Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

About this talk

From the TED site:

Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world’s most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you.

The upshot

Wallace’s ‘grueling quest’ is amusing, but if you just want the upshot, it’s this:

He ends by describing a study from researches at Stanford and CalTech. They gave participants the same wine labeled with different price tags.

Unsurprisingly, many participants said they preferred the more expensive wine.

But surprisingly, MRI brain imaging performed on the participants showed that their brains registered more pleasure for the wine with the (fake) higher price tag.

My take: The happiness, it seems, is real. We only think we need money to buy it.

Teenage affluenza is spreading fast

This video has done the rounds, but it’s well worth revisiting, even at more than 5 minutes. If you haven’t seen it, please do – your time and attention will be rewarded.

It brilliantly highlights the effect comparison has on how we see our lives. If we compare our bodies with those of supermodels, our bank accounts with those of media moguls, or our track times with those of Olympic athletes, it probably won’t do much to boost our happiness. But if we’re a little wiser, we can choose to see our lives in a more realistic light, and recognize just how much we have to be happy about.

The video is so cool because of its humor.

Humor is also how David Rakoff’s recent essay collection makes his point about our culture of excess. It’s delightfully titled:

Now, Don’t Get Too Comfortable:
The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems.

Happiness life strategy

UrbanDictionary.com defines first world problems as:

Problems from living in a wealthy, industrialized nation that third worlders would probably roll their eyes at.

The truth is, most of our problems fit this category. We live in the first world, so it makes sense that social slights, iPods and overweight are the kinds of concerns that occupy us. But the reminder from commentators like World Vision and David Rakoff to run the occasional reality check on our perspective, expectations and points of comparison is worth heeding.

Choosing to see our problems in perspective leaves us with less to worry about and more to appreciate. And that’s a great life strategy for happiness.

December can be crazy – shopping crowds, stressful relatives, too much eating, drinking, and spending – too much everything!

When the end of the year is filled with excess it can really put the kibosh on your plans for a great start to a happy new year.

If you want to avoid falling into the same olds patterns as last year – and the year before – then download and print SparkPeople’s calendar of  31 daily tips for better choices through the holiday season (you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader).

These are excellent ideas for keeping this December sane – including how to:

• Splurge wisely
• Simplify gifts
• De-stress
• Just say no
• Give back
• Rest up
• Stop when full
• Stay active

Follow SparkPeople’s tips and you can ease into January with a mind, body and bank account ready to enjoy a fresh start and a happy 2008.

Technorati Tags: Christmas,New Year,life strategies,happiness strategies,money,health

Image by donut_p under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

If Monday’s post got you considering your own calling, you may be interested in this week’s TIME magazine article Happiness on the job, which asks the question: Which jobs make people happy?

The answer, it seems, is not necessarily the best-paid ones. According to the article:

- Americans are reasonably happy workers. About 90% rate their jobs as moderately or very satisfying.
- The highest happiness scorers are firefighters and priests, occupations with incomes around the US average.

I won’t go into the hierarchy of happy vocations diagrammed in TIME because I’d hate to imply that a particular job makes happiness more or less likely. In fact, even though I’ve provided the link I don’t recommend you check out where your job sits on the index – unless you’re already pretty happy and won’t be discouraged if your job ranks low. There are happy and unhappy people in every occupation, so knowing the happiness rank of the average person with your job isn’t all that enlightening.

TIME asks which jobs make people happy, but a better question is which job will make you happy. The kind of work that can bring you happiness will most likely:

• Tap your talents and strengths
• Be enjoyable
• Give you a sense of purpose and meaning.

It’s no wonder, then, that firefighters and clerics top the list – you wouldn’t choose either career path to dodge the family business or make a quick buck – you’d have to feel called to it. It’s also significant that these high happiness scorers are average income earners.

Once again, it seems that meaning matters more than money in making you happy. (Hey – I could have said merry.)

As if we needed more convincing.

Related posts:
Happiness Life Strategy: How to find your passion
How to be happy – 10. Don’t keep up with the Joneses

Web MD has an article called Strategies for Happiness: 7 Steps to Becoming a Happier Person By Tom Valeo. Reviewed by Cynthia Dennison Haines, MD.

Here’s a quick summary of the 7 strategies from the article:

Happiness Strategy # 1: Don’t Worry, Choose Happy

First, make a decision to be happy. Then you can select the strategies to help you. The remaining strategies are the sorts of things psychologists suggest.

Happiness Strategy #2: Cultivate Gratitude

It can dispel bitterness and despair.

Happiness Strategy #3: Foster Forgiveness

Grudges can affect physical and mental health, and ruminating is stressful.

Happiness Strategy #4: Counteract Negative Thoughts and Feelings

Valeo suggests meditation, rhythmic breathing, yoga, or relaxation techniques as well as learning to identify and dispute thoughts of inadequacy and helplessness.

Happiness Strategy #5: Remember, Money Can’t Buy Happiness

Readers of this blog know all about this one! See the recent Happiness Strategy How to be happy – 10. Don’t keep up with the Joneses.

Happiness Strategy #6: Foster Friendship

Valeo mentions that an Australian study found people over 70 with rich friendship networks enjoyed greater longevity.

Happiness Strategy #7: Engage in Meaningful Activities

Do more of what means more to get more out of life.

My 2 cents

In his introduction to the strategies Valeo says ‘your talent for happiness is, to a large degree, determined by your genes’. I say puh-huh! In fact, as we saw in a recent Happiness Strategy – How to be happy – 11. Focus on what you can do to be happier – research suggests that only between 25% and 52% of happiness variance is related to genes. And these figures reflect potential – environment (what you experience) and volition (what you choose to think and do) also contribute to whether and how genetic dispositions are expressed.

Apart from that quibble, the list of 7 strategies is an excellent one.

Valeo sums up by noting ‘happiness can be a matter of choice — not just luck’.

I’d add — and not just money, genes, or life circumstances either.

Technorati Tags: Strategies , money , relationships , forgiveness , gratitude , meaning