Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

Look alive!

A new study has found that thinking
fast can improve your mood.

Princeton and Harvard researchers conducted six experiments requiring participants to briskly whisk through activities such as brainstorming, reading ideas on screen or watching a fast-forwarded film clip.

Thinking fast brought participants creativity, elation and, to a lesser extent, a sense of energy and power.

Scientific American observes:

It is unclear why thought speed affects mood, but [the study’s lead author, Emily] Pronin and her colleagues theorize that our own expectations may be part of the equation. In earlier research, they found that people generally believe fast thinking is a sign of a good mood. This lay belief may lead us to instinctively infer that if we are thinking quickly we must be happy. In addition, they suggest, thinking quickly may unleash the brain’s novelty-loving dopamine system, which is involved in sensations of pleasure and reward.

So up your thinking speed – and you’ll join the ranks of the quick and the glad.

Image by jurvetson

Guess what!

I’ve recently released a nifty
little Strategies for Happiness
workbook on creating more
happiness in your life.

It uses checklist-style worksheets to guide you to think about, and organize, the areas of your life you want to change, including:

• - Creating a happiness mindset
• - Optimism and beliefs
• - Goals and happiness
• - Research-based strategies for happiness
• - Releasing barriers to happiness

In fact, it’s much of the stuff you read about here, put into a ready-made action plan.

It’s an instant PDF download, so if you’re keen to get started right away, you can!
Download now!

Are you planning to be happier
in 2009?

If it’s your goal to boost your
happiness over the next year,
you’ll find some some ideas 
for what to focus on  in the post 

How to be Organized in 2009:
Day 8 – Strategies for Happiness 

at my Get Organized Wizard blog.

Ideas for goals include:

• Creating a happiness mindset
• Strategies for happiness
• Releasing barriers to happiness

You might find other, happiness-related areas to inspire you this year in the organizing your new year’s resolutions series, including Personal Development, Health & Fitness, Fun & Recreation. Managing Technology, Home, Family and Relationships.

Ready to make 2009 the year you organize your happiness?

Picture adapted from image by Aldon.

About this talk

From the TED site:

Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness — sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces.

The take-away

Gilbert gives heaps of interesting examples to show how bad we are at comparing costs and estimating value, and the problem of shifting comparisons. As a result, we make poor decisions about what will make us happy.

In essence:

• we underestimate the odds of our future pains, and
• we overestimate the value of our present pleasures.

My 2 cents

To put it another way: immediate gratification ain’t so gratifying – our brains simply trick us into thinking it will be.

Knowing that, we may find greater happiness if we adopt those old-fashioned virtues of patience, persistence and discipline.

But not when it comes to chocolate.

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.