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Be 40 Percent Happier

Lisa

At some point, we’ve all probably wrestled with questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives. Are we making the most of our time and talents? Do we feel fulfilled on a day to day basis? Could we be happier if (this) or (that)?

As I undertook a little journey to learn more about purpose and contentment, I came across the teachings of several people whose work can transform how we think about happiness and well being.  

First up is Tim Tamashiro. If you search for information about finding meaning or purpose in life, I wouldn’t be surprised if your search results include something about Ikigai.

Ikigai (pronounced “EE-kee-guy”) is a Japanese concept that translates to “life’s worth.” It’s your reason for being. Who doesn’t want to know what their life’s purpose is? But that’s a really big question. To home in on your Ikigai, consider where these four smaller questions intersect:

  • What are you good at?
  • What do you love to do?
  • What does the world need?
  • What can you feel rewarded for?
Image source

Clarity and action on some or all of those questions will bring you ever closer to your Ikigai.

The first few books I read about Ikigai were a little abstract, but then I read Tim Tamashiro’s book, How to Ikigai. Tamashiro’s personable writing and actionable advice made Ikigai discovery feel within reach. 

At one point, he referenced an online course available through Coursera.org. It’s called “The Science of Well-Being” and is taught by Dr. Laurie Santos. You can audit the course free of charge. It is the online version of a class Santos teaches at Yale, one of the university’s all-time most popular courses. Santos leads us through the many reasons why the things we think will make us happy (such as good grades, the perfect job, and “awesome stuff”) actually do not. Then she lays out proven and practical ways that we can enhance our well-being.

Throughout the highly engaging series of lectures, I noticed that Santos cited a number of studies from Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. 

So my next step was to read Lyubomirsky’s book The Myths of Happiness. There is considerable overlap between the concepts in this book and the course by Laurie Santos, but basically Lyubomirsky goes further into the science of why all those things that we think will make us happy (perfect spouse, perfect job, more money) actually don’t. Thankfully, she also explains how to outsmart the myths to discover greater happiness. 

I really enjoyed learning more about The Myths, but it was another book by Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness, that really has stuck with me. The major premise of the book is summarized by this simple pie chart that breaks down the components that contribute to one’s happiness in life:

Ten percent of our happiness in life is based on our life circumstances. Are we rich or poor? Single or coupled? Canadian or Cambodian? These things matter, but not as much as we imagine.

50 percent of our happiness comes from our genetic set point. Some people are naturally more optimistic and positive than others. Thanks! 🙂 or Thanks :/  mom and dad. 

However, we control a startling 40 PERCENT of our overall happiness with our intentional activities. With our actions, we hold the keys to becoming 40 percent happier. 

That’s pretty empowering!

In the book, Lyubomirsky outlines 12 different activities people can do (though she does not recommend that you try to implement ALL of them). Rather, there is a quiz to ascertain your person-activity matches—those things that are most suited to what you need but also what you are most likely to follow through with and enjoy. If you hate doing something, it is not likely to become an ongoing or enjoyable habit for you. 

The thing I appreciated most about each of these authors and scholars is that they offered practical advice. Tangible, actionable steps I could implement to increase my happiness quotient. I didn’t necessarily believe at first that happiness was something that could be rigorously studied and quantified, but people ARE studying and quantifying happiness. And their work has the potential to help a lot of people. 

It’s certainly helped me!

Eat

The Secret to Dry January: Non-Alcoholic Beer

Lisa

Although it’s been around since 2013, somehow I had not heard of “Dry January” until this year. 

“Sober October” I was familiar with, when people abstain from alcohol for the month to give their livers a rest and reset their overall relationship with booze.

After all the excesses of the holiday season, I can see why Dry January is a thing and appeals to people who either a) want to get their healthy routines back on track or b) want to start some healthier habits. 

I had intended to take part in Sober October, but . . . my motivation just wasn’t there. So I did a Dry January! My husband joined me. We’re not planning to swear off alcohol forever, and PLEASE do not use the phrase “sober-curious” (just . . . ick). We were simply enjoying a healthy challenge. 

One of the ways we kept things interesting was by sampling the world of non-alcoholic (NA) beers. It’s quite a growing industry, with more and more people experimenting with these brews. It was a lot of fun to explore NA brews and learn more about how they are made.

So . . . How Is NA Beer Made?

Something to note, there is a distinction between NA (non-alcoholic) and AF (alcohol-free) beer. NA beer, by law, can have up to 0.5% ABV (alcohol by volume). AF beer has 0.0%. Just something to be aware of, since some people use the terms interchangeably.

All beer is born from the same four ingredients—water, grain, hops, and yeast. From that blueprint, brewers can take beers in seemingly infinite taste directions. But how do they make it non-alcoholic? In a nutshell, they can either:

  1. Brew regular beer and then remove the alcohol
  2. Brew beer that doesn’t create much alcohol to begin with

Method #1
To remove alcohol from fully-leaded beer, brewers can:

  • Distill It: Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so if beer is heated to the correct temperature, the alcohol will boil off but leave the rest of the beverage behind. Brewers can also use vacuum pressure rather than heat to force the alcohol to evaporate.
  • Filter It: There are a few ways to filter out the alcohol. With reverse osmosis, pressure is used to filter full-strength beer through a semipermeable membrane. The smaller water and alcohol molecules slip through the membrane, but the beery-tasting goodness remains behind. The brewer can then add water and carbonation to the concentrate before bottling it up. Brewers can also force nitrogen gas through beer to filter out the alcohol. 
  • Dilute It: With this method, brewers craft their full-strength beer as usual, then water it down to achieve a lower ABV. Maybe home brewers do this? I have not been able to find any commercial brewers that claim to use this method, so I haven’t sampled any diluted beers.

Method #2
Alternatively, brewers can craft NA beer right out of the gate in a couple of ways.

  • Controlled fermentation (aka “microfermentation”): When yeast gobble up the sugars from grains during the fermentation process of beer making, one byproduct is alcohol. By using grains with less sugar (like rice or corn instead of barley or wheat) or by using special strains of yeast, brewers can “control” how much fermentation occurs, therefore controlling the amount of alcohol produced (and making sure it stays below the 0.5% ABV threshold). Brewers can control the amount of fermentation by playing with other variables too, like temperature, pressure, and acidity. 
  • Simulated fermentation: With this technique, brewers don’t actually ferment the beer at all (because, remember, fermentation creates alcohol). They add special ingredients and enzymes to the base ingredients to replicate a fizzy, hoppy beverage. I was curious to sample a beer made using this method, but I couldn’t seem to find any. Then I came across an explanation on taprm.com that made me laugh out loud and also probably explains my dilemma:

“There’s also a process referred to as ‘simulated fermentation,’ which basically means a brewer uses a blend of ingredients that simulate the flavor a beer has after fermentation. This isn’t a popular method of creating non-alcoholic beer, because quite frankly, they usually taste like garbage.” 

The Tasting Room

On the last Saturday of Dry January, I put together a collection of NA beers to conduct a tasting with a small group of friends. The lineup included beers made from different methods of removing alcohol (as nearly as I could tell from my research). We had a mix of lager-ish beers and IPA-ish beers.

The Lager-ish Lineup:


Athletic Upside Dawn Golden (controlled fermentation)
Clausthaler (controlled fermentation)
O’Doul’s Golden (distillation)

The IPA-ish Lineup:


Athletic Free Wave Hazy IPA (controlled fermentation)
BrewDog Nanny State (controlled fermentation)
Untitled Art Hazy IPA (filtration)

The Results:

People were pleasantly surprised that all of the beers actually tasted like beer. If they hadn’t known that the beers were non-alcoholic, they would not necessarily have guessed them to be. Also in the pro column: The beers are lower in calories than regular brews, won’t interfere with your sleep, and can’t be blamed for next-day headaches. But that being said . . . it IS near-beer. Everything was pretty good, but nothing was truly great. Overall taste-wise, we concluded that the beers had a little less flavor, a little less carbonation, and a little more bitterness than we would want from a really good brew. But you know what? We had so much fun sampling the different beers! Goes to show that the most important ingredient for a good time is the company, not the alcohol. 

So maybe you’ll consider indulging your “sober-curiosity” next Dry January. I’m glad I did. I discovered not only that non-alcoholic beer is better than nothing . . . it’s not half bad!

References:

From NA Beer Club

From Renegade Brewing

From TapRm

From Unknown Brewing

Explore

Let There Be Light Therapy

Lisa

I love sunshine, yet the summer solstice in June is always kind of a bittersweet day for me. The solstice marks the longest day of sunlight hours in the northern hemisphere, and people all over the world celebrate this beautiful event. But after that day, even if I don’t notice it right away, I know that the daylight hours are shrinking. The long, dark days of winter are creeping closer.

During the summer solstice, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun. More sunlight! (Image source)

When I was younger, the daylight/darkness ratio didn’t seem to bother me very much. I don’t remember thinking anything of it as a kid, or even as a young adult. It could be kind of inconvenient when it got dark outside at 5:00 PM, but it didn’t seem to affect my mood.

But for the past several years, as a 40-something adult, I have begun to struggle. I was familiar with the concept of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), what I’d always thought of as the “winter blues,” but for some reason it feels like there’s been a shift from concept to reality for me. This year more than any other, I felt the late afternoon darkness pressing down on me like a weight. I felt tired, grouchy, and rather disproportionately blue. 

It’s not known for certain what causes the symptoms of SAD, but the most likely culprit seems to be the interplay between sunlight and your circadian rhythm, serotonin levels, and melatonin levels. Reduced sunlight during the winter months can throw off your circadian rhythm (internal 24-hour clock), lower serotonin levels (a hormone which impacts mood, emotions, and appetite), and disrupt melatonin levels (a key hormone in regulating sleep patterns and mood). 

What should I do? I tried to channel my hygge. I thought, Goddammit. The Scandinavians put up with way more cold and dark than this. Suck it up. Light a candle and get cozy already. 

I lit four candles. 

But I still felt glum. 

When I told my sister-in-law about how I was struggling, she said, “You know, you can borrow a light therapy lamp from the library. I wonder if that might help?”

We have the most illuminating conversations.

What Is Light Therapy?

Light therapy, or phototherapy, has been shown to be a very effective treatment for seasonal depression. Many people notice the benefits in as little as two to four days. Light therapy boxes work by mimicking the powerful light we absorb from the sun during other times of year, delivering messages to our brains to help regulate certain hormones.

People use light therapy for more than just SAD. Different wavelengths of light can be used to treat things like acne, jaundice, and joint pain; UV light therapy can benefit conditions like eczema and psoriasis. The light lamps that are used for SAD filter out UV light and are not the same as other phototherapy treatments, so keep that in mind if you decide to try one. 

Why Does Light Therapy Work?

Hormones are a fascinating topic all on their own, and wow are they powerful. Hormones are chemical messengers that regulate pretty much every bodily system and function, from sleep to mood to digestion to reproduction. Light therapy sends signals to help regulate in particular the hormones melatonin and serotonin.

  • We produce melatonin during our hours of darkness each night (which is why your bedroom should be dark dark dark), and stop upon exposure to bright light in the morning. Cutting off melatonin production in the morning is important for getting it to resume at a reasonable time in the evening, heading off insomnia and promoting better sleep. 
  • Conversely, sunlight stimulates the brain’s production of serotonin, which plays a huge role in regulating mood, as well as digestion and appetite. 

It makes sense that disruption of these hormones would have a dramatic ripple effect.

Time to Get Lit

Since I do not have any of the conditions that would exclude me (bipolar disorder, macular degeneration, lupus, diabetes, etc.) from using a light therapy box, I stopped by the library and checked one out for two weeks. 

The instructions that came with the TaoTronics Light Therapy Lamp were pretty skimpy, so I did some reading about how to use the light most effectively. The recommendations:

  • Get a lamp that produces 10,000 lux of UV-free light
  • Use the lamp within the first hour of waking up
  • Place the lamp about 16-24 inches from your face
  • Bask in the light for about 20-30 minutes per day

(Lux is a unit of illumination. With lighting, you often see the terms “lumens” and “lux” to quantify the intensity of the light. Lumens is a fixed measurement of how much total light a source emits, in all directions. Lux measures how much light from that source falls on a given surface, so lux is higher if you are closer to the source or the center of its beam, and lower if you move farther away from the light source.)

Lux chart; Lumens vs. lux

You don’t want to look directly at the light, but you do want to make sure your eyes are open so that the light gets in there. There are special receptors in your retinas that communicate with the brain about melatonin and serotonin production. The light should be positioned at or a little above eye level, to mimic the angle of the sun toward your face. It seems that some people who report little benefit from the light simply might not have it at the most effective height and/or distance.

The Big Question: Did It Work?

I used the therapy light every morning for two weeks. Thirty minutes while I had my breakfast and coffee worked out to be perfect timing. 

  • I felt like it helped me “wake up” in the morning and feel more alert. On days when my alarm jolts me from sleep rather than waking up on my own, I usually find it very hard to shake off the slumber. On those mornings, the light really helped.
  • I slept soundly at night. Since I get up so early for school, I am usually tired pretty early at night as well, and that didn’t change. But I noticed that I woke up less frequently throughout the night and seemed to sleep more deeply.
  • I noticed a subtle boost in my mood. I felt more cheerful and patient. I still got tired and cranky sometimes (who doesn’t?), but overall I felt pretty good.

Since I didn’t check out the light box from the library until early January, my only regret is that I hadn’t “seen the light” and started using one earlier in the season. Next year I will.

So the big takeaway: If you can’t spend your winter in the sunny tropics, a good option might be to bring the sun to you, with a light therapy box. 

References and Further Reading

“Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health”

“Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)”

“Seasonal Affective Disorder Treatment: Choosing a Light Box”

“Sunlight, Serotonin, and Your Sleep Cycle”

“Will a SAD Sun Lamp Actually Make You Happy?”