is an accumulation of happy moments across your whole life. A pursuit of happiness is a pursuit to maximize those happy moments in your life.
What would be the meaning of a success which reduces the sum total of possible happy moments?
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