Do hobbies make you happy?

There is no specific formula to stay happy and definition or perspective about happiness varies according to personalities. Though it is obvious that staying busy and involving oneself into favorite leisure activities or hobbies helps you get rid of depression, stress etc and thus make you happy. Can we define happiness?

What is Happiness?

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner says:

'Happiness is not merely a life lived by accumulating moments of pleasure. On the contrary, happiness is a long lasting enduring enjoyment of life, it is being in love with living. It is your reward for achieving a good character and personal rational values in life. Some important values are a productive career, romance, friendship and hobbies.'

Studies show that having a hobby boosts creativity, providing an outlet for your imagination to run free. So to help you stay healthy and happier.

In a recent article '10 Habits That Make You Happier' published at 'fox news' author has suggested to try one new hobby every three months for staying happy. Author says:

'Hobbies are a great way to lift your spirits. Not only does a new hobby give you a chance to set and commit to goals (a key determinant of happiness), but hobbies also offer the opportunity to make new friends and socialize (another important determinant of happiness). By diversifying your hobbies to include larger social activities and more personal, intimate projects, you’ll be able to address both the external and internal factors that determine happiness.'

Read more at: 'Fox news'

One of the most pervasive and widespread is a better mental health. After a hard day's work, relaxing while doing the things you love boosts your mind's health without you ever realizing it. This happens because engaging in your hobby leads to the release of various hormones in the brain, which are associated with reward, satisfaction, happiness and so on. Dopamine and oxytocin are just two examples, and they are both addictive substances. If they are release while you are performing an activity, then you will most likely try to do it again, without being necessarily able to logically explain why. You will only say “Because I like it.”

People develop hobbies for the sheer pleasure of it, as a stress relieving activity, to break the boredom of life or to generate an income from activities that they love to do. It can be one or all of these but hobbies and interests frequently offer a place to escape to, where one can heal the mind as well as the body.

What hobbies do for you?

Hobbies can relax your mind by staying out of work and concentrating on a thing you like. Thus they can help you reduce your stress level. Hobbies are very similar to meditation. Both in meditation and hobby you try to reach a common goal, happiness. There are no rules when it comes to choosing a hobby. It my be gardening or watching good movies or wood carving or listening to music or reading books or even it may be sleeping.

There is no better time than now to renew an interest in an old hobby or start a new one. Immersing yourself in a hobby is a great way to happiness. And, after all, being happy is what it’s all about. Happiness and hobbies also go hand in hand. If you are keen to discover the joy of feeling better and positive every day, then it’s time to start a hobby to keep your body, mind and soul refreshed.

Useful links and resources:

* Your hobby and happiness

* YouTube video: Hobbies Lead To Happiness

* Hobbies and You

How to speed up your computer with easy techniques?

Does your computer take a long time to start up?
Does it take more time to run a program?
These are all symptoms of slowing down your pc and indication that you need to use techniques to speed it up.
How?
There are many easy techniques which can help you keep your pc in best shape. It is very common complain from pc users that after some time or weeks, we observe slowing down of programs of pc or laptop. What is the best solution to speed up your computer?
I have collected some techniques which might help you speed up your computer, and at the bottom of the post, there are more links to the sites with easy techniques.

Start Up Programs
Many "gadget" programs want to load automatically at start up and each one sits in memory chewing up resources including memory and CPU cycles. Even worse some programs load at start up and never even let you know they're doing it. I've worked on computers that have had in excess of 100 start up programs (including necessary Windows processes).

Get rid of them! Most of them were probably install once and forget and you'll never miss them. Identifying them is another story but there are alternatives that will help you track them down.

Windows includes a program called MSCONFIG that will identify some start up programs. Click start, run and type in MSCONFIG and that'll get it started. Msconfig is kind of bare bones and won't give you the full story but if you don't have a lot it might do the job.

Next is autoruns which is an excellent and free tool from Microsoft. A word of warning. It is powerful and will not stop you from removing a critical Windows process. Be careful of what you're doing. You can do a free online scan here but you'll have to buy it to make any changes.


Registry Fixers

The registry does a boatload of work in Windows being where just about everything about any program or process is stored and most remove program routines don't do a good job of cleaning up when they are uninstalled. If you've removed even a few programs the registry can become full of useless information. Why does this affect performance? Every time that Windows has to access the registry it's thrashing through a load of useless data to find the right info. I've worked on machines where 25% of the registry was useless junk.

You can avoid this by using a complete uninstaller which works great but it won't fix anything that was uninstalled prior to it being used.  It is far easier and less expensive to use a registry fixer as it will not only removed obsolete junk but also fix registry errors which can cause errors and put Windows into slow mode.

Hard Drives - Fragmentation
Hard drive fragmentation should be done frequently. It helps speed up your pc.

Speed Up Your Computer In 5 Minutes

Useful links:

* Microsoft offers: How to make a computer faster: 6 ways to speed up your PC
* PC world offers: 50 Tools to Speed Up Your PC
* Top 9 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer
* How to Speed up a Windows XP Computer

Physical benefits of hobbies for all age people

Having a variety of hobbies helps alleviate boredom and provides a change of pace from time to time.
Most people think of hobbies as a diversion to help while away the time, however, hobbies also play an important role in the health and wellbeing of an individual, particularly seniors, by reducing the risk of depression and dementia.

Hobbies can be an effective tool in reducing stress and lowering blood pressure, and hobbies that engage the brain, puzzles for example, have been found to be effective in delaying the onset of Alzheimers.

Physical Benefits of Hobbies:

1. manual dexterity
2. focus and concentration
3. creativity
4. improved health

Examples of Different Types of Hobbies among which outdoor hobbies can help you get more physical benefits such as photography, fishing, metal detecting etc.

• Ceramics
• Sculpting
• Geocaching
• Trivia
• Metal Detecting
• RC Cars
• Photography
• Astronomy
• Fishing

Finding a hobby is relatively easy. First, choose a hobby that has appeal and matches the physical capabilities necessary. Try several different hobbies in order to find the best fit, and don't be afraid to have more than one favorite.

Still looking for a hobby idea? Ask friends what they like to do in their spare time. The answers might not only be surprising, but they may just provide the perfect hobby idea.