Happiness research ( believe it or not, there are nerds with coca-cola bottle glasses researching what makes us happy) has shown that 50% of our happiness is genetically determined and already pre-destined. This is called the happiness "set point" or "happi-stat". According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, only 10 % of happiness is attributed to differences in life circumstances. These are things like health, money, houses, cars, job situations; even family harmony and beauty: things that we spend most of our energy pursuing. The other 40 %, according to her, is under our control.
In her book, The How of Happiness, she outlines activities that we can do to influence that 40 %. Here are the big ones that stuck with me:
1. Practicing Gratitude and Positive Thinking. This is the area where I found that I need to work the hardest. Especially avoiding overthinking and social comparison. So much of our social interaction is based on comparison that it seems especially challenging not to compare. Even at the work-place, a common strategy to get employees to perform better is to provide "informational pieces" comparing them to their peers in every aspect of their work.
2. Investing in Social Connections. Practicing acts of kindness and nurturing social relationships seems more intuitive to me. Social connections can get tricky when they dangerously move towards "keeping up with the Jones's".
3. Managing Stress Hardship and Trauma. Developing one's own personal repertoire of coping strategies and learning to forgive seem like they are easier strategies to learn. Being less judgemental and remembering that there are only two kinds of people: those who are being kind right now and those that are being unkind right now.
4. Living in the present. Savoring life's joys and increasing flow experinces, getting into the flow of things and completely immerse yourself.
Here is something that really struck a chord: "Act the way you want to be". If you want to become a gangster, start acting like one; if you want to be a happy person, start acting like one.
Thanks Sonja, I promise to be a different person starting today.
I admire the eloquence of your thught method and the way you so skillfully distilled down Sonja's treatise into a quarter page summary. May I take the liberty of distilling it down further...
ReplyDelete1. FORGIVE-Yourself for past slips and others fro their slips against you. Truly forgive and not just pretend to. Because God forgives us so we have to do the same for others around us.
2. LOVE- yourself and others for God loves us so we may love others around us.
3. ACCEPT- Yourself as who you are today while of course always striving to better your own self one notch at a time.
4. Emotionally and to whatever extent possible physically distance yourself from sources of negative energy. Put them in an imaginary shoebox and float it down an imaginary river and blissfully watch it go away from you.
Set a date for doing #1,2,3,4 above and just do it, start afresh.. and move on happier. I did it midnight of 31st 2009. It works.
Neeraj Vij MD
Phoenix, AZ.