Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

Are your chocolate indulgences tarnished by fears of cholesterol, cavities, pimples and fat?

Well fret no more, chocoholic chums – a recent SparkPeople article has set about busting these and other chocolate-coated myths.

Now before you install chocolate at the base of your personal food pyramid, take note: the quantities you can savor before the guilt-free swing-tag falls off are not large. The article quotes 1.4 ounces or about 40 grams – somewhere between a fun size and regular size chocolate bar.

Here’s a paraphrased summary of the article:

Myth: Chocolate puts you in caffeine overdrive.
Busted! A 4-ounce chocolate bar and 8-ounce chocolate-milk drink each contain 6 mg of caffeine,  versus 65-135mg in a regular coffee.

Myth: Chocolate kicks up your cholesterol.
Busted! The saturated fat in milk chocolate doesn’t raise cholesterol the same way other fats do. Eating a 1.4 ounce chocolate bar can raise HDL (good) cholesterol levels.

Myth: Chocolate is nutritionally bankrupt.
Busted! Chocolate yields magnesium, copper, iron and zinc and has the same amount of antioxidants as a 5-ounce glass of red wine. A daily dose of the dark stuff can help lower blood pressure and improve insulin resistance (but don’t abandon medication!).

Myth: Chocolate rots your teeth.
Busted! Milk chocolate’s mouth-clearing fat content shortens sugar-tooth contact time and its protein, calcium and phosphate may actually protect tooth enamel.

Myth: Chocolate gives you migraines.
Busted!  Research findings say nope.

Myth: Chocolate causes zits.
Busted! Twenty years worth of studies say nuh-uh.

Myth: Chocolate makes you a fatty boombah.
Busted! The average chocolate bar contains 220 calories, not so high that you can’t enjoy it now and then.

With Cupid just behind us and the Easter Bunny hippity-hoppitying his way over, it’s good to know we can indulge ourselves, moderately, in the pleasures of chocolate.

Be wise and be happy.

Technorati Tags: Happiness life strategy,happiness,research,chocolate,myth busting

Image: Scyza

A new study, reported last month in the media and about to appear in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, looked at the way our bodies produce antibodies in response to infection.

(Flu vaccines were used as a proxy for pathogens because the body’s response is similar for the purposes of the study.)

Not everybody has fun flu fighting

In the first experiment, Two groups of women were given flu vaccines. The high self-discrepant group – women who were displeased with themselves and their progress toward goals – produced fewer antibodies in response to the vaccine than a second group of women who were satisfied with their lives and goal progress. The levels stayed low for more than a month post-vaccination.

In a second experiment high self-discrepant women were asked to write – one group wrote about goal-related concerns, a second wrote about daily activities. The first group reported fewer flu symptoms and showed higher antibody levels.

Happiness life strategy

To have a strong immune system it helps to be on track with our life goals, or at least to be at peace with our progress.

But if we can’t, there’s still hope for fighting the flu.

By getting our disappointments out of our head and onto the page, we can be more rational in examining our expectations, more clearheaded in questioning our approaches and more constructive in coming up with alternative ideas.

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, maybe we should eat it while writing.

Image: ppreacher

Lesson: A happiness model

Although positive psychology and well-being research have flourished, there’s no  agreed-upon theory of happiness. But a model has been suggested, quite recently in fact, and it’s based on 3 factors (1).

1. Circumstances and demographics
- like health, finances and marital status

2. Personality and genes 
- the ‘innate’ aspects of a person

3. Intentional factors 
- deliberate actions like pursuing a goal

These 3 factors vary in how much, and for how long, they can change a person’s level of happiness. The first 2 will probably sound familiar by now:

1. Circumstances and demographics

Overall circumstances at a given time make a pretty small contribution to happiness – as we saw in Happiness Strategy 8: Make happiness an inside job and Happiness Strategy 10: Don’t keep up with the Joneses.

And changing these circumstances leads at best to a short-term boost, because people quickly adjust to new conditions, as we saw in Happiness Strategy 9: Get off the hedonic treadmill.

According to the model, circumstances and demographics contribute about 10% of the variance in happiness, in statistical terms.

2. Personality and genes 

Unlike the small effect of conditions, genes and personality make a big difference to happiness levels, as we saw in Happiness Strategy 11: Focus on what you can do to be happier and Happiness Strategy 12: Make peace with your personality. It may be that people have a happiness set-point around which they fluctuate with circumstances.

According to the model personality and genes contribute about 50% of the variance in happiness.

Our conscious behavior can explain some of the happiness-personality link, as we saw in Strategy 13: Act like you’re an extravert – even if you aren’t.

Which leads nicely to the third part of the model.

3. Intentional factors 

We’re left with about 40% for the last factor in the happiness model – the actions or behaviors people engage in deliberately. They might be:

• Cognitive – like counting your blessings
• Behavioral – like exercising regularly
• Volitional – like striving for a goal.

Although intentional factors aren’t automatic, they can become a habit over time (1).

Happiness strategy: Concentrate on intentional factors

Looking at the factors in this model of happiness, it’s clear where our happiness-raising efforts will have the most benefit. Circumstances contribute little, changed circumstances bring short-term gains at best, and genes offer limited opportunity for tweaking. Rather, it’s the intentional component of the model that makes a large contribution to happiness as well as offering a way to sustainable happiness change.

• What kinds of intentional actions can we use to raise our happiness levels?
• Is there research evidence that they work?
• And if they work, will we stay happier for life, or will we have to keep doing them?

Upcoming strategies will cover these and many other questions about intentional factors as a way to raise your own happiness. Stay tuned!

Research sources:

(1) Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.

How to be happy:
101 practical strategies drawn from positive psychology.

This post is part of a series covering simple, practical, research-inspired, happiness strategies you can use in your own life. For more information about the series, check out the 101 Happiness Strategies main page.

Technorati Tags: happiness strategies,happiness model,happiness,personality,circumstances,intentional factors

In the New York magazine article Happiness: A User’s Manual, Ben Mathis-Lilley takes a bunch of happiness research findings and translates them into 20 useful tips for New Yorkers.

The result is fun, and a cute reminder of those findings about happiness – some of which may be familiar to Happiness Strategies readers via 101 Happiness Strategies and Book Reviews.

Here’s a sample from the article:

Fire your therapist if he so much as mentions your childhood.
Contra Freud and pro common sense, much of Authentic Happiness author Martin Seligman’s research suggests that rehashing events that enraged you long ago tends to produce depression rather than sweet closure and relief.

If someone tells you he’s still pining for his ex, ask the ex out.
Stumbling on Happiness author Dan Gilbert is currently conducting a study designed to show that the best way to predict how much you’ll enjoy a blind date is to ask the last person to go out with your date how much fun he had.

If you can’t decide what TV to buy, walk across the hall and ask your neighbor if he likes his.
In multiple studies, subjects felt they’d be better able to predict their reaction to an experience by imagining it, rather than hearing somebody else’s testimony. Even regarding such seemingly straightforward activities as deciding whether to eat pretzels or potato chips, they were wrong. Turns out, people are happier following advice.

If you go on a shopping spree, throw away the receipts.
In one study cited by both Schwartz and Gilbert, photography students were allowed to keep only one picture taken during their course. Some students were later allowed to swap their choice for a different photo, yet those who couldn’t change were much happier. How did they deal with inflexibility? By rationalizing how much they enjoyed their new decoration.

Take the local, and don’t wait for the express.
Inaction, on the other hand, gnaws away at the mind relentlessly, like so many rats chewing on an empty Mountain Dew bottle someone dropped onto the tracks as you idly waited for the 4. You should have just jumped on the 6.

Join a church, a yoga studio, an Alcoholics Anonymous group, or an underground fight club.
People who have more friends and belong to community-building groups are happier. To paraphrase the Norm MacDonald–era “Weekend Update,” perhaps that’s the kind of finding that could have been published in the scientific journal Duh, but there it is.

Order from the same takeout menu every time.
Researchers found that subjects asked to choose their meals weeks in advance mistakenly predicted that variety would make them happier, while those who simply decided what to eat on the spot were completely satisfied with the same thing each week. (Although eating macaroni and cheese endlessly, like repeating any pleasant experience over and over, reduces its appeal—so switch it up with cheeseburgers.)

Excerpted from http://nymag.com/news/features/17574/

Technorati Tags: happiness,new york,happiness research,happiness strategies for new yorkers

In last Monday’s Yorkshire Post Maggie Stratton asked the question:

In a society obsessed by material gain, should schools be teaching our children the true meaning of happiness?

Her answer draws on the advice of two education experts who believe it’s time to get very serious about happiness at school.

Alas, say Smith and Jones, unhappiness at school is a problem

Educationalist Alistair Smith and Sir John Jones, headteacher for 17 years, believe in preventative educational medicine.

Smith quotes research that:

• Children with a positive mind learn faster
• The best indicator of adult happiness is childhood happiness
• Children learn from the optimism or pessimism of adults around them
• Irritated children tend to be more neurotic and unhappy as adults.

He says happy teachers and students boost children’s results and prospects and lower their risk of problems like violence, truancy and drug taking.

Jones is concerned about the pressure of constant testing. He says ‘Youngsters today are the most tested in the history of testing. I don’t think testing brings happiness’.

So what’s the solution for happier kids at school?

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Smith and Jones run a conference called Winning the H Factor – The Secrets of Happy Schools. Their strategies include:

• Assembly – have only positive messages
• Weekly awards – for the person who cheered everyone up
• Weekly staff lunch – served by pupils
• Freedom of expression – allowing people to voice their grievances
• Positive language – eg challenges versus problems, learning versus behavior and setback versus crisis
• Focus on independent learning rather than test results – although of course tests can’t be altogether avoided.

Here’s how Jones sums it up:

‘What we are saying is let’s look at the culture, let’s talk about happiness. If pupils are happy they are less likely to come in and abuse or assault the teacher, they are less likely to drink too much on a Friday night or consider taking drugs under pressure from peers. If you build a community in which individuals are happy then they are more likely to be functional.’

Happiness strategies revisited

This ties in with the idea that being happy is good for you and everyone around you, as we explored in some of the early 101 Happiness Strategies, including

• Happiness Strategy 3. Choose happiness for your health
• Happiness Strategy 4. Be happy now
• Happiness Strategy 5. Spread it around

and summarized (good for a quick review) in

• Happiness Strategy 6. Make happiness a goal.

If you’ve got kids, this is a timely lesson – it’s never too early to start being happy.