It’s not the thing itself, it’s what it’s like 28 Apr 8:59 AM (4 days ago)
“Why does being kind to someone affect my heart, brain, and immune system?”
This was a question I was recently asked, with an emphasis on, “But why.” The style of the question reminded me of childhood, when we frustrate the adults in our lives by asking repeated ‘but why’s.
Like our responses to children, we could make endless iterations until we end up philosophising about the meaning of life. I could have answered that it’s because we have kind genes and are genetically wired not only to be kind (which I have covered in another blog), but to have a positive biological experience of it.
But I didn’t relish another ‘but why’ regarding why we have kind genes, and I figured he was looking for a more common sensical answer anyway. So I said it’s because of what the experience of being kind is like.
It’s easier to explain if I use the example of stress. We can all agree that stress produces stress hormones. But missing in that phrase are the words, “the experience of.” It’s the experience of stress that produces stress hormones, not the situation itself.
Let me explain.
Two people can face the same situation. One of them feels stressed about it while the other doesn’t. Some people get stressed when they’re running late, some people don’t. Some get stressed when challenged, others don’t. In each case, one has an experience of stress while the other doesn’t, even when the situation they’re facing is identical.
Thus, one of them produces stress hormones while the other doesn’t. Here, it’s not the situation that produced the stress hormones. It was the experience of stress within the situation that did it.
Experience is a personal thing. And we don’t all have the same experiences of the same things. One person might love the taste of bananas. To another they are repugnant. Same food, different experience.
So what has this to do with kindness?
We don’t all have the same experience of kindness.
It’s not doing something kind itself that brings about beneficial physiological effects, neither is it being kind itself that makes us happier. It’s what the experience is like.
Because not all kindness feels good nor makes us happier. In fact, there are times when we can give too much and then it becomes detrimental to health. In one piece of research into volunteering, people’s happiness was cross-referenced against how many hours they volunteered. Up to a certain point, volunteering resulted in more happiness, but over that ‘tipping point’ and it was associated with more stress. It became less about the kindness and more about the ‘job’.
Similarly, when kindness isn’t appreciated or reciprocated, sometimes it feels stressful.
But in general, when kindness is offered because in the moment it feels like the right thing to do, then the experience is positive, and it leads to the well-known effects on the heart, brain, and immune system. It’s in the experience, not the act itself, that lies the physiological effects.
And here, I’d also like to point out that, because it comes down to experiences, we’re led to a little-known fact – although one I’ve written and spoken about quite a bit.
The experiences of kindness and stress are opposites – physiologically.
For example:
-stress tends to cause tension in the nervous system while kindness tends to cause a relaxation effect.
-experiences of stress tend to increase blood pressure, while experiences of kindness tend to reduce it.
-stress dials up a key region of the brain that plays a significant role in stress, worry, fear, anxiety. Kindness, on the other hand, dials it down.
-stress dampens the immune system, kindness supports the immune system.
For info if you want to read a good summary of these facts, you might enjoy my book, The Joy of Actually Giving a F*ck. Chapter 4 is called, ‘The Opposite of Stress’.
We typically assume that the opposite of stress is peace or even calm. But these represent the absence of stress, not its opposite. The opposite of stress, physiologically speaking, is kindness.
Or to use the more exact terms, the opposite of an experience of stress, physiologically speaking, is an experience of kindness.
It’s what it’s like.
That’s more or less how I answered the question.
Everybody gets stressed. It’s part of being humans. But maybe the next time you feel stressed, try kindness. And note what the experience is like.
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Most heroes don’t wear capes 15 Apr 3:37 PM (17 days ago)
When we think of heroes, our minds often leap to grand gestures—leaping into burning buildings, scaling mountains, delivering dramatic speeches that shift the course of history.
We picture capes, medals, and front-page headlines. But the truth is, most real heroes are quietly woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. You pass them in the street. You might even be one yourself.
Heroism doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it whispers.
It’s the nurse who stays a few minutes past her shift to comfort a frightened patient.
It’s the teenager who sits with someone who usually eats lunch alone.
It’s the friend who checks in when you’ve gone quiet, even though their own heart is heavy.
It’s the neighbour who brings in the bins, picks up groceries, or simply notices when something’s not quite right.
These acts might not make the evening news, but they are the glue that holds our humanity together.
In a world that often celebrates noise, power, and performance, it can be easy to overlook the quiet courage it takes to be kind, to care, to show up. But those everyday moments—the ones that may seem small, even invisible—carry enormous weight. They lift others. They change lives. Sometimes, they even save them.
And here’s the thing: you don’t need to be extraordinary to make an extraordinary difference. You don’t need a title, a following, or a cape. All you need is to care enough to act.
In fact, some of the most heroic things you can do are often the simplest:
– Speak up when it’s easier to stay silent.
– Offer compassion when someone feels alone.
– Keep going when no one sees how hard it is.
There’s a quiet kind of bravery in all of this—a steady, grounded strength that doesn’t ask for applause.
So the next time you wonder whether what you do really matters, remember this: heroism isn’t always about scale. It’s about heart. And often, it’s the smallest acts, done with love and consistency, that ripple the furthest.
Most heroes don’t wear capes.
They sometimes wear tired smiles, and they carry full hearts and move through the world leaving it better than they found it.
Maybe that’s you. And maybe that’s more than enough.
Sources: This blog is based on Chapter 5 of my book, ‘The Joy of Actually Giving a F*ck: How kindness can cure stress and make you happy’. The book chapter shares the same title as this blog and also discusses some science around the physiological effects of heroism.
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What if it works? A life lesson from the tennis court 11 Apr 10:00 AM (21 days ago)
I was reminded of an important life lesson recently.
I played a two-set tennis match against a 19-year-old tennis coach. He’s a talented player – he strikes the ball sweetly, accurately, and with a lot of pace.
I lost the first set, six games to one. He outplayed me. But then he offered me some advice. He is a coach, after all.
He said it seemed that I was playing as if I was afraid to miss. I was holding back, not fully committing to my shots. Against a player like him, who doesn’t make many errors, playing that way makes it almost impossible to win points.
He told me, “Just go for it. If you miss, you miss – but at least you’re giving yourself a chance.” I realised he was right. If I don’t go for it, then I’ve lost already.
His advice changed everything. The next set was 50:50 all the way. In the end, he won it 7-5, but it was close. The difference in my play between the first and second set was dramatic.
I didn’t mind not winning – it was a huge learning experience. The difference between striving with determination and playing it safe out of fear.
As I walked home afterwards, I found myself reflecting on how much life is like this.
Do you ever hold back because you’re afraid of getting things wrong? Afraid of failing? Afraid of making a mistake – of “missing,” so to speak? I certainly have.
But when we do this, it keeps us rooted to the spot. And we end up doing little or nothing. In a sense, we fail without ever giving ourselves a chance.
But what if it works?
What if you win?
What if what you do hits the mark exactly.
Because unless we give it our all in life, we risk missing out on something wonderful – whether this is in love, work, play, or anything else.
Ask yourself if you’re holding back anywhere in your life because you’re more focused on what could go wrong.
Then ask yourself this instead:
‘What if it works?’
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Open Label Placebos: Why They Work Even When You Know They’re Fake 10 Apr 9:35 AM (22 days ago)
Open Label Placebos (OLP) are placebos that don’t pretend to be real drugs. They say ‘Placebo’ right there on the bottle.
Which makes it all the more surprising that… they still work.
According to the purpose of a placebo – to compare a drug against a control – they shouldn’t work. It kind of defeats the purpose, some would think, to write ‘Placebo’ on the label.
Yet they work. Really well. And incredibly, how well they work depends on whether you’ve been given some explanation about the placebo effect.
That’s exactly what a new study at the University of Basel in Switzerland found. Led by Antje Nascimento, the researchers randomised 150 women experiencing symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) into three groups: two were openly given placebos, while a third group served as a control.
Of those who took placebos, one group were given an explanation that placebos work, together with some explanation around how they seem to work.
Over the course of 3 menstrual cycles:
Women who took the placebos with an explanation saw a:
- 79.3% reduction in severity of their symptoms and
- 82.5% reduction in how the symptoms interfered with their daily life.
The control group reported:
- 33% and 45.7% reductions respectively.
A huge difference.
The placebo-only group (no explanation) experienced:
- around a 50% reduction in both measures.
How does it work?
OK. Let’s unpack some of what’s going on.
OLPs work via two main pathways and the study identified both of these.
First is through conditioning. We’ve all had experience of opening a bottle of pills or medicine, taking the pills with some water, and getting some relief of symptoms.
Every time we have this experience it strengthens an association between the process of taking the pills and the relief of symptoms. The more we take medicines in our life, the stronger that association becomes. It’s called ‘conditioning’.
Well, the psychological weight of that lifetime of experience – the strength of the association – is greater than the short-term awareness that it’s ‘just a placebo’.
It’s like a tug-of-war between long-held associations and conscious awareness – and the stronger pull tends to win.
The placebo works because you’re used to the process of getting symptom-relief when you take medicine.
This accounted for the group who had around a 50% reduction in symptom severity compared with 33% in the control group. A fairly substantial difference.
Secondly, the general mechanism of the placebo effect is that the brain does what it needs to do (given the resources available to it) to meet our expectations, whatever they are – usually a reduction in symptoms.
For example, in studies into pain, a person receiving a placebo that they believe is a painkiller has an expectation that their symptoms will now go away. So their brain does what it’s able to do to meet that expectation. In this case, it produces its own painkillers: endogenous opioids. These are the brain’s own morphine – natural pain-relieving chemicals the body produces when it expects relief.
And it’s the endogenous opioids that make the pain go away. It’s a real physical process in the brain that’s activated by whatever the person’s expectation is.
When those women with PMT symptoms were given extra information about the placebo effect – that it’s a very real phenomenon and a bit about how it works – it increased their expectation that the placebos would work even though they are just placebos, thus ensuring that they DID work.
Their brain simply did what it needed to do to reduce their symptoms.
Other OLP studies
This isn’t the first OLP study. It was the first to look into the effects on PMT and also to demonstrate both pathways that OLPs work.
Ted Kaptchuk, a professor at Harvard Medical School, has actively studied OLPs for more than a decade. A seminal study led by his team in 2010 put OLPs on the map when they were shown to be highly effective for the treatment of IBS.
Eighty volunteers either received no treatment (control group) or Open Label Placebos. Those who received the OLPs were told they were, “placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in IBS symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes.”
The study lasted 3 weeks and those who received the OLPs had significantly less symptom severity and had made much more of an improvement than the control group.
Since then, studies have shown OLPs can benefit a surprisingly wide range of conditions, including chronic low back pain, fatigue experienced by cancer patients, ADHD, allergic rhinitis, menopausal hot flushes, depression, and for increasing the effectiveness of methadone in opioid use disorder, .
Where do we go from here?
Open Label Placebos offer a surprisingly powerful – and incredibly low cost – way of treating certain conditions by tapping directly into the mind-body connection.
They demonstrate that the mind has far more ability to impact healing than we realise. And there are simple ways that we can assist this.
Every treatment scenario has what Kaptchuk called a ‘built-in placebo effect’. The setting matters: a view of nature, gentle music, a warm and empathetic doctor or therapist – all of these can amplify the effectiveness of treatment by activating the body’s natural healing systems.
And education around the placebo effect and the mind-body connection in general can help too by increasing a person’s expectations of relief.
It raises the question: how much untapped healing potential lies in what we expect, believe, and feel?
Additional resources:
My book, ‘Why Woo-Woo Works: The surprising science behind meditation, reiki, crystals, and other alternative practices‘ includes chapters on the ‘built-in’ placebo effects of nature, the environment, sounds, empathetic doctors, and more. It also includes a more detailed explanation of how the placebo effect works, and an expansion on some more of the OLP studies.
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The Life-Extending Power of a Sunny Outlook 25 Mar 7:56 AM (last month)
Can a positive attitude help us live longer?
It seems it can—according to a growing body of research into how our mindset impacts health and wellbeing.
Let’s start with a fascinating (if slightly gross) study. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University gave 193 healthy volunteers nasal drops containing cold or flu viruses. Beforehand, each person’s emotional style was assessed—essentially, whether they had a more positive or negative outlook on life.
People with a positive emotional style tend to meet life’s stresses more calmly. Those with a negative style are more likely to feel frustration, anxiety, or stress in response to the same events.
After taking the drops, everyone was quarantined for the duration of the study. Each day, researchers collected and weighed participants’ used tissues—yes, really! By subtracting the tissue’s dry weight from the total, they could calculate how much mucus each person produced. (Not the dream job, I imagine, but a surprisingly effective way to measure symptom severity.)
And the results? Eye-opening.
Participants with the most positive emotional style produced far less mucus and had fewer symptoms overall. While not everyone became ill, those with a negative emotional style were much more likely to catch the virus than those with a positive one.
The takeaway? Our emotional style plays a much bigger role in health than we might realise. A positive outlook can be protective.
And this link between attitude and health goes far beyond the common cold.
Attitude and Longevity
At the Mayo Clinic, a 30-year study of 447 people found that optimists had around a 50% lower risk of early death compared to pessimists. The researchers concluded, bluntly:
“Mind and body are linked, and attitude has an impact on the final outcome—death.”
Another long-term study at Yale followed 660 people over the age of 50. It looked at how our attitudes toward ageing affect our health and even our lifespan. Participants were asked whether they agreed with statements like, “Things keep getting worse as I get older,” or, “As you get older, you are less useful.”
Those who disagreed with the negative statements—who saw ageing more positively—lived an average of 7.5 years longer than those with the most negative perceptions of ageing.
Similarly, a Dutch study of 999 people over the age of 65 found a strong protective relationship between optimism and longevity. Not only did optimistic people live longer—they also had a 77% lower risk of heart disease.
What’s Going On Here? The Science Behind It
So why do these effects exist?
One big factor is stress. A positive mindset often means that we respond to the same challenges with less stress.
Imagine two people stuck in traffic on their way to an important event. The one with a negative mindset might feel angry, anxious, and complain repeatedly, mentally spinning around what a disaster this is. Their stress response kicks in: heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, the mind clouds. This reaction, while useful in danger, becomes harmful if it’s the go-to pattern.
Now consider the person with a more positive mindset. They might feel briefly annoyed, but they accept the situation. They stay calm enough to think clearly—perhaps even spot an alternative route. Their body stays more relaxed, and their mind sharper.
When this more adaptive response becomes the norm, it protects the body from the long-term damage that comes with chronic stress: increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and more.
In short, positivity doesn’t just feel better. It is better—for your brain, body, and even your lifespan.
Want to Be More Positive? Here Are 3 Suggestions:
1. Practice Kindness
Kindness is a powerful antidote to stress. While stress activates the fight-or-flight system, kindness activates its opposite: the calming, connecting side of our nervous system.
Feeling tense or overwhelmed? Try doing something kind. Check in on someone, offer encouragement, send a thoughtful message, or help a neighbour.
And if people are your stressors, play around with the idea that you never know what people are dealing with behind closed doors. Maybe you can relate to that yourself.
Either way, even small gestures can shift our emotional landscape—and reframe how we view life’s stressors.
2. Count Your Blessings
Gratitude can rewire the brain over time. Our mindset is, in many ways, a habit. A negative mindset is simply a habit of scanning for problems or expecting the worst. But habits can be changed.
Writing down 5–10 things you’re grateful for each day helps train your brain to notice what’s going well. With practice, we begin to lean more toward the light than the shade.
3. Say “I’ll Handle It”
In Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers encourages us to say these three words whenever we’re faced with something difficult: I’ll handle it.
It’s a simple phrase, but powerful. It reminds us of our capacity to cope. And the more we practice it, the more we start to remember just how often we have handled things in the past—which builds confidence for the future.
Final Thoughts
Positivity, it seems, really does rock. Not in a fluffy “just think happy thoughts” kind of way—but in a grounded, scientific, life-enhancing way.
Of course, no one is positive all the time. Sometimes, a little moan is therapeutic. And many people use a bit of negativity as a kind of emotional armor—to prepare for setbacks or soften disappointment. There’s value in that too.
But overall, the research is clear: over time, a positive mindset tends to be less stressful, more adaptive, and better for our health.
And it might just give us a few extra healthy years on this planet.
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A superfood for your soul 20 Mar 3:50 PM (last month)
We all know that eating well nourishes our bodies. Nutritious food gives us energy, supports our immune system, and keeps us feeling our best.
But what if I told you there’s a superfood for your soul—one that’s completely free, always available, and scientifically proven to boost your well-being?
That superfood is kindness.
OK, you don’t eat kindness like other superfoods, but hear me out.
Acts of kindness, whether big or small, are like a powerful supplement for the mind and heart. Research has shown that experiences of kindness release a cocktail of feel-good chemicals—dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin—and these help reduce stress, increase happiness, and even improve heart health.
Kindness isn’t just about making someone else’s day brighter; it’s a boomerang—what you give comes right back to you in the form of better health.
Nature’s Reward
I think of this as Nature’s Reward. It’s nature’s way of saying, “Thank you and well done for acting in a way that keeps all of us – i.e., life – thriving.”
You see, many moons ago, in the distant past, our ancient ancestors learned from experience that helping each other was key to survival. There were no supermarkets in those days. And there were more wild animals around, without the barriers of city limits to keep them out.
Helping others meant food, protection, and companionship.
This tendency to help each other, to gather in groups, even to laugh and tells stories by the campfire grew in each succeeding generation. Over time, kindness to each other became instinctual. And it became pleasurable. Wind the clock forward to the present day and that satisfying feeling you get when you help someone is thanks to our ancient ancestors.
And it comes with an accompanying set of chemicals in the brain and throughout the body that bring about some quite amazing effects.
Brain circuits
Nowadays, we’ve charted lots of ways that being kind impacts our mental (and physical) health. Kindness is an antidote to stress; it even dials down activity in stress regions of the brain. It’s a physical effect! And the magic is that it works in the opposite direction to experiences of stress.
Experiences of kindness also dial up activity in happiness and positive mood regions of the brain. And these positive mood regions become strengthened just as a muscle becomes stronger when you regularly work out.
And that’s the key, and what we see in science. Regular acts of kindness boost happiness. But it’s not just that kindness momentarily feels good or satisfying. There’s a physical effect on the brain that makes the feelings longer lasting.
This doesn’t mean that being a kind person guarantees you’ll be happy. Experience tells us this isn’t true. Life happens, as we all know, and often in unpredictable ways. But since these positive regions of the brain are strengthened, what it does mean is that as life happens, happiness and positive moods in general become more accessible to us.
And this is consistent with an array of scientific studies that show that kindness generally makes us happier.
Not just Yourself
And the best part? Kindness isn’t limited by time, money, or circumstance. You don’t need to wait for the “right moment” to be kind. It can be as simple as sending a thoughtful text, paying a sincere compliment, checking in on someone, or practicing patience when someone is having a tough day. Small, consistent acts of kindness add up, just like small healthy choices add up to a stronger body.
And they impact others too, beyond the person you show kindness to in the moment. Kindness creates a ripple effect that extends much further than the person you’re kind to.
Think of a pebble dropped in a pond. In time, ripples reach the far sides of the pond and lily pads rise. They rise because of the wave. And the wave was created by the pebble dropped in the pond. Now, the pebble is a metaphor for kindness and the pond is human society. The wave is how kindness travels from one person to the next.
But it’s not lily pads that rise. It’s the smiles on people’s faces. It’s the quality of people’s days that are lifted as they experience a moment of kindness that began with that seemingly small thing that you did – that pebble you dropped metaphorically into someone’s day.
Acts of kindness are rarely isolated acts, even if they might seem so in the moment. They lift people’s spirits. They give people hope. And people naturally pass that good will onto others. That’s how the ripple effect works.
So, if you’re looking for a way to boost your mood, reduce stress, cultivate deeper connections, and make some ripples of joy in the world, let kindness be your go-to superfood.
And you don’t need to search for this superfood in the aisles of a supermarket, nor hunt in the depths of the Amazon rainforest.
It’s free. And you already have it in abundance.
Sprinkle it everywhere, and watch how it transforms not just your mental health, but the world around you.
Resources
This article is adapted from Chapter 3 of my book, ‘The Joy of Actually Giving a F*ck: How kindness can cure stress and make you happy‘. The chapter is called, ‘A Superfood for your mental health’. The book is about all the ways that kindness impacts our mental & physical health, and how it can make a difference in our homes, communities, places of work, and the world. It’s all backed up with science and there’s a references section at the back that contains all the studies cited in the book.
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The Illusion of Being Self-Made: Why Gratitude and Humility Matter More Than We Think 18 Mar 11:43 AM (last month)
We love a good success story. The self-made entrepreneur who bootstrapped their way to the top. The athlete who defied the odds. The student with the tough background who had to work harder than anyone else and reaped the rewards in the end. These stories fuel the belief that, with enough grit and determination, anyone can succeed.
I personally find this narrative inspiring. But there’s another side to life that’s often overlooked. There’s also the support, and dare I say, luck and circumstance that form a backdrop to most successes.
And I find it’s important to remember this because, as philosopher Michael Sandel argues in The Tyranny of Merit, the more we believe we are entirely self-made, the harder it becomes to cultivate humility and gratitude.
The Myth of Self-Sufficiency
It’s easy to feel like we’ve earned everything we have through our own efforts. You alone are more aware than anyone else of what you’ve gone through.
Each of us acutely know about the sleepless nights, the long hours, the worry that we’ll never get there that have plagued our minds. But then our hard work and determination, and the choices we make along the way, gradually pay off.
This is my personal story too – I know what I’ve gone through to get to where I am. And it wasn’t easy. Hard work and perseverance do matter. Of course they do. But no one exists in a vacuum.
Let’s also consider the education we received, the opportunities we were given, the health we may have been fortunate enough to have—all these factors play a role in shaping our paths.
In reflecting on courageous decisions that I’ve made that shaped my life, I’m always drawn to when I resigned from my very well-paid job to start a career in writing and speaking. It took a lot of courage, not least because I didn’t have experience in doing what I was setting out to do.
Yet, if it hadn’t been for my mum and dad a year or so earlier, who supported me through a difficult period of depression, a period of time that sowed the seeds of that decision, then I’d probably never have done it. And I wouldn’t be sitting here writing these words.
And my PhD professor was pivotal in me landing that great job in the first place. Had I done my PhD under any other supervisor, I probably would not have even got an interview for it. Some might call this luck. Others, fate. But either way, my choices were built upon other things happening, and other people.
And what about intelligence? We often credit this as underlying our abilities. It’s often viewed as a purely personal trait, not something we choose. But we don’t decide our genetic makeup or the environment that shapes our abilities. Nor do we control the economy we’re born into or the societal structures that determine which kinds of work are valued and rewarded.
Yet, when success arrives, it’s easy to forget these external factors. We congratulate ourselves and, sometimes, even look down on those who didn’t ‘make it’ in the same way, imagining that they just didn’t work hard enough.
Let me just say here that this isn’t in any way to take away from what we’ve gone through and the grit and determination that anyone shows to get to where they are, but just to also remember those who helped (in obvious and less obvious ways) on our path.
It’s in finding that balance within ourselves: I did something good and I’m also grateful for help I’ve had along the way in my life. It’s neither just one or the other. Cultivating a sense of both aspects is healthy.
Because danger lies when we attribute all success to individual effort. We risk losing sight of the essential role of others in our lives.
Why Forgetting This Makes Gratitude Harder
Gratitude flourishes when we recognize that we are interconnected. It grows when we acknowledge that we are recipients of kindness, opportunity, and even good fortune. Because if we see ourselves as purely self-sufficient, what is there to be grateful for? Just the sunshine?
Even sunshine makes it easier, some might argue, to work in rather than wind and rain, which might be someone else’s circumstance. Physically and metaphorically.
If I believe that every success is purely of my own making, then I have little reason to feel thankful. Worse still, I might come to see those who struggle as simply not trying hard enough rather than as people who may have faced obstacles that I was lucky enough to avoid.
Because for every person who succeeded in building something, someone else had a similar dream but ill health or some other circumstance stood in their way, or made the hill much steeper to climb.
Gratitude requires an open-hearted recognition of the people and circumstances that have helped shape us. It softens the ego’s grip and lets humility find a foothold — the understanding that, while effort matters, none of us are entirely self-made.
A More Honest (and Kinder) Perspective
As I’ve said, this isn’t about diminishing hard work or denying personal responsibility. It’s about taking a fuller, more truthful perspective—one that makes space for gratitude rather than entitlement, humility rather than arrogance.
It’s about recognizing the teacher who took extra time to encourage us, the family member who supported us, the unseen workers who built the infrastructure we rely on every day. It’s about appreciating the fortunate breaks, the mentors, the societal structures that helped us get where we are. And the luck, or fate – whatever we prefer to call it.
And it’s about extending that same understanding to others—acknowledging that not everyone had the same foundation to build on and that kindness, rather than judgment, is the more compassionate response.
Cultivating a Culture of Gratitude
When we move away from the myth of being entirely self-made, something beautiful happens: gratitude becomes easier, relationships become deeper, and kindness becomes more natural. We start to see success not as an individual possession, but as something we can share—something that can lift others as well as ourselves.
Humility and gratitude are not just moral virtues; they are deeply connected to well-being. Studies show that grateful people are happier, more resilient, and more connected to others. Humility, too, is a strength—it allows us to learn, grow, and see the world with clearer eyes.
So perhaps the real marker of success isn’t just what we achieve, but also how well we recognize the web of connections that helped us along the way.
The more we embrace that truth, the more grateful—and ultimately, the more fulfilled—we become.
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Pass It On: The Surprising Science of Contagious Happiness 10 Mar 10:07 AM (last month)
Imagine you’re having a regular day, feeling neither happy nor sad. Then you meet up with a friend who is buzzing with excitement about something great that’s just happened to them.
Without even trying, you start to feel a little lighter, a little happier. What if I told you this isn’t just a coincidence, but a well-documented scientific phenomenon? And the further effects are quite astonishing.
Scientists James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis studied data from thousands of people in a large social network and found something incredible: happiness is contagious.
For example, if someone you are friends with becomes happier for some reason, then there’s a fairly decent chance that you will also become happier over the next few weeks or months.
They even put some numbers on it. If it was an immediate social contact who became happier, the chances of you becoming happier were 15%. But this was an average of social contacts in general, people you know and interact with from time to time. If the person who became happier was someone you considered a friend, then the chances of you becoming happier was 25%.
And if this friend was a close mutual friend, and who lived within a mile of you, the chances of you becoming happier if they became happier increased to 63%.
How is this even possible?
Well, there’s two main factors. One is emotional contagion and the other is behavioural contagion. And they both fit under the umbrella of social contagion.
Emotional contagion
Emotional contagion is the phenomena where we ‘catch’ the emotions of people we spend time with, just as you can catch a cold from someone you interact with. It’s facilitated by a network of brain cells known as the Mirror Neuron System (MNS).
When someone you’re with smiles, your MNS picks up their facial muscle movements and automatically triggers the same ones in you.
That’s what the ‘mirror’ bit means. It’s why you tend to smile when someone smiles, frown when someone frowns, even tense when you see someone looking fearful.
But this is only half of it. At the same time, your MNS pings the emotional regions of your brain that are consistent with the smile, so you not only smile but you also feel a bit better.
In this way, if they’re smiling because they feel happy about something, within seconds you find yourself smiling and feeling happier too.
Behavioural contagion
With behavioural contagion, we become happier when someone’s behaviour around us changes. So if your friend becomes happier and starts behaving differently, their happier behaviour has a knock-on effect on you.
For example, maybe they want to go out more, share more coffees and conversation, go to the cinema. As you go along, these experiences result in you becoming happier too.
It can also be caused by imitation. For example, say your happier friend tidies their garden and decorates their home because of how they’re feeling, you may well get the urge to do the same yourself, and reap the rewards of satisfaction at the extra cleanliness and colour in your life.
Contagious happiness tends to work through both these pathways.
And it depends on the quality of relationship. It’s much stronger if you are close friends, but less so if a friendship is one-sided. For example, if someone thinks of you as a friend but you don’t see them in the same way, then there’s only a 12% chance of their happiness impacting you.
The ripple effect
Where things get really interesting is that happiness can spread much further than from just one person to another. Happiness actually spreads up to what’s known as 3 degrees of separation.
This means that if you become happier, you will increase the likelihood of your friends becoming happier (1-degree), your friends’ friends (2-degrees), and your friends’ friends’ friends (3-degrees). And most likely you have never met, nor will ever meet, most of the people in this latter group. Yet your change in happiness affects them.
That’s amazing! To put some numbers to it, starting with the 15% average figure I mentioned above, which is the likelihood of your contacts (in general) at 1-degree of separation from you becoming happier if you become happier, Fowler and Christakis found that people at 2-degrees of separation from you stand a 10% chance of becoming happier because you have become happier.
And that’s the fascinating bit: because you became happier. Not for some other seemingly random reason. But because you became happier.
And then it extends farther. People at three degrees of separation from you – remember, these are your friends’ friends’ friends – have a 6% chance of becoming happier because you became happier.
Let’s put this into perspective. Say you have ten friends and each of them have ten friends, so that’s 100 people at two degrees of separation from you, and each of these people also have ten friends, that’s 1,000 people at three degrees of separation from you.
So roughly 60 of these people will find themselves feeling a bit happier over the next few weeks or months because you have become happier, either through emotional or behavioural contagion.
If you ever doubted how deeply connected we all are, just let those number sink in for a second.
So the next time you do something that lifts your mood – a walk in nature, a heartfelt conversation, an act of kindness – remember that the benefits may extend far beyond yourself. Your happiness might just be the spark that ignites a wave of joy for people you’ll never even meet.
Resources
The main reference for the 3-degrees of separation research is: J. H. Fowler and N. A. Christakis (2008), ‘Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study’, British Medical Journal, 337, a2338. Link to study.
If you want to read more about contagious emotions and experiences (happiness, depression, fear, loneliness, weight changes, divorce), how it works, how it happens in the workplace, even how playing violent computer games or watching violent movies can affect us, see my book, ‘The Contagious Power of Thinking’. Ref: David R Hamilton PhD, ‘The Contagious Power of Thinking’. Link to book on Amazon UK Link to Amazon US Amazon Australia Amazon Canada (it is available in some other countries too).
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Rewriting my self-worth: A journey from self-doubt to self-love 7 Mar 12:55 PM (last month)
As a teenager at high school the most confident people were in a different social class from me.
They were middle class. I didn’t know what class was, to be honest, because it never mattered at primary school (from ages 5-12), but it soon became clear that I had a different background from them, lived in a different kind of estate, had a different accent, and my parents had much less money.
And it seemed to matter. As adults we know that class shouldn’t define our worth. Intellectually, we know we all have the same inherent worth. But to my teenage mind, it did matter.
Not consciously, I must add. It was more like an assumption, like they stand at one end of the room, and I know that my place is at the other end, along with others of my class.
There was a sense to me that they were better than me, more entitled, more deserving of what life had to offer.
There was a guy named Michael who was in some of my classes. He appeared to be the cleverest person in the class. He often spoke up and had an air of confidence and a relaxed self-assuredness that I didn’t possess.
To my teenage mind, Michael and the others seemed to be what adults talking about self-esteem call ‘enough’. Intellectually, they seemed to have an innate intelligence. I could learn, yes. I could dive in and understand something, absolutely. But it wasn’t the same.
To me, they had an air of enoughness that was reflected in their presence, confidence, in how they answered in class, and how they conducted themselves in general.
They spoke in a self-assured way. They casually spoke about current world events. They knew the names of people in the government. They talked about bands they followed, most of which I’d never heard of. They sometimes used words I didn’t understand. They talked about intellectual stuff they watched on TV. And they laughed at stuff I didn’t get.
Despite my odd success here and there and my fairly decent academic record, I carried a sense of not enough while I was around them.
Michael talked often of his plan to go to university. He had selected Cambridge and spoke of his future like it was inevitable. The others similarly had their top targets in mind. The progression from school to university was a foregone conclusion for them, a core expectation.
Me? University felt way above me, so I never considered it. For a start, my parents could never have afforded it. Only one person in my entire estate had ever gone to university. I set my sights on a youth training scheme (YTS) that was popular at the time. It felt like it was the thing I was supposed to do. My parents didn’t know any better as it’s what everyone in our street did, that or get an apprenticeship or join the armed forces.
Now, for the record, what I’m writing here is not about which path is better for kids because we’re all different. It’s not about whether it’s better to go to university, or do a training course, get a scholarship, an apprenticeship, join the forces, or something else. I’m just recounting my own experiences and thought processes at the time.
I really had little knowledge of any paths available, to be honest. The YTSs seemed more normal for people like me, that is, people of my social class, because it’s what most people I grew up with did. University felt like it was for people like Michael and his friends, who carried themselves with a completely different air from me.
It was only after my chemistry teacher, Mr Tracey (one of the most inspiring teachers I have ever had) sat me down one day and explained things to me. He said I should go to university.
He assured me I’d really like it and that I’d do very well. Lots of people like me go to university, he said. I must add that he meant ‘like me’ in a kind and gentle way because he could tell how I thought of myself.
Noticing my shock and resistance to the idea, he said I would qualify for a government grant, a bursary, which would actually amount to more than what the youth training schemes paid.
A YTS paid £27 a week at the time (this was the late 80s). The full university bursary was about £500 per 12-week term, including getting your fees paid. I did the math. Suddenly, university was an option. It felt attainable. Without that government assistance, I’d never have gone.
And so it was that I went to University. And chemistry was a natural choice for me. I’ll cut a longer story short here because the details aren’t important to the points I wish to make. I came out with a First-Class Honours Degree and a PhD and went on to work in R&D for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, helping develop drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer. Then I made a career change, setting out on the path to what I do now – writing books and speaking.
Sounds like a success story. Perhaps. Depends on how you look at it. Self-worth assumptions tend to stick and drag all sorts of difficulties and challenges into our lives, no matter what we do and where we go. We meet the world as we are, at the level we think of ourselves.
Looking back, I realise now that my achievements didn’t change how I felt inside. As Nathaniel Branden wrote in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, “You can’t outperform your level of self-esteem.”
I did a lot of things through those years, and I achieved quite a lot. I coached athletics. I co-founded a charity. I wrote several books. But how I felt on the inside didn’t change. All that ever changed was the context.
Things only changed when I decided to work on self-love (self-esteem). I tend to use these terms interchangeably, but when I say self-love, I mean ‘internal’ self-esteem. There’s external and there’s internal.
External self-esteem is when you derive your sense of worth from successes and achievements and from people having a positive perception of you. The trouble with this is that if something changes on the outside, if you fail at something or people stop liking you, it’s painful and can feel that life is falling apart.
Internal self-esteem, on the other hand (which I mean when I say self-love) is where your sense of worth is not dependent upon external things. You have an inner sense of worthiness and value. And a sense of self-compassion, where you understand that failing sometimes is normal. Internal self-esteem helps buffer you against the normal swings and roundabouts of life.
A game-changer for me was the understanding that there’s a sort of synchronisation between how you feel on the inside and how that shows in the way you hold and move your body. And that it’s a two-way street, or bi-directional, to use the technical term.
In part, it’s known as the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. Making facial, and bodily, gestures of stress can make you feel stressed. Those of sadness can make you feel sad. But smiling and making other facial and bodily movements of happiness can make you feel better.
I began the practice of holding my body posture in a way that I reckoned I would if I felt that, “I am enough.” I practiced standing with my back straight, my shoulders relaxed, my neck and face relaxed, and breathing steadily and easily. I put a reminder on my phone to remind me every hour or so to check my posture.
My goal was to make an ‘I am enough’ posture a habit and, in so doing, wire it into my brain.
It worked. Over the course of a couple of months of doing this, I made sizeable gains in how I felt on the inside. I felt more confident. I felt better about myself. I was less scared. I felt more optimistic about my life.
I was pleasantly surprised that something so simple could have such a big impact. Although it did take a lot of work. I had to correct how I sat at my desk, teaching myself to sit up straight rather than slouch. I had to get out of the habit of stooping my shoulders when I felt unsure of myself, worried, or was in an unfamiliar place or situation. I had to relentlessly practice relaxing my face and wearing a gentle smile when idling rather than one of uncertainty or a frown.
But these things became easier with practice, and I began to feel better as a consequence.
Of course, there’s more to self-love than this and I don’t wish to state that this is all you ever have to do. We’re all different and we have different backgrounds, different life situations, different experiences that have shaped our feelings and expectations. But it can go some way to changing how you feel.
In my two-year self-love journey (it’s what I eventually came to call that period of my life, and that resulted in me writing my book, I Heart Me: The Science of Self-Love) I also had to learn self-compassion, and that it was OK to be vulnerable, and it helped to see that some of my behaviour patterns were things I’d picked up from my parents.
And studying the subject of self-love in general helped me unpick some of my ingrained thinking, like the idea that those middle-class kids at school, and by extension anyone with seeming authority as I grew into an adult, were inherently more worthy than me.
But learning how to manage my posture is what got me far enough that I was able to recognise these other things. It’s what got me far enough up the self-love ladder that more beneficial changes became possible.
I hope this is helpful to know and that you find the practice beneficial too. And if you, or someone you know, feels similar to how I felt when I was at school, then I hope the practice can help you, or them, feel a little more self-confidence, self-assured, and contribute towards a greater internal self-esteem.
True self-worth isn’t about where we come from or what we achieve – it’s about how we see ourselves. And that’s something we can change.
I’d like to leave you with one of my favourite self-love quotes. It’s from “The Six-Pillars of Self-Esteem,” by Nathaniel Branden:
“If my aim is to prove I am ‘enough’, the project goes on to infinity—because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.”
Resources
Here’s some links to my book on learning self-love is called, “I Heart Me: The Science of Self-Love” in case you find it helpful.
I share the science and practice around how to use your posture to help build self-love. I also talk about vulnerability, shame, body image, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, how we pick up patterns from our parents, and I share 28 practices for developing self-love.
Paperback UK Audiobook UK Paperback US Audiobook US Paperback Australia Audiobook Australia
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I’m so happy for you 24 Feb 9:56 AM (2 months ago)
This is not the sort of title I usually have for a blog. However, it captures the essence of what’s called, ‘confelicity’.
Simply put, confelicity is the joy we feel at someone else’s happiness. It’s when you’re genuinely pleased that your friend got that promotion, or received that compliment, or got that unexpected tip, or found out she was pregnant, or whatever else a person feels happy about.
It’s not just about tolerating another person’s success or good fortune; it’s about genuinely celebrating it with them.
The word derives from the Latin – con (together) and felicitas (happiness or good fortune). It literally means shared happiness or sharing in happiness.
I was giving a talk a few nights ago and got chatting with the event manager. She and her best friend had recently started their own company creating bespoke events. It was a brave step, giving up on the secure income they were both used to. But it was easy to see that she truly believed in what they’re doing, and their hearts are totally in it.
I couldn’t help but be genuinely happy for her. That’s confelicity!
And there were the two girls who had recently started their own venture, The Soul Works Studio, in Glasgow. Again, such a brave move, to step away from safe and secure full-time employment to pursue a dream. I couldn’t help but feel genuinely thrilled for them. Confelicity!
Not always easy
Sounds easy to be happy for people. But it’s not always that simple, and I’m sure most of us can relate.
I remember years ago cheering on a friend in a track race, while at the same time envying him because I came last in my race. We were both amateur athletes at the time. I was cheering, trying my best to be happy for him, but at the same time found myself relieved that he didn’t win.
Afterwards I berated myself.
What sort of friend secretly doesn’t want his friend to win, I asked myself. I felt so disappointed in myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to win. Not consciously, at least. Of course, I did want him to win, I told myself. So why did I feel relieved that he didn’t? I hope I’m a better friend now, 30 years or so later.
The root of it is that other people’s successes sometimes highlight our own seeming failures or ineptitudes. And if these are painful to us, then it becomes even more difficult to be happy for others. I deeply wanted to succeed in athletics, but despite my dream of competing in the Olympics, I was acutely aware that I just wasn’t up to the mark. People around me succeeding only made it more obvious (and painful) to me that I wasn’t.
We want to want to be happy, but sometimes the only way we know to make ourselves feel better is to bring others down, even just a little. It doesn’t even feel like we’re in control of what we’re doing.
We secretly feel relieved when they don’t succeed. Ah well, better luck next time, we offer. Or we find fault, caution them against potential failures or pitfalls. Sometimes this is all well-meaning, of course, but other times it comes from a painful place.
Comparing ourselves with others is natural. In her new book, ‘Open When…’, Dr Julie Smith explains that making comparisons with others is built into human nature. In a positive sense, it can help to guide us in the right direction, inspiring us to act and become more. We evolved the tendency and it’s helped us innovate and thrive as a species.
But the downside is those times when we feel that we’re personally failing, and it hurts. Then it’s much more difficult to be happy for others. They have what we want, after all. Deep down, it feels like a threat to our very survival. But with practice, we can do it.
How to want others to win
A friend told me of the time when her marriage ended. She deeply wanted to be a mother and it was an issue in the relationship. At the time, all her close friends were having children and had growing families. It’s what she longed for too.
The pain at the idea that she might not be a mother was unbearable, yet every time she saw her friends, they were talking about their babies and young children. It was tearing her apart inside.
Then she had a wakeup call. She recognised that the pain and envy at her friends’ good fortune, was eating away at her. It was taking its toll on her mental health.
She knew that the only way to survive this difficult time in her life was to be genuinely happy for her friends. She put everything into it. She made a huge effort to be a part of their lives in every way, showing them so much genuine love, caring, and respect. She put her heart and soul into it. And that’s where the magic happened. She realised that she was deeply and genuinely happy for her friends.
In being present in their lives, in consciously choosing to love and support them, her own hurt began to fade. That’s what confelicity does. In the moment that our attention shifts onto the seeing the smile on a person’s face and celebrates their win with them, it moves away from our own pain. And in that moment, we nourish one of our deepest human needs. Connection.
And as we drink in that connection, happiness flourishes as a side effect.
An aspect of empathy
At its heart, confelicity reflects a deep sense of connection and mutual upliftment. Instead of envy or indifference, confelicity encourages us to lean into someone else’s joy as though it were our own.
It’s related to empathy. Empathy can be thought of as ‘I feel with you’. But we usually speak of empathy in the sense that we’re empathising with someone’s pain. Confelicity, on the other hand, is a positive aspect of empathy. Instead of sharing in their pain, we share in their happiness.
Ways to Show Confelicity
Like kindness, practicing confelicity doesn’t require grand gestures; it’s about the small, meaningful ways we show up for others. Here are some ways to embrace and express this powerful form of kindness:
1. Be Present and Attentive
When someone shares good news, listen fully. Put away distractions, make eye contact, and let them know you’re genuinely interested.
2. Celebrate Their Wins
Send a congratulatory message, throw a small celebration, or simply say something like, “I’m so happy for you!” Acknowledging their joy amplifies it.
3. Avoid Comparison
Resist the urge to measure your life against theirs. Confelicity flourishes when we focus on their happiness without letting insecurities cloud the moment.
4. Amplify Their Joy
Share their happiness with others if appropriate. For instance, if a colleague’s project succeeds, celebrate it publicly in the workplace.
5. Practice Empathy
Imagine how much their achievement means to them. Putting yourself in their shoes deepens your emotional connection to their joy.
6. Pause and Appreciate: Take a moment to savour others’ happiness instead of rushing past it.
How Confelicity Affects Us
Sharing in another’s happiness isn’t just good for them—it’s profoundly beneficial for us too. Here’s how:
Strengthens Relationships
Confelicity builds trust and deepens bonds. When we show that we genuinely care about someone else’s joy, it nurtures stronger, more meaningful connections.
Boosts Our Own Happiness
Joy is contagious. By celebrating others’ success, we get to share in the positive emotions, enhancing our own wellbeing.
Reduces Negative Feelings
Practicing confelicity helps us let go of envy or resentment. It shifts our mindset from scarcity—where we feel there’s only so much good to go around—to abundance, where everyone’s joy contributes to a richer, fuller world.
Encourages a Kindness Mindset
Confelicity aligns beautifully with kindness. It reminds us that lifting others up benefits everyone. It helps build a culture of mutual support.
Final Thoughts
Confelicity invites us to step out of the shadows of comparison and into the light of shared joy. It’s a gentle yet powerful reminder that happiness multiplies when it’s shared.
When we’re happy for others, we contribute to a world that feels a wee bit warmer, a little kinder, and a lot more connected.
So, the next time someone shares their happiness with you, lean into it! Celebrate with them. Feel their joy as your own. Because in the end, confelicity isn’t just about sharing happiness—it’s about creating it, together.
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