Fitness
The Hidden Benefits of Exercise: Happiness, Hope, & Social Connection
The book The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage explores how movement makes us feel.
3 min readJul 25, 2020
The bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct offers an intriguing book that doesn’t tell us why we should exercise but instead shows us how to fall in love with movement. I often explore the “Why” of exercise, but this writing explores why the action is integral to our happiness and humanity.
Today, we shift gears to go beyond the familiar arguments in favor of exercise. We’ll look at why the movement is central to optimizing our happiness and our humanity.
- How can you use movement to create happiness, meaning, and connection?
- Activity connects with some basic human joys.
- Exercise can help reduce depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
Dr. McGonigal offers five ways movement can help you enjoy life:
- Activate pleasure. With exercise, our brains…
