Understanding the Neuroscience of Happiness is the first step to leveraging your own and others’ happiness. How does the ancient threat-reward response of the brain and it’s seductive neuro-chemical merry-making, entice us into believing some things make us happy, when they are in fact, saboteurs to long-term well-being? Learn how to use brain plasticity as a means of achieving emotional, psychological and physiological bliss.

1. THE NEUROSCIENCE OF
HAPPINESS
COLLEEN LIGHTBODY MPhil; PGCNL; PCC

3. Scientific Revolution Nature-Nurture
1. 50% GENETIC
2. 8 % CIRCUMSTANCES
3. 42% INTERPRETATION

5. Bad is stronger than Good
FEAR ANGER
SADNESS JOY

6. Thinking

7. NEUROTRANSMITTER
1. ENDOCANNABINOIDS
2. DOPAMINE
3. SERATONIN
4. NOREPINEPHRINE/ADRENALIN
5. OXYTOCIN
6. ENDORPHIN
7. ECETYLCHOLINE
8. GABA
FAKING IT…..
• CANNABIS
• COCAINE/METAMPHETAMINE
• SUGAR/CANNABIS/ECSTACY/TOB
ACCO/PROZAC
• COCAINE/SPEED/CAFFEINE
• HUG YOUR DOG
• HEROIN/CANNABIS/ALCOHOL/SU
GAR/TOBACCO/CHOCOLATE
• VIAGRA
• VALIUM/ALCOHOL/CANNABIS

8. BALANCE

9. HAPPINESS
HEDONIC
 The Pleasant Life
 Sensory - momentary
 Seductive
EUDAEMONIC
 The Good Life
 Mental - sustained
 Effort

10. STRATEGIES
 COGNITIVE
 PHYSICAL
 SOCIAL
 SPIRITUAL
 MINDFULNESS/APPRAI
SAL/POSITIVE
THINKING
 FOOD/EXERCISE
 CONNECTION/SERVICE
 MEANING AND
PURPOSE/GRATITUDE

11. “Happiness is neither
virtue nor pleasure; nor
this thing nor that, but
simply growth. We are
happy when we are
growing”
W.B. Yeats

13. M

14. “We Don’t laugh because we are happy, we are happy
because we laugh”
William James 1870

15. WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR E-TOLL INVOICE

16. BE HAPPY