Dare Share Your Dark Side

Buddha said, "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." Seek to reveal the latter within yourself, dare share a little of your dark side this evening, the night of the last full moon of 2010.

The U-Bend of Happiness

Happiness is just around the 'bend'
The greyer the world gets, the brighter it becomes
(Posted: 20/12/2010 on Winnipeg Free Press)

Ask people how they feel about getting older, and they will probably reply in the same vein as Maurice Chevalier: "Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative." Stiffening joints, weakening muscles, fading eyesight and the clouding of memory, coupled with the modern world's careless contempt for the old, seem a fearful prospect -- better than death, perhaps, but not much. Yet mankind is wrong to dread aging. Life is not a long slow decline from sunlit uplands toward the valley of death. It is, rather, a U-bend.

When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the midlife crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move toward old age they lose things they treasure -- vitality, mental sharpness and looks -- they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness.

This curious finding has emerged from a new branch of economics that seeks a more satisfactory measure than money of human well-being. Conventional economics uses money as a proxy for utility -- the dismal way in which the discipline talks about happiness. But some economists, unconvinced that there is a direct relationship between money and well-being, have decided to go to the nub of the matter and measure happiness itself.

There are already a lot of data on the subject collected by, for instance, America's General Social Survey, Eurobarometer and Gallup. Surveys ask two main sorts of questions. One concerns people's assessment of their lives, and the other how they feel at any particular time. The first goes along the lines of: Thinking about your life as a whole, how do you feel? The second is something like: Yesterday, did you feel happy/contented/angry/anxious? The first sort of question is said to measure global well-being, and the second hedonic or emotional well-being. They do not always elicit the same response: Having children, for instance, tends to make people feel better about their life as a whole, but also increases the chance that they felt angry or anxious yesterday.

Statisticians trawl through the vast quantities of data these surveys produce, rather as miners panning for gold. They are trying to find the answer to the perennial question: what makes people happy?

Four main factors, it seems: gender, personality, external circumstances and age. Women, by and large, are slightly happier than men. But they are also more susceptible to depression: A fifth to a quarter of women experience depression at some point in their lives, compared with around a tenth of men. Which suggests either that women are more likely to experience more extreme emotions, or that a few women are more miserable than men, while most are more cheerful.

Two personality traits shine through the complexity of economists' regression analyses: neuroticism and extroversion. Neurotic people -- those who are prone to guilt, anger and anxiety -- tend to be unhappy. This is more than a tautological observation about people's mood when asked about their feelings by pollsters or economists. Studies following people over many years have shown that neuroticism is a stable personality trait and a good predictor of levels of happiness. Neurotic people are not just prone to negative feelings: They also tend to have low emotional intelligence, which makes them bad at forming or managing relationships, and that in turn makes them unhappy.

Whereas neuroticism tends to make for gloomy types, extroversion does the opposite. Those who like working in teams and who relish parties tend to be happier than those who shut their office doors in the daytime and hole up at home in the evenings. This personality trait may help explain some cross-cultural differences: A study comparing similar groups of British, Chinese and Japanese people found that the British were, on average, both more extroverted and happier than the Chinese and Japanese.

Then there is the role of circumstance. All sorts of things in people's lives, such as relationships, education, income and health, shape the way they feel. Being married gives people a considerable lift, but not as big as the gloom that springs from being unemployed. In America, being black used to be associated with lower levels of happiness -- though the most recent figures suggest that being black or Hispanic is nowadays associated with greater happiness. People with children in the house are less happy than those without. More educated people are happier, but that effect disappears once income is controlled for. Education, in other words, seems to make people happy because it makes them richer. And richer people are happier than poor ones -- though just how much is a source of argument.

Lastly, there is age. Ask a bunch of 30-year-olds and another bunch of 70-year-olds (as Peter Ubel, of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, did with two colleagues, Heather Lacey and Dylan Smith, in 2006) which group they think is likely to be happier, and both groups point to the 30-year-olds. Ask them to rate their own well-being, and the 70-year-olds are the happier bunch. The academics quoted lyrics written by Pete Townshend of The Who when he was 20: "Things they do look awful cold / Hope I die before I get old." They pointed out that Townshend, having passed his 60th birthday, was writing a blog that glowed with good humor.

Townshend may have thought of himself as a youthful radical, but this view is ancient and conventional. The "seven ages of man" -- the dominant image of the life course in the 16th and 17th centuries -- was almost invariably conceived as a rise in stature and contentedness to middle age, followed by a sharp decline toward the grave. Inverting the rise and fall is a recent idea. "A few of us noticed the U-bend in the early 1990s," says Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick Business School. "We ran a conference about it, but nobody came."

Since then, interest in the U-bend has been growing. Its effect on happiness is significant -- about half as much, from the nadir of middle age to the elderly peak, as that of unemployment. It appears all over the world. David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College, and Oswald looked at the figures for 72 countries. The nadir varies among countries -- Ukrainians, at the top of the range, are at their most miserable at 62, and Swiss, at the bottom, at 35 -- but in the great majority of countries people are at their unhappiest in their 40s and early 50s. The global average is 46.

The U-bend shows up in studies not just of global well-being but also of hedonic or emotional well-being. One paper, published this year by Arthur Stone, Joseph Schwartz and Joan Broderick of Stony Brook University, and Angus Deaton of Princeton, breaks well-being down into positive and negative feelings and looks at how the experience of those emotions varies through life. Enjoyment and happiness dip in middle age, then pick up; stress rises during the early 20s, then falls sharply; worry peaks in middle age, and falls sharply thereafter; anger declines throughout life; sadness rises slightly in middle age, and falls thereafter.

Turn the question upside down, and the pattern still appears. When the British Labor Force Survey asks people whether they are depressed, the U-bend becomes an arc, peaking at 46.

There is always a possibility that variations are the result not of changes during the course of life, but of differences between cohorts. A 70-year-old European may feel different to a 30-year-old not because he is older, but because he grew up during the Second World War and was thus formed by different experiences. But the accumulation of data undermines the idea of a cohort effect. Americans and Zimbabweans have not been formed by similar experiences, yet the U-bend appears in both their countries. And if a cohort effect were responsible, the U-bend would not show up consistently in 40 years' worth of data.

Another possible explanation is that unhappy people die early. It is hard to establish whether that is true or not; but, given that death in middle age is fairly rare, it would explain only a little of the phenomenon. Perhaps the U-bend is merely an expression of the effect of external circumstances. After all, common factors affect people at different stages of the life-cycle. People in their 40s, for instance, often have teenage children. Could the misery of the middle-aged be the consequence of sharing space with angry adolescents? And older people tend to be richer. Could their relative contentment be the result of their piles of cash?

The answer, it turns out, is no: Control for cash, employment status and children, and the U-bend is still there. So the growing happiness that follows middle-aged misery must be the result not of external circumstances but of internal changes.

People, studies show, behave differently at different ages. Older people have fewer rows and come up with better solutions to conflict. They are better at controlling their emotions, better at accepting misfortune and less prone to anger. In one study, for instance, subjects were asked to listen to recordings of people supposedly saying disparaging things about them. Older and younger people were similarly saddened, but older people were less angry and less inclined to pass judgment, taking the view, as one put it, that "you can't please all the people all the time."

There are various theories as to why this might be so. Laura Carstensen, professor of psychology at Stanford University, talks of "the uniquely human ability to recognize our own mortality and monitor our own time horizons." Because the old know they are closer to death, she argues, they grow better at living for the present. They come to focus on things that matter now -- such as feelings -- and less on long-term goals. "When young people look at older people, they think how terrifying it must be to be nearing the end of your life. But older people know what matters most." For instance, she says, "Young people will go to cocktail parties because they might meet somebody who will be useful to them in the future, even though nobody I know actually likes going to cocktail parties."

There are other possible explanations. Maybe the sight of contemporaries keeling over infuses survivors with a determination to make the most of their remaining years. Maybe people come to accept their strengths and weaknesses, give up hoping to become chief executive or have a picture shown in the Royal Academy, and learn to be satisfied as assistant branch manager, with their watercolour on display at the church fete. "Being an old maid," says one of the characters in a story by Edna Ferber, an (unmarried) American novelist, was "like death by drowning -- a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling."

Perhaps acceptance of aging itself is a source of relief. "How pleasant is the day", observed William James, an American philosopher, "when we give up striving to be young -- or slender."

Whatever the causes of the U-bend, it has consequences beyond the emotional. Happiness doesn't just make people happy -- it also makes them healthier. John Weinman, professor of psychiatry at King's College London, monitored the stress levels of a group of volunteers and then inflicted small wounds on them. The wounds of the least stressed healed twice as fast as those of the most stressed. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Sheldon Cohen infected people with cold and flu viruses. He found that happier types were less likely to catch the virus, and showed fewer symptoms of illness when they did. So although old people tend to be less healthy than younger ones, their cheerfulness may help counteract their crumbliness.

Happier people are more productive, too. Oswald and two colleagues, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi, cheered up a bunch of volunteers by showing them a funny film, then set them mental tests and compared their performance to groups that had seen a neutral film, or no film at all. The ones who had seen the funny film performed 12 per cent better. This leads to two conclusions. First, if you are going to volunteer for a study, choose the economists' experiment rather than studies by psychologists or psychiatrists. Second, the cheerfulness of the old should help counteract their loss of productivity through declining cognitive skills -- a point worth remembering as the world works out how to deal with an aging workforce. The aging of the rich world is normally seen as a burden on the economy and a problem to be solved. The U-bend argues for a more positive view of the matter. The greyer the world gets, the brighter it becomes.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 20, 2010 A13

The Happiness of Being There (guardian.co.uk)

Taken whilst wandering through Chandni Chowk, one of Old Delhi's main thoroughfares, by Christopher Griffiths.

Here are some other cheerful photos from The Guardian's "Been There" photo competition.

Wisdom from a 9-year old

"Happiness is fun, food, friends and family."
Dominic Dominguez

The Road to Happiness

“The Rarámuri have no money, but nobody is poor,” Caballo said. “In the States, you ask for a glass of water and they take you to a homeless shelter. Here, they take you in and feed you. You ask to camp out, and they say, “Sure, but wouldn’t you rather sleep inside with us?’” Born to Run, Christopher McDougall

Quote of the Day

"There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way." Buddha

Secret to Happiness Quote of the Day:

"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." Frank Howard Clark

Buddha Says:

"Yum! Fall food season is here! Garlic mashed potay-toes! Pump-kin pie! Spaghetti squash, Mac-n-cheese, hot apple cider! Mexican hot chocolate! Let's get fat! Let's get happy!"

(Photo courtesy of blogger Fran Betlyon)

The Delivering Happiness Bus Tour : Inspire and Be Inspired.

It's been a year since Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote his first book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which became an instant bestseller on many lists, including the New York Times.

If you've read Delivering Happiness, you know Tony likes to do things a little differently and naturally, that carries over to launching a book. So starting in August, Tony and the Delivering Happiness team will be heading on a 20+ city bus tour with one mission in mind: to Inspire and Be Inspired.

They'll be driving cross-country, visiting colleges, companies and non-profits while throwing events, Delivering Happiness style. There will be town hall meetings, Q&As, book signings, BBQs and music along the way. They'll be talking to people that have been inspired by the book and, in turn, have inspired us.

This isn't your average tour bus either – the 47', baby-blue DHBus has received a complete happiness makeover that includes green grass (on the inside), a fridge stocked with Red Bull and pickles and the latest in technology that might give them a run at being the Most Wired Bus in the World.

And even if you're not physically on the bus, you can still hop on! Follow along by visiting our interactive map of real-time tweets about the tour. Engage with the team and read up on their travel journal, where we'll be sharing summaries of our events and memorable moments of the day.

Of course a big part of Inspire and Be Inspired is the community that's growing into the Delivering Happiness Movement. Come join the movement and connect with others throughout our online community. Share your story, read others, take part in the on-going discussions on the Delivering Happiness message boards or start your own.

Quote of the Day

"Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it." Groucho Marx

What "The Happiest Man in the World" Thinks About Happiness

(Originally published in New York Magazine, September 19, 2010. Photo: Courtesy of Konchog)

The Happiness Workout: Advice from the guru.
By Eric V. Copage

Matthieu Ricard, happiness guru, has a new book, Why Meditate, a follow-up to his earlier how-to manual, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. He came to town to promote both it and the practice of happiness in general. Ricard is a 64-year-old Frenchman who, shortly after receiving a doctorate in cellular genetics, decided to become a Buddhist monk. Today he is wearing the yellow-and-burgundy robes of his calling at an event in the West 17th Street loft offices of the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. He is conducting a daylong meditation workshop for 57 quietly—and spiritually—affluent-looking men and women. He is also signing a few books.

Neuroscientists studying meditation have done numerous brain scans and brain-wave measurements on Ricard; they found that the parts of his brain associated with positive emotions were unusually active. In 2007, a British paper nicknamed him “The Happiest Man in the World,” which stuck.

In person, Ricard does seem to chuckle a lot. He says that while often people think of happiness as the absence of conflict, it’s actually “a cluster of qualities: altruism, compassion, inner peace, inner freedom, and inner strength.” And it can be cultivated. “It’s not, in principle, different from any skill. Instead of going to a gymnasium for fitness, you go to a compassion gymnasium, which is sitting in the morning and, for twenty minutes, bringing love and kindness to your mind.” Eventually, “It will raise your baseline.”

I confront him with the basic type-A New Yorker’s suspicion of bliss: Wouldn’t someone lose their mojo, their creative spark and ambition, if they were too happy? “You don’t become dull like a vegetable,” he promises. “You’ll still have your ups and downs, but where you come back after winning the lottery or losing, your response will be different.”

Wouldn’t a person too steeped in good feelings become vulnerable to being taken advantage of? “Altruism and compassion doesn’t mean stupidly letting everyone step on your toes,” he says. “When you meet someone, have an open attitude—an a priori trusting. If you smile, smile—but you don’t have to smile like you’re crazy. If you value others, you are concerned with their happiness and suffering. That doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

I ask him if he thinks unhappiness is romanticized. “When my book on happiness was published in Paris, many said, ‘We don’t care for happiness, so leave us alone!’ They say suffering is so interesting, it’s always changing. But I think for some reason you are lost and can’t see how you cultivate happiness. And you make a whole romantic theory about unhappiness, rather than remedy the cause of that suffering.”

So what irritates him? “I don’t feel irritation,” he responds haltingly, after a beat. “Irritation has to do with a self-centered attitude: ‘This bugs me! I can’t stand that!’ It’s not like indignation, which is a noble form of anger. It says, ‘This is not acceptable that there is a massacre, that there is an injustice.’ It comes from compassion that there is something here that has caused a lot of suffering and should be remedied. But irritation is basically when you’re not in control of your mind.”

How to Make a Country of Happy People: free education, free health care, and a clean mountain environment...

A few happy Bhutanese children.

"It does not demand much imagination intelligence," the prime minster told the summit, "to understand that endless pursuit of material growth in a world with limited natural resources within a delicately balanced ecology is just not sustainable -- that it is dangerous and stupid."

Happy Bhutan proposes a new global goal
By Tim Witcher (AFP)

(Originally published by AFP, September 21, 2010)

UNITED NATIONS — The introvert Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on Monday urged the world to adopt a new Millennium Development Goal -- happiness -- if it really wants to end the scourge of poverty, hunger and disease.

Bhutan's Prime Minister, Jigmi Thinley, condemned the "dangerous and stupid" pursuit of wealth, even by some of his big and brash neighbours India and China, in a speech to the UN summit on reaching the MDGs.

The land of the Gross National Happiness index again sought to export its optimistic ideology, which the prime minister said encompassed all of the eight major goals set by the United Nations in 2000.

Aims which Thinley said Bhutan is on target to reach, while the rest of the world struggles.

Thinley said that as the eight existing goals are likely to remain after the target date of 2015 "my delegation would like to propose to this highest forum in the world that we include happiness as the ninth MDG."

"It is a goal that stands as a separate value while representing as well, the sum total outcome of the other eight. Its relevance goes beyond the poor and developing member states to bind all of humanity, rich and poor, to a timeless common vision."

Gross National Happiness was conceived by the father of Buddhist Bhutan's young monarch -- Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck -- and is firmly established as official government policy.

Seeking a more holistic indicator of development that transcends the "materialism" of Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Happiness measures four criteria -- sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the environment, and good governance.

It does not ignore economic growth, however. Bhutan, which has been slowly emerging from hundreds of years of isolation -- only allowing television in 1999 -- has clocked an annual average of about eight percent growth for the past few years.

Bhutan says it concentrates on the type of growth that is important. It has policies that provide free education and health care, a clean mountain environment and making sure the country's religious and cultural traditions remain intact.

"It does not demand much imagination intelligence," the prime minster told the summit, "to understand that endless pursuit of material growth in a world with limited natural resources within a delicately balanced ecology is just not sustainable -- that it is dangerous and stupid.

"One cannot imagine, even as China and India aspire to compete in consumption with the USA, what would become of Earth if every global citizen acquired the same voracious capacity."

According to the prime minister, "the evidence of the limited ability of nature to tolerate abuse is there for us to suffer in the rising frequency and fury of multiple calamities." He mentioned the Pakistan flood disaster as well as the huge oil slick which has hit the Gulf of Mexico this year.

Thinley said the global financial crisis was a reminder that much of the world's wealth is "illusory" and can quickly "disappear without a trace."

He said the current economic crisis could get worse and predicted "more, we can be certain, will strike to persuade us of the need to change our way of life."

The prime minister left the podium with a smile and to a strong if bemused ovation from world leaders.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved

Designing Your Own Workspace Improves Happiness

(excerpted from Designing Your Own Workspace Improves Health Happiness and Productivity, originally published on ohsonline.com on September 14, 2010)

Results consistently showed that the more control people had over their office spaces, the happier and more motivated they were in their jobs. They felt physically more comfortable at work, identified more with their employers, and felt more positive about their jobs in general.

Studies by the University of Exeter's School of Psychology have revealed the potential for remarkable improvements in workers’ attitudes to their jobs by allowing them to personalize their offices.

The findings challenge the conventional approach taken by most companies, where managers often create a “lean” working environment that reflects a standardized corporate identity.

Dr Craig Knight conducted the research as part of his PhD and is now Director of PRISM – a company that deals with space issues in the workplace. He said “Most contemporary offices are functional and offer very little user control, but our studies suggest this practice needs to be challenged.

“When people feel uncomfortable in their surroundings they are less engaged – not only with the space but also with what they do in it. If they can have some control, that all changes and people report being happier at work, identifying more with their employer, and are more efficient when doing their jobs.”

The research involved more than 2,000 office workers in a series of studies looking at attitudes to — and productivity within — working space. This included two surveys of workers’ attitudes carried out via online questionnaires, as well as two experiments which examined workers’ efficiency when carrying out tasks under different conditions.

The surveys assessed the level of control workers had over their space — ranging from none at all to being fully consulted over design changes. Workers were then asked a series of questions about how they felt about their workspace and their jobs.

Results consistently showed that the more control people had over their office spaces, the happier and more motivated they were in their jobs. They felt physically more comfortable at work, identified more with their employers, and felt more positive about their jobs in general.

(To read the entire article, as published on Occupational Health and Safety's website, ohsonline.com, click here)

"Gay" Means "Happy"

"Gay" Means "Happy"

Words (not image) seen on a t-shirt-for-sale, today in Union Square Park, NYC

Stop Waiting! and Start Getting Happy!

How to be Happy:
Tips for cultivating contentment

Are you tired of waiting around for happiness to find you? Stop waiting and start getting happy with these tips.

(Originally published on by the MayoClinic.com, September 15, 2010)

Do you know how to be happy? Or are you waiting for happiness to find you? Despite what the fairy tales depict, happiness doesn't appear by magic. It's not even something that happens to you. It's something you can cultivate. So, what are you waiting for? Start discovering how to be happy.

How to be happy: What science tells us
Only 10 percent or so of the variation in people's reports of happiness can be explained by differences in their circumstances. The bulk of what determines happiness is your personality and — more modifiable — your thoughts and behaviors. So, yes, you can learn how to be happy — or at least happier.

Although you may have thought, as many people do, that happiness comes from being born rich or beautiful or living a stress-free life, the reality is that those things don't confer lasting happiness. Indeed, how to be happy can't be boiled down to one thing. Happiness is the sum of your life choices. People who are happy seem to intuitively know this, and their lives are built on the following pillars:

• Devoting time to family and friends
• Appreciating what they have
• Maintaining an optimistic outlook
• Feeling a sense of purpose
• Living in the moment

How to be happy: Practice, practice, practice
The good news is that your choices, thoughts and actions can influence your level of happiness. It's not as easy as flipping a switch, but you can turn up your happiness level. Here's how to get started on the path to creating a happier you.

Invest in relationships
Surround yourself with happy people. Being around people who are content buoys your own mood. And by being happy yourself, you give something back to those around you.

Friends and family help you celebrate life's successes and support you in difficult times. Although it's easy to take friends and family for granted, these relationships need nurturing. Build up your emotional account with kind words and actions. Be careful and gracious with critique. Let people know that you appreciate what they do for you or even just that you're glad they're part of your life.

Express gratitude
Gratitude is more than saying thank you. It's a sense of wonder, appreciation and, yes, thankfulness for life. It's easy to go through life without recognizing your good fortune. Often, it takes a serious illness or other tragic event to jolt people into appreciating the good things in their lives. Don't wait for something like that to happen to you.
Make a commitment to practice gratitude. Each day identify at least one thing that enriches your life. When you find yourself thinking an ungrateful thought, try substituting a grateful one. For example, replace "my sister forgot my birthday" with "my sister has always been there for me in tough times." Let gratitude be the last thought before you go off to sleep. Let gratitude also be your first thought when you wake up in the morning.

Cultivate optimism
Develop the habit of seeing the positive side of things. You needn't become a Pollyanna — after all, bad things do happen, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. But you don't have to let the negatives color your whole outlook on life. Remember that what is right about you almost always trumps what is wrong about you.
If you're not an optimistic person by nature, it may take time for you to change your pessimistic thinking. Start by recognizing negative thoughts as you have them. Then take a step back and ask yourself these key questions:

• Is the situation really as bad as I think?
• Is there another way to look at the situation?
• What can I learn from this experience that I can use in the future?
  

Find your purpose
People who strive to meet a goal or fulfill a mission — whether it's growing a garden, caring for children or finding one's spirituality — are happier than those who don't have such aspirations. Having a goal provides a sense of purpose, bolsters self-esteem and brings people together. What your goal is doesn't matter as much as whether the process of working toward it is meaningful to you. Try to align your daily activities with the long-term meaning and purpose of your life. Research studies suggest that relationships provide the strongest meaning and purpose to your life. So cultivate meaningful relationships.
Are you engaged in something you love? If not, ask yourself these questions to discover how you can find your purpose:

• What excites and energizes me?
• What are my proudest achievements?
• How do I want others to remember me?

Live in the moment
Don't postpone joy waiting for a day when your life is less busy or less stressful. That day may never come. Instead, look for opportunities to savor the small pleasures of everyday life. Focus on the positives in the present moment. Don't spend your time rehashing the past or worrying about the future. Take time to stop and smell the flowers.

References

1. Lyubomirsky S. The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York, N.Y.: Penguin, 2007:14.


2. Baker D, et al. What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2003:39.


3. Hill AL, et al. Emotions as infectious diseases in a large social network: The SISa model. Proceedings Biological Sciences. In press. Accessed July 7, 2010.


4. Sood A. Log On: Two Steps to Mindful Awareness. Rochester, Minn.: Morning Dew Publications, 2009:28.


5. Snyder CR, et al. Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Exploration of Human Strengths. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2007:145.

Don’t let one bad apple spoil the barrel

Quite often, as we go through life, we’ll experience moments when one person in a group, one issue in a relationship, one personal problem is so rotten that it threatens to infect the rest of your life, especially if we allow ourselves to give into the fallacy that it is representative of the whole.

In these situations you must remind yourself that you have a choice—you can either let the apple continue to rot and ruin everything or you can pick it out, isolate it, and recognize that it need not affect the rest of the situation.

Picking out this bad apple sometimes is simply a matter of compartmentalizing the situation, and being mentally and emotionally strong enough to know that it is not indicative of a widespread concern. One cloud does not mean the sky is falling.

You can expedite resolving the issue by focusing on the positive, continuing to conduct your life as usual, rather than allowing the bad apple to take over. Certainly, at some point, you must deal with the issue, problem or person, but it need not usurp everything else.

So, stay positive, remind yourself that it is but one issue, one person, one problem and don’t let that one bad apple spoil the barrel.

Happiness Fuels Success...not the other way around

"Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward:

Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.

When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work."

(Excerpted from David M. Kinchen's Book Review of The Happiness Advantage By Shawn Achor.)

Happiness can be a taco with all the fixings

"After all, if your loved ones are OK, the bills are paid and a couple of monster tacos aren't going to break the bank, how much more do you really need?

I know. The guacamole."

New York City:
I came across this editorial on the recent Princeton study and I thought I'd share it with my readers. It reflects a certain philosophy that a lot of us American-Latinos and Latin Americans understand and live by on a daily basis.

There is a wonderful saying in Spanish that I love to use whenever toasting, usually for no better reason than to acknowledge the happiness one experiences when simply being at a "happy hour" with friends:

¡Al salud, amor y dinero, y el tiempo para disfrutar los todos!
To our health, love and money, and time to enjoy them all.

I think it is worth noting that "to money" here does not mean "a lot of money" or winning the lottery, it simply means, as Ms. Anglin points out, is "just enough money" to live responsibly by and to enjoy life often, which in essence is not much money at all, if you do it right.

Happiness can be a taco with all the fixings
by Maria Anglin
(Originally posted to mysanantonio.com on September 9, 2010)

To all of those people who love to repeat the dicho about how money can't buy happiness, a new study has come along saying "Fijate que si."

Well, sort of.

On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reported on a study that found people's emotional well being, or happiness, increases with their income up until they hit $75,000 a year. After that, the researchers reported, the level of happiness stays about the same.

People making less than that, a Princeton economist told the Chronicle, face too much “stuff” that interferes with their day-to-day happiness. Presumably, the economist was talking about facing cost of living expenses and decisions that could lead to more bills, although he might also have been talking about all the “stuff” que compra el vecino with really bad credit. It's hard not to be a little envidioso of El You-Only-Live-Once and his new iPad, his week-long trip to Curacao and the new and loaded hemi, unless you're with him on Saturday morning when he's frantically figuring out which bill to pay and which one to leave in the shoebox hasta que caiga el proximo paycheck.

But for those who count their coins responsibly, it makes perfect sense that a little more scratch makes life easier. Anybody who has ever had to make the difficult choice between the beef fajita monster taco con guacamole y un taco flaco de picadillo con papas knows that this is true. For those who don't understand the happiness a good taco can bring, here's another example — a full tank of gas vs. as much gas as you can afford with the few bucks left over after the trip to the Dollar Only, plus the quarters that were hiding under the napkins in the car's console. It's safe to bet the study's findings also have something to do with the happy people surveyed also having a good memory; nickeleando is a tough lesson and one not easily forgotten.

Those who quote the song “Pobrecito mi patron, cree que el pobre soy yo,” are likely hovering around that $75,000 mark, which is probably lower in places like San Antonio that are blessed with a lower cost of living than other big cities. While money can buy us a lot of freedom and peace of mind, it can also attract big problems along with all manner of sinverguenzas, ratas and pediches — which is why those who know this actively avoid buying lottery tickets with huge jackpots.

After all, if your loved ones are OK, the bills are paid and a couple of monster tacos aren't going to break the bank, how much more do you really need?

I know. The guacamole.

—mariaanglin@yahoo.com

After $75,000, Money Can't Buy Day-to-Day Happiness

"What other studies have also shown is that money matters up to a point. But after a certain point, having additional money doesn't make people like their lives better or feel better about themselves on a day to day basis."

This holds true in other countries around the world as well... Once per capita GDP rises to a point in which people are no longer struggling to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and healthcare, additional increases in overall national wealth don't seem to make much of a difference in happiness..."

After $75,000, Money Can't Buy Day-to-Day Happiness
But the more people make, the better they feel about their lives overall, study found

By Jenifer Goodwin, Bloomberg Businessweek


MONDAY, Sept. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Money can help buy happiness -- at least if you're bringing in about $75,000 a year, new research shows.

While happiness increases along with annual household incomes up to about $75,000, beyond that, earning more money has no effect on day-to-day contentment, according to the study.

But that doesn't mean you should give up trying to get that promotion. While making more won't help your emotional state on any given day, people who had household incomes above $75,000 were more apt to say they were satisfied overall with their life.

Those who made, say, $120,000 reported more satisfaction with their lives and had a higher assessment of their life overall than those who made less, while those who made $160,000 evaluated their lives even better still.

"It's really important to recognize that the word 'happiness' covers a lot of ground," said study author Angus Deaton, a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. "There is your overall evaluation of how your life is going, while the other has to do more with emotional well-being at the moment. Higher incomes don't seem to have any effect on well-being after around $75,000, whereas your evaluation of your life keeps going up along with income."

The study is in the Sept. 6 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers used data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which surveyed 450,000 Americans in 2008 and 2009 about their household income, emotional state during the prior day and overall feelings about their life and well-being.

Both measures of happiness are getting at something different, Deaton noted. You might be feeling blue or unhappy one day because your boss hassled you or you got a speeding ticket, but overall, you think life is going pretty well.

Conversely, you might have felt happy, even joyful, on an outing with your friends and family, but are overall not satisfied with your life or the direction it's going.

So which measure of happiness matters more?

That's a philosophical question and perhaps one only the individual can answer, Deaton said. "That's a really deep, hard question. [Both measures] are important. But if you're unhappy now, the fact your life may be going well doesn't make up for that."

Social scientists and psychologists have long grappled with how to measure happiness, said James Maddux, a psychology professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who was not involved with the study.

The new study does a good job teasing apart the different aspects of emotional well-being, including more immediate emotions vs. bigger-picture life evaluations, Maddux said.

"This study is consistent with a lot of other studies on the relationship between income and happiness or overall life satisfaction," Maddux said. "What other studies have also shown is that money matters up to a point. But after a certain point, having additional money doesn't make people like their lives better or feel better about themselves on a day to day basis."

This holds true in other countries around the world as well, he noted. Once per capita GDP rises to a point in which people are no longer struggling to meet basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and healthcare, additional increases in overall national wealth don't seem to make much of a difference in happiness, Maddux said.

Maddux urged America's beleaguered workers not to get too hung up on the $75,000 figure. That income level can mean very different things depending on how many people are in the family, what sorts of financial responsibilities you have and where you live, he said.

"$75,000 is not a magical figure people need to achieve to be at their happiest," Maddux said. "The point is there is a threshold at which people probably are not going to be substantially happier if they keep making more money."

In 2008, average U.S household income was about $71,500, while the median -- or the point at which half of incomes are higher and half are lower -- was $52,000. The average skews higher than the median because of a few very high incomes, Deaton explained.

While people with household incomes of more than $75,000 probably won't feel an enduring happiness boost if they are able to earn more, losing substantial income would likely not be good for their emotional well being, the study suggested. As income dropped, respondents reported declining happiness and increased sadness and stress.

And,according to the study, poverty exacerbated the emotional impact of negative life events such as illness and divorce. Nor did the poor get as much of a happiness boost from weekends as those who were better-off, according to the researchers.

"Life is unfair for the poor in all sort of dimensions," Deaton said.

Confucius says...

Simple meals, water to drink, bent elbow for pillow: therein is happiness.