How happy are you?
Social scientists are trying hard to find out how you or others would answer, but their task is not an easy one. Measuring the happiness of individuals might be likened to attempting to quantify the love that a man has for his wife or the amount of grief that is caused by a death in the family. Emotions do not lend themselves to precise measurement. However, scientists do recognize a basic truth: All humans have the capacity for being happy. This is the good news for you and me!
Let’s think about a flower for minute. To flourish, a flower needs good soil, water and a proper climate. Likewise, researchers recognize that certain conditions contribute to happiness. These include physical well-being; good work; adequate food, shelter, and clothing; fulfillment of creative desires; and true friends; just to mention some of them.
You would probably not dispute the effect those conditions have on a person’s prospects for being happy. But we as human beings are more complex than a flower and need to be balanced when consuming or deciding for the things that are going to bring us happiness over all.
You would probably not dispute the effect those conditions have on a person’s prospects for being happy. But we as human beings are more complex than a flower and need to be balanced when consuming or deciding for the things that are going to bring us happiness over all.
Have hope and be positive
Something to remember is that nobody is born happy, lives happy and dies happy, as if happiness was a born talent in our genes or a gift in our personality (although people with certain personalities might find it easier to be happy, for example: people that are very loving). Happiness is an art, something we work for, the result of our surroundings, similar to the flower example mentioned earlier.
One thing that you have to develop before being happy is a belief called hope. What is hope exactly? Many dictionaries describe it slightly different but with the following main idea, which is: “Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.”
Having said this, hoping for something doesn’t mean that you will automatically be happy after that. You need to be realistic with what you hope for. You can’t hope for having 1 million dollars in 24 hours and be happy. Having hope is to always expect that things in life will have a good outcome. Having hope is being positive, believing that your problems or mistakes are one more opportunity for you to learn and find solutions that will have good results. After you suffer a tragedy, you hope for things to get better and to stop suffering with time. Happiness does not mean that you will never suffer. It means that no matter what happens, you will not lose hope, which is required to keep yourself focused, sane and a happy person overall.
We are fragile beings and are limited on what we can do about our problems. So we do our best and hope for the best by being positive. To illustrate: Several years ago Maria watched her husband die a painful death from cancer. Her tears had scarcely dried when financial problems forced her and her three daughters out of the family home. Two years later, Maria discovered that she had cancer. She has had two major operations and deals with severe pain every day. Despite these problems, she is so positive in her thinking that she is moved to encourage other people. How does she maintain her happiness?
Maria says: “When I have a problem, I try not to think too much about myself. I avoid asking questions like these: ‘Why me? Why do I have to suffer like this? Why did I have to get sick?’ Negative thinking uses up energy. Instead, I direct my energy toward being positive and helping others. That brings me happiness.”
Is money the answer?
Your true value as a person or level of happiness has nothing to do with the size of your bank account. In fact, the pursuit of wealth often adds anxieties, which sap the joy out of life and steal time from more important pursuits. According to Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology in the United States, the more people seek satisfaction in material things, the less they find it there. A Bible writer named Solomon put it this way: “The man who loves money can never have enough, and the man who is in love with great wealth enjoys no return from it.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10, The New English Bible) The situation might be compared to the itch produced by a mosquito bite—the more you scratch it, the more it itches, until it becomes an open sore.
Don’t get me wrong. Enjoying the results of our hard work is one of the things in life that bring joy and satisfaction, which contributes to our happiness. By working hard, we increase our self-respect, another vital ingredient in happiness. We are also able to enjoy some of life’s wholesome pleasures. There is a difference, however, between enjoying some of the good things money offers and making the pursuit of riches the focus of our life.
Occasionally we hear anecdotal accounts about individuals who grew up in troubled homes but fought against all odds and became very wealthy. “Such stories are sometimes cited as evidence that they made the best of a bad thing, turning out well despite or because of their unhappy childhoods,” explains a report on happiness in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The problem with this interpretation, according to research, is that they may not have turned out so well after all. They just turned out wealthy.”
Be generous and thankful
Happy people, not self-centered, tend to be generous and interested in others. “There really is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving. Besides giving in a material way, we can give of our time and energy, which may be even more appreciated, especially in the family. Husbands and wives need to spend time together to keep their marriage strong and happy, and parents need to make ample time for their children, talking with them, showing them affection, and teaching them. When family members give in such ways, they thrive and their home becomes a haven of happiness.
Conversely, when others give to you—whether of themselves or in some other way—do you ‘show yourself thankful’? Living by those three words can make a world of difference in our relationships with others and can greatly add to our own joy. When someone expresses heartfelt gratitude to you, doesn’t your heart glow with warmth?
Showing gratitude also raises our awareness of the good things that happen to us. In a controlled experiment, a researcher at the University of California at Riverside, U.S.A., asked her subjects to keep a “gratitude journal”—a diary of things for which they were thankful. It comes as no surprise that over a period of six weeks, the subjects felt noticeably more satisfied with life.
The lesson? No matter what your situation, learn to count your blessings.
The benefits of being happy
A happy disposition is good medicine. “Happiness or related mental states like hope, optimism (being positive) and contentment appear to reduce the risk or limit the severity of cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease, diabetes, hypertension, colds and upper-respiratory infections,” says a report in Time magazine. Furthermore, a Dutch study of elderly patients revealed that over a nine-year period, a happy, positive disposition reduced the risk of death by an amazing 50 percent!
How mental states affect the body remains unclear. Research has shown, however, that positive, optimistic people have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is known to suppress the immune system.
Without complicating your life, focus on the simple and most valuable things in life. The things that you cannot set a price on and the ones you are not able to buy. Remember to have hope, be positive, be generous and thankful. This way, your journey to happiness will seem a lot simpler than what you ever thought it would be.
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