Shortform Mini Guide: "Habits of a Happy Brain"

3 Lessons and an Action Plan

Happiness hormones—you’ve evolved to crave them, and your brain evolved to create them when your survival needs are met. It’s why you seek food, shelter, and love, and it’s supposed to be the perfect system for maximizing your chances of a long and happy life.

So, why do we also desire things that shorten our lifespans? Why do we develop harmful habits? Are our brains glitching?

In Habits of a Happy Brain, Loretta Breuning explains that our happiness cravings served us well in a world where our survival was less assured: where anything that brought us joy increased the odds we’d live to see another day. Today, though, we no longer need to consume every bit of goodness we come across due to abundance—but our brains are still wired as if we do.

In this Mini Book Guide, we’ll outline the basics of Breuning’s advice on rewiring your brain toward healthier happiness-inducing habits. For a deeper summary—plus our analysis of her ideas—check out our complete guide.

Lesson 1: Happiness Is Chemical

Your brain produces four main “happy chemicals” in response to things that help you survive: dopamine (for reward and motivation), serotonin (social status and self-worth), oxytocin (social bonding and trust), and endorphins (pain relief and pleasure).

Lesson 2: Happiness Is Fleeting

Each of these chemicals fades quickly after the brain produces it. This is on purpose—if we gained long-lasting happiness after eating just one meal, we’d have no motivation to eat another. Hence, we’re driven to constantly seek out things that will trigger more happiness hormones.

Lesson 3: Habits Are Wired Into Us

When we engage in an activity that brings us happiness, our brains get wired to repeat it. The more we repeat it, the stronger the wiring gets. In this way, a habit forms—bad ones or good.

(Shortform note: In That Little Voice in Your Head, Mo Gawdat writes that we’re wired to seek not only more instances of happiness, but also bigger and more extreme happiness. Today, we no longer need to gather as many resources as possible to ensure our basic survival, so we’ve directed our instinctive wanting toward unnecessary things—a bigger house, nicer car, newer phone, and so on.)

Action Plan

You can train your brain to crave healthy happiness triggers by practicing healthy behaviors in ways that trigger happiness chemicals. Practicing these behaviors for 45 days is typically enough to rewire your brain for new habits.

To increase your endorphins, incorporate things into your life that make you laugh—for example, sing karaoke with your friends.

To increase your dopamine, celebrate small achievements, such as waking up on time and eating a healthy breakfast.

To increase your serotonin, enjoy the perks of whatever social position you hold at the moment—if you’re a leader, enjoy your power; if you’re a subordinate, enjoy having less responsibility and pressure.

To increase your oxytocin, take small steps to build relationships with people around you. For example, give your neighbor a smile every day until you feel comfortable enough to start a conversation.

(Shortform note: There’s little agreement on how long it takes to solidify a new habit. Some claim 21 days is the magic number, but research suggests it can take up to 254 days, with 66 days being a typical length. In Atomic Habits, James Clear agrees there’s no strict rule, arguing that what matters is not how much time passes, but how consistent you are in repeating the behavior.)

Want More?

In our complete guide to Habits of a Happy Brain, we dive deeper into the brain chemistry of happiness and how to use it to build better habits. Along the way, we supplement Breuning’s ideas with research updates and advice from other experts on happiness and productivity.