The practices that may be sabotaging your emotional health, and offers practical advice to correct them and achieve a more fulfilling life.
Faced with this global scenario, clinical therapist Anna Lancaster told Hola that well-being is not the result of external circumstances, but rather an experience that is built from within. Although genetic factors play a role, she points out that up to 60% of our happiness depends on everyday decisions and our immediate environment.
Lancaster identified five common mistakes that sabotage emotional well-being and offers practical tools to reconnect with a more fulfilling life:
1. Putting facts before emotions
Most people expect to feel good after something good happens. Lancaster proposes reversing that logic: generating positive emotions first so that the mind and environment align accordingly. "The brain doesn't distinguish between what's real and what's imagined. If we cultivate feelings like gratitude or enthusiasm, we reconfigure its functioning," he asserted.
Her advice is to start each morning with a visualization: This
simple exercise trains the brain to adopt a more positive disposition from the
very beginning.
2. Reinforce the brain's negative bias
The human mind tends to give more weight to the negative. This is why uncomfortable memories or criticism often appear. To counteract this, the expert recommended practicing gratitude as a daily habit: at the end of each day, write down three good things that happened, no matter how small they may seem.
Studies by psychologist Martin Seligman, a leading figure in positive psychology, have shown that this simple gesture strengthens emotional resilience and improves overall levels of well-being.
3. Use destructive self-talk
Our way of speaking to ourselves has a direct impact on the brain. According to Lancaster, phrases like "I'm a failure" or "this isn't for me" generate neural connections that perpetuate those beliefs.
The proposal is to use the language we would use with someone we love. She also suggests speaking to yourself in the third person: “You can handle this, Ana,” instead of “I'm overwhelmed.” This small adjustment helps reduce the emotional burden and encourages self-compassion.
4. Seek quick, artificial rewards
From your morning coffee to endless scrolling on social media, many of our daily actions activate brief surges of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure. However, its constant stimulation can overwhelm the system and reduce its effectiveness, resulting in a loss of overall motivation.
Lancaster recommended a “morning reset”: avoiding cell phones, caffeine, and sugar for the first hour of the day. Instead, she suggests opting for activities that generate sustained gratification, such as reading, learning something new, or having a deep conversation.
5. Neglecting meaningful connections
Beyond professional or financial success, human relationships are the greatest predictor of long-term happiness, as demonstrated by the Harvard Grant Study, one of the largest on well-being.
To strengthen connections, Lancaster suggested being truly present: putting down your phone when chatting, expressing affection, and scheduling face-to-face meetings. A gesture as simple as sending a heartfelt message to a friend can make a difference.
Instead of postponing happiness for the future, the specialist encourages us to integrate it into a daily practice. Changing small habits, reframing our inner narrative, and prioritizing human contact are decisions that, when combined, transform the way we experience everyday life.
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