Find Fitness - Put on a Happy Face

Every Monday, That's Fit's very own "charged up" wellness guru Laura Lewis presents The Passion Principle, a weekly guide that will help you achieve your greatest potential through words of inspiration, cutting-edge ideas and action tips you can use in your every day life!

Happy people are more likely to lose weight and get fit than their sadder counterparts. It's because happiness helps you maintain objectivity and stay on the path to achieving high-level goals, and for some, feeling happy might be as easy as looking at a mood-boosting photo.

I'm happy. I am sitting at my sister's house looking out the window as I write this, watching the birds flitting around, enjoying the breakfast buffet she placed in the trees for them. See, I have a thing for watching birds. It always lifts my spirits. There is just something so fun to me about observing them dart around and chirp to each other as they fill their gullets until their hearts are content. Good news for me: It turns out purposefully doing things that keep me happy will keep me on target for achieving my goals.

Good news for you: Researchers studying the happiness factor and its influence on behavior and thought processes are finding that a good mood may help one to remain objective and see the big picture. In a recent study published in the "Journal of Consumer Research," the authors wrote that "a positive mood enhances efforts to attain future well-being, encourages broader and flexible thinking, and increases openness to information." They found that by placing a happy face beside typed statements read by participants that these folks were more open to information and were able to think more abstractly than those staring down a frowning face. In other follow-up studies, people encouraged to recall happy situations enjoyed similar results. Researchers concluded that "those in a positive mood not only adopt higher-order future goals and work harder toward attaining them, yet also reduce their efforts when goals are proximal or concrete."

If being happy can help you to stay in forward motion while moving towards high-level goals, such as losing 20 pounds or running a marathon, then it's important that you maintain a positive frame of mind. Here, five things you can do to stay happy:

• Get the Picture. Find photos that make you feel happy and place them in strategic areas -- at your desk, on the dash in your car or on the mirror in your bathroom. Put one on your fridge and you might stick with your diet.
  
• Listen Up! Three times a day, listen to a piece of music, an inspirational audio recording or watch a video that makes you feel happy and giddy. Need a suggestion? Try this!
• Make a Fun List. Write down 20 fun activities you enjoy. Is it feeding the ducks at the park? Watching the sunset? Hugging your dog or cat? Laughing with friends? Pick one and do it daily.
• Just Move! Walk, run, work out in the gym, hike, dance, take the stairs and more. Challenging your body will help decrease stress while elevating those feel-good hormones.
• Laugh Often. I am a big fan of laughing, giggling and just plain lightening the mood as often as possible. Laughing elevates dopamine levels in the brain and lowers the stress hormone cortisol. When was the last time you laughed?

A little bit of happiness can go a long way in helping you to achieve your goals. So tell us: What do you do to stay happy?