Habits of a Happy Brain Book Summary - Habits of a Happy Brain Book explained in key points

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Habits of a Happy Brain summary

Name: Habits of a Happy Brain
Rating: 4.4 (94 reviews)
Author: Loretta Graziano Breuning

Loretta Graziano Breuning

Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin & Endorphin Levels

4.4 (94 ratings)

18 mins

Topics

Routines & Habits The Brain Neuroscience Happiness

Table of Contents

Habits of a Happy Brain
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn which chemicals make you happy and what you can do to optimize them.

Peruse the shelves of any book shop and you will find a multitude of titles telling you how to be happy. It’s no surprise that so many writers have tried to tackle this: we all want to be happier.

But what is happiness and where does it come from? These blinks show you how joyfulness (and its evil sibling unhappiness) are products of our brain – more specifically the chemicals of the brain. They explain how these chemicals work and crucially how you can stimulate the right ones for yourself.

In these blinks you will learn

why dominating others makes us feel happy; and
why true happiness is only ever 45 days away.

We feel happy every time we see something that is good for our survival.

Everybody wants to be happy. In fact, if we had our way, most of us would always be happy. But what does “being happy” actually mean? And what does happiness look like inside our brain?

Several structures in our brain, collectively called the limbic system, manage all of the chemicals responsible for our happiness. These happy chemicals are brain chemicals – dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin and serotonin – that are released each time we see something that is good for our survival.

Whenever we sense something, the limbic makes a quick assessment to “decide” whether or not something is worth a spurt of happy chemicals.

The limbic system developed a very long time ago in our evolutionary history, and works today as it did in the past: things that increase the possibility of survival trigger happy chemicals, and things that decrease our chances of survival trigger unhappy chemicals.

Though we inherited the limbic system from our ancestors, our brain doesn’t automatically know when to release happy chemicals. Rather, it’s our experiences and the neural pathways they form which determine what makes us happy and what doesn’t.

Neural pathways are mainly formed when we are young: Each time we experienced something nice as a child, a neurochemical connection was built or strengthened.

When you were hungry as a child, for example, that experience probably made you feel bad. If your mom gave you a cookie to ease your hunger, however, you probably felt better. If this happens a few times a connection between your neurons is formed. That’s why you now reach out for a cookie whenever you feel bad: your brain formed a connection between eating cookies and a happy feeling.

Dopamine and endorphin reward us for seeking our desires and let us combat physical pain.

Our limbic system’s “decisions” can be quite confusing sometimes. It’s often unclear why one thing can make us happy when others don’t. Understanding the limbic system requires you to first understand how your various happy chemicals work.

The happy chemical dopamine is released whenever you expect a reward, and it’s what motivates you to keep seeking it.

Oxytocin lets us enjoy our social lives, while serotonin rewards us for dominating others.

If you had to pick three things that make you happy, one of them would probably involve your friends, family or colleagues. But why is that? Here, too, you can thank your happy chemicals.

The chemical oxytocin rewards you for building social alliances. The good feeling you get because you trust another person is because of the oxytocin that has been released in your brain. In fact, every experience of social belonging triggers oxytocin, because belonging to a social group is good for our survival.

Despite the great feeling that happy chemicals bring, unhappy chemicals are equally important.

Our unhappy chemicals are incredibly important to our survival. We might not enjoy bad feelings, but the feelings themselves – along with the chemicals that promote them – are as important as the positive emotions.

Cortisol is one such chemical. While happy chemicals help us to pursue things that promote our survival, the unhappy chemical cortisol grabs our attention whenever our survival is threatened.

The happiness strategies our brain develops through past experience will eventually disappoint us.

You could probably make a long list of things that make you feel good. But do these things actually make you happy?

Our experience has taught us what makes us happy, but unfortunately even those things will eventually disappoint us.

Neural circuits form because our experiences make physical changes in our brain.

Obviously, we don’t want to become trapped in vicious cycles. It’s important to understand how these patterns develop and understand why it’s so much more difficult to change them in our adult lives.

Experiences are critical in the formation of your neural circuitry. One way they alter your brain is through myelination.

We can rewire our brains in order to enjoy things that are good for us.

The knowledge that changing the way you approach happiness will mean changing your neuro-circuitry might make the whole process seem quite daunting. However, all you need is a little patience, and you’ll soon have much more control over your happiness.

In fact, it takes only 45 days to construct a new neural pathway to happiness. When it comes to changing your habits, persistence is the most important thing: If you manage to keep up your new habit for 45 days straight, then you will have internalized it and it will feel natural.

By constantly making decisions, we are responsible for our own happy chemicals.

As useful as our complex neural structure is for our survival, it can also be a burden. Being on the constant lookout for potential threats and problems comes at the cost of ignoring the good things in life. However, we have the choice to change that!

To live means to constantly choose whether it’s worth giving something up to gain something else. Your brain is always looking for opportunities to improve survival, but these opportunities always come with risks that might not bring the desired outcome. But there’s no way to avoid having to make these decisions, so you might as well get used to the risk.

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What is Habits of a Happy Brain about?

Habits of a Happy Brain (2012) provides a detailed introduction to the four chemicals responsible for our happiness: dopamine, serotonin, endorphin and oxytocin. The book explores the mechanics of what makes us happy and why, as well as why some bad things make us feel so good.

Best quote from Habits of a Happy Brain

Fact: The painkiller morphine essentially imitates the release of endorphins in the brain.

—Loretta Graziano Breuning

Who should read Habits of a Happy Brain?

Anyone interested in turning their bad habits into productive ones
Anyone who wants to become a happier person
Anyone who is interested in psychology and neurology

About the Author

Loretta Graziano Breuning is the founder of the Inner Mammal Institute as well as a docent at the Oakland Zoo, where she lectures on the social behavior of mammals and gives tours. She has written several other books, including Beyond Cynical: Transcend Your Mammalian Negativity.

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Psychology Science Mindfulness & Happiness

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