How Can I Make More Oxytocin: The Happiness Hormone

Happiness is up to you!

Today I want to share a practical way to boost your happiness hormone, oxytocin.

What we know is that happiness is up to you. Now, a caveat, of course! There are injustices, and we should speak up, and there are things that we cannot control, and we should feel all those things. But that should not preclude our happiness — in whatever moments of time we can get.

Human connection is a basic way to quickly and effectively boost happiness. On the flip side, for most people, scrolling through social media will not boost their happiness.

SAY WHAT?

Image Credit: AndreyPopov from Canva

Don’t get me wrong. Social media is my virtual coffee shop; I love it. I am a connection junkie, but the science is clear that social media is not a substitute for human connection. Those likes, comments, and seeing what your friends are up to from a virtual distance are not going to boost your happiness. It’s like being on a diet but binging on ice cream when you are hungry. It’s not going to help your diet goals.

If you need a boost of the happiness hormone oxytocin, human connection is the way to go. If this is true even for me, who thinks social media is my virtual coffee shop, it’s probably true for you too. So how does it work?

When we are lonely, we are starving for OXYTOCIN,

We starve for eye contact and human touch; both boost oxytocin

If you can get with someone, do that. But if you can’t, a video conference or Facetime is really the next best thing.

The reason video conferencing works is that although I can not touch you, I can see you, and OXYTOCIN comes from seeing you, too — looking at your eyes.

P.S. That means being intentional and not multitasking on the video call.

So, go out and touch someone or catch up with a friend on a video call. Let me know over on social how it went. @everydayhappinesswithkatie

Until next time, life is heavy enough; searching for happiness shouldn’t be an extra burden. Get a dose of happiness delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe to happy mail, delivered twice a month.