Happiness Is Partly Inherited
(From LiveScience, as posted 04 March 2008)
The key to happiness may lie in your genes.
Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh and the Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia have found that happiness is partly determined by personality traits that are largely hereditary, along with your situation in life.
The researchers used a personality test called the Five-Factor Model on more than 990 twin pairs. Matching that with happiness data taken from the pairs, they found that people who do not excessively worry, and who are sociable and conscientious tend to be happier.
The research, detailed in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science, identified evidence for common genes that result in the personality traits that predispose people to happiness, the researchers said.
"Although happiness is subject to a wide range of external influences we have found that there is a heritable component of happiness which can be entirely explained by genetic architecture of personality," said study team leader Alexander Weiss of the University of Edinburgh.
While these genes won't guarantee happiness, the personality mix they result in could act as a trigger when bad things happen, allowing people to have an "affective reserve" of happiness that can be called upon in stressful times.
And while the genetic influence is strong, about 50 percent of the differences in people's happiness in life can still be chalked up to a variety of external factors, such as relationships, health and careers. Research done by Ed Diener of the University of Illinois finds that the happiest people have strong friendships, for example.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
How Happiness Works: Action Counts
The Science of Lasting Happiness
Through controlled experiments, Sonja Lyubomirsky explores ways to beat the genetic set point for happiness. Staying in high spirits, she finds, is hard work
(As published in Scientific American, March 2007 by Marina Krakovsky)
The day I meet Sonja Lyubomirsky, she keeps getting calls from her Toyota Prius dealer. When she finally picks up, she is excited by the news: she can buy the car she wants in two days. Lyubomirsky wonders if her enthusiasm might come across as materialism, but I understand that she is buying an experience as much as a possession. The hybrid will be gentler on the environment, and a California state law letting some hybrids use the carpool lane promises a faster commute between her coastal Santa Monica home and her job at the University of California, Riverside, some 70 miles inland.
Two weeks later, in late January, the 40-year-old Lyubomirsky, who smiles often and seems to approach life with zest and good humor, reports that she is "totally loving the Prius." But will the feeling wear off soon after the new-car smell, or will it last, making a naturally happy person even more so?
An experimental psychologist investigating the possibility of lasting happiness, Lyubomirsky understands far better than most of us the folly of pinning our hopes on a new car--or on any good fortune that comes our way. We tend to adapt, quickly returning to our usual level of happiness. The classic example of such "hedonic adaptation" comes from a 1970s study of lottery winners, who a year after their windfall ended up no happier than nonwinners. Hedonic adaptation helps to explain why even changes in major life circumstances--such as income, marriage, physical health and where we live--do so little to boost our overall happiness. Not only that, but studies of twins and adoptees have shown that about 50 percent of each person's happiness is determined from birth. This "genetic set point" alone makes the happiness glass look half empty, because any upward swing in happiness seems doomed to fall back to near your baseline.
"There's been a tension in the field," explains Lyubomirsky's main collaborator, psychologist Kennon M. Sheldon of the University of Missouri-Columbia. "Some people were assuming you can affect happiness if, for example, you picked the right goals, but there was all this literature that suggested it was impossible, that what goes up must come down."
Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and another psychologist, David A. Schkade of the University of California, San Diego, put the existing findings together into a simple pie chart showing what determines happiness. Half the pie is the genetic set point. The smallest slice is circumstances, which explain only about 10 percent of people's differences in happiness. So what is the remaining 40 percent? "Because nobody had put it together before, that's unexplained," Lyubomirsky says. But she believes that when you take away genes and circumstances, what is left besides error must be "intentional activity," mental and behavioral strategies to counteract adaptation's downward pull.
Also in this issue of Scientific American
* Skeptic Free to Choose
* Feature Articles The Promise of Plasmonics
* Technicalities The Car Doctor Is In
Lyubomirsky has been studying these activities in hopes of finding out whether and how people can stay above their set point. In theory, that is possible in much the same way regular diet and exercise can keep athletes' weight below their genetic set points. But before Lyubomirsky began, there was "a huge vacuum of research on how to increase happiness," she says. The lottery study in particular "made people shy away from interventions," explains eminent University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, the father of positive psychology and a mentor to Lyubomirsky. When science had scrutinized happiness at all, it was mainly through correlational studies, which cannot tell what came first--the happiness or what it is linked to--let alone determine the cause and effect. Finding out that individuals with strong social ties are more satisfied with their lives than loners, for example, begs the question of whether friends make us happier or whether happy people are simply likelier to seek and attract friends.
Lyubomirsky began studying happiness as a graduate student in 1989 after an intriguing conversation with her adviser, Stanford University psychologist Lee D. Ross, who told her about a remarkably happy friend who had lost both parents to the Holocaust. Ross explains it this way: "For this person, the meaning of the Holocaust was that it was indecent or inappropriate to be unhappy about trivial things--and that one should strive to find joy in life and human relationships." Psychologists have long known that different people can see and think about the same events in different ways, but they had done little research on how these interpretations affect well-being.
Count your blessings every day? Not if you want to be really happy.
So Lyubomirsky had to lay some groundwork before she could go into the lab. Back then, happiness was "a fuzzy, unscientific topic," she says, and although no instrument yet exists for giving perfectly valid, reliable and precise readings of someone's happiness from session to session, Lyubomirsky has brought scientific rigor to the emerging field. From her firm belief that it is each person's self-reported happiness that matters, she developed a four-question Subjective Happiness Scale. Lyubomirsky's working definition of happiness--"a joyful, contented life"--gets at both the feelings and judgments necessary for overall happiness. (If a sleep-deprived new mom feels fulfilled but frazzled, and an aimless party girl feels empty despite loads of fun, neither would consider herself truly happy.) To this day, she rarely sees her studies' participants; they do most exercises out in the real world and answer detailed questionnaires on the computer, often from home. To assess subjects' efforts and honesty, she uses several cross-checks, such as timing them as they complete the questionnaires.
The research needed to answer questions about lasting happiness is costly, because studies need to follow a sizable group of people over a long time. Two and a half years ago Lyubomirsky and Sheldon received a five-year, $1-million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to do just that. Investigators have no shortage of possible strategies to test, with happiness advice coming "from the Buddha to Tony Robbins," as Seligman puts it. So Lyubomirsky started with three promising strategies: kindness, gratitude and optimism--all of which past research had linked with happiness.
Her aim is not merely to confirm the strategies' effectiveness but to gain insights into how happiness works. For example, conventional wisdom suggests keeping a daily gratitude journal. But one study revealed that those who had been assigned to do that ended up less happy than those who had to count their blessings only once a week. Lyubomirsky therefore confirmed her hunch that timing is important. So is variety, it turned out: a kindness intervention found that participants told to vary their good deeds ended up happier than those forced into a kindness rut. Lyubomirsky is also asking about mediators: Why, for example, does acting kind make you happier? "I'm a basic researcher, not an applied researcher, so I'm interested not so much in the strategies but in how they work and what goes on behind the scenes," she explains.
Initial results with the interventions have been promising, but sustaining them is tough. Months after a study is over, the people who have stopped the exercises show a drop in happiness. Like a drug or a diet, the exercises work only if you stick with them. Instilling habits is crucial. Another key: "fit," or how well the exercise matches the person. If sitting down to imagine your best possible self (an optimism exercise) feels contrived, you will be less likely to do it.
The biggest factor may be getting over the idea that happiness is fixed--and realizing that sustained effort can boost it. "A lot of people don't apply the notion of effort to their emotional lives," Lyubomirsky declares, "but the effort it takes is enormous."
Through controlled experiments, Sonja Lyubomirsky explores ways to beat the genetic set point for happiness. Staying in high spirits, she finds, is hard work
(As published in Scientific American, March 2007 by Marina Krakovsky)
The day I meet Sonja Lyubomirsky, she keeps getting calls from her Toyota Prius dealer. When she finally picks up, she is excited by the news: she can buy the car she wants in two days. Lyubomirsky wonders if her enthusiasm might come across as materialism, but I understand that she is buying an experience as much as a possession. The hybrid will be gentler on the environment, and a California state law letting some hybrids use the carpool lane promises a faster commute between her coastal Santa Monica home and her job at the University of California, Riverside, some 70 miles inland.
Two weeks later, in late January, the 40-year-old Lyubomirsky, who smiles often and seems to approach life with zest and good humor, reports that she is "totally loving the Prius." But will the feeling wear off soon after the new-car smell, or will it last, making a naturally happy person even more so?
An experimental psychologist investigating the possibility of lasting happiness, Lyubomirsky understands far better than most of us the folly of pinning our hopes on a new car--or on any good fortune that comes our way. We tend to adapt, quickly returning to our usual level of happiness. The classic example of such "hedonic adaptation" comes from a 1970s study of lottery winners, who a year after their windfall ended up no happier than nonwinners. Hedonic adaptation helps to explain why even changes in major life circumstances--such as income, marriage, physical health and where we live--do so little to boost our overall happiness. Not only that, but studies of twins and adoptees have shown that about 50 percent of each person's happiness is determined from birth. This "genetic set point" alone makes the happiness glass look half empty, because any upward swing in happiness seems doomed to fall back to near your baseline.
"There's been a tension in the field," explains Lyubomirsky's main collaborator, psychologist Kennon M. Sheldon of the University of Missouri-Columbia. "Some people were assuming you can affect happiness if, for example, you picked the right goals, but there was all this literature that suggested it was impossible, that what goes up must come down."
Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and another psychologist, David A. Schkade of the University of California, San Diego, put the existing findings together into a simple pie chart showing what determines happiness. Half the pie is the genetic set point. The smallest slice is circumstances, which explain only about 10 percent of people's differences in happiness. So what is the remaining 40 percent? "Because nobody had put it together before, that's unexplained," Lyubomirsky says. But she believes that when you take away genes and circumstances, what is left besides error must be "intentional activity," mental and behavioral strategies to counteract adaptation's downward pull.
Also in this issue of Scientific American
* Skeptic Free to Choose
* Feature Articles The Promise of Plasmonics
* Technicalities The Car Doctor Is In
Lyubomirsky has been studying these activities in hopes of finding out whether and how people can stay above their set point. In theory, that is possible in much the same way regular diet and exercise can keep athletes' weight below their genetic set points. But before Lyubomirsky began, there was "a huge vacuum of research on how to increase happiness," she says. The lottery study in particular "made people shy away from interventions," explains eminent University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, the father of positive psychology and a mentor to Lyubomirsky. When science had scrutinized happiness at all, it was mainly through correlational studies, which cannot tell what came first--the happiness or what it is linked to--let alone determine the cause and effect. Finding out that individuals with strong social ties are more satisfied with their lives than loners, for example, begs the question of whether friends make us happier or whether happy people are simply likelier to seek and attract friends.
Lyubomirsky began studying happiness as a graduate student in 1989 after an intriguing conversation with her adviser, Stanford University psychologist Lee D. Ross, who told her about a remarkably happy friend who had lost both parents to the Holocaust. Ross explains it this way: "For this person, the meaning of the Holocaust was that it was indecent or inappropriate to be unhappy about trivial things--and that one should strive to find joy in life and human relationships." Psychologists have long known that different people can see and think about the same events in different ways, but they had done little research on how these interpretations affect well-being.
Count your blessings every day? Not if you want to be really happy.
So Lyubomirsky had to lay some groundwork before she could go into the lab. Back then, happiness was "a fuzzy, unscientific topic," she says, and although no instrument yet exists for giving perfectly valid, reliable and precise readings of someone's happiness from session to session, Lyubomirsky has brought scientific rigor to the emerging field. From her firm belief that it is each person's self-reported happiness that matters, she developed a four-question Subjective Happiness Scale. Lyubomirsky's working definition of happiness--"a joyful, contented life"--gets at both the feelings and judgments necessary for overall happiness. (If a sleep-deprived new mom feels fulfilled but frazzled, and an aimless party girl feels empty despite loads of fun, neither would consider herself truly happy.) To this day, she rarely sees her studies' participants; they do most exercises out in the real world and answer detailed questionnaires on the computer, often from home. To assess subjects' efforts and honesty, she uses several cross-checks, such as timing them as they complete the questionnaires.
The research needed to answer questions about lasting happiness is costly, because studies need to follow a sizable group of people over a long time. Two and a half years ago Lyubomirsky and Sheldon received a five-year, $1-million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to do just that. Investigators have no shortage of possible strategies to test, with happiness advice coming "from the Buddha to Tony Robbins," as Seligman puts it. So Lyubomirsky started with three promising strategies: kindness, gratitude and optimism--all of which past research had linked with happiness.
Her aim is not merely to confirm the strategies' effectiveness but to gain insights into how happiness works. For example, conventional wisdom suggests keeping a daily gratitude journal. But one study revealed that those who had been assigned to do that ended up less happy than those who had to count their blessings only once a week. Lyubomirsky therefore confirmed her hunch that timing is important. So is variety, it turned out: a kindness intervention found that participants told to vary their good deeds ended up happier than those forced into a kindness rut. Lyubomirsky is also asking about mediators: Why, for example, does acting kind make you happier? "I'm a basic researcher, not an applied researcher, so I'm interested not so much in the strategies but in how they work and what goes on behind the scenes," she explains.
Initial results with the interventions have been promising, but sustaining them is tough. Months after a study is over, the people who have stopped the exercises show a drop in happiness. Like a drug or a diet, the exercises work only if you stick with them. Instilling habits is crucial. Another key: "fit," or how well the exercise matches the person. If sitting down to imagine your best possible self (an optimism exercise) feels contrived, you will be less likely to do it.
The biggest factor may be getting over the idea that happiness is fixed--and realizing that sustained effort can boost it. "A lot of people don't apply the notion of effort to their emotional lives," Lyubomirsky declares, "but the effort it takes is enormous."
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Science Says: Its the Small Things That Count
Make Yourself Happy
Small acts that create immediate pleasures can add up to long-term satisfaction
(As published in Scientific American, March, 2005, by Maja Storch)
Little events sometimes have far-reaching consequences. For example, the reason I'm no longer driving a delightful but temperamental Alfa Romeo is because of a chocolate Easter bunny. I used to bring my car to a repair shop that employed a mechanic with whom I was most pleased. Then one day he phoned to inform me that he had resigned. "But why?" I asked him. "A new owner has taken over," he replied. "The working atmosphere isn't like it used to be. I just didn't feel good there anymore."
Immediately the psychologist in me was intrigued. "So what was different?" I wanted to know. "Well, I guess it was just little things," he said. "Like, at Easter, the owner's wife would always slip a chocolate bunny into everyone's toolbox. It made you feel like someone out there was making an effort." The Easter bunny didn't come anymore, the esteemed mechanic left, and my next car was a reliable but less glamorous Saab.
Behind this trivial story lurks a central topic of psychology: how personal happiness originates. Psychologists hope that once we understand this, we might be able to create these feelings at will.
Short-Term Joys
Personal happiness has two components: one is short-lived and immediate, and the second is long-term and "habitual." The instant variety could best be described as an intense experience of joy. These feelings range from sensual pleasures to so-called flow experiences--brought on by acts in which we become totally immersed and lose all sense of self. Instant happiness can also emerge when you are just relax-ing on your balcony after a hard day's work, with your feet up as you watch the sun go down. Short-term pleasures create a stirring of emotions that psychologists refer to as positive affect.
Many people can motivate themselves before beginning an unpleasant task by anticipating the good feeling of success they will get when the job is completed. And simple acts of social caring can create positive affects for others: a smile, a word of praise, a kind letter--or a chocolate Easter bunny.
Also in this issue of Mind
* Illusions Mind the Gap
* Features What's Wrong with This Picture?
* Features Unleashing Creativity
Most individuals underestimate the power this factor can have in both their private and professional lives. One extravagant annual company picnic does not create a healthy working environment; it takes many immediate, smaller happy moments to achieve this atmosphere. All employers should demonstrate to their employees that they care. Even if employers are focused only on the bottom line, for only minimal time and expense they can noticeably increase job satisfaction and, therefore, productivity. The same applies to family relationships and partnerships. Each person--alternating each week, for instance--can take a turn "being responsible" for positive feelings by bringing home owers, getting tickets for a movie, or planning a weekend outing together.
A very different tactic can also elicit immediate feelings of happiness--the reduction of anything that makes you unhappy. Let us say you are in a meeting at work at which another employee shoots down one of your proposals with an unannounced set of statistics. Because he did not submit his figures before the meeting, you have not prepared a reply. Everyone is impressed with his pie chart, even though you are sure no one really understands it. You are overtaken by a wave of anger, and, worse, you can think of nothing to say.
By becoming aware of your somatic markers, you can build a foundation of positive thoughts.
To dissipate the unhappiness that will most likely stay with you after such a meeting, you can use a device we have developed at the University of Zurich called the idea basket. Imagine that there is a basket in front of you and that you are going to fill it with suggestions from your colleagues and friends. Begin by making a detailed list of which situations, circumstances and triggers have led to specific negative emotional experiences. Then ask as many trustworthy and discreet people as you can to come up with appropriate ways to respond.
Try to get ideas from people in as many different social groups as possible. Certainly ask your favorite co-worker, but also approach your son's kindergarten teacher, the neighborhood bricklayer, even your 14-year-old daughter--despite her adolescent behavior that sometimes leaves you wondering how sound her thinking really is. Often those whose minds have stored experiences through very different connections produce the most surprising and helpful ideas. Once your suggestion basket is full, choose several options that could reduce the negative aspects and then resolve to act on them. Even if you cannot fully transform the negative into a positive in a given situation, curing it even halfway can greatly improve your happiness.
Long-Term Satisfaction
By creating an ongoing series of short-term highs and reversing lows, you are already on your way to long-term, habitual happiness. This state expresses itself as an all-encompassing feeling of satisfaction with life. According to psychological surveys, factors that can strongly contribute to this state are financial security, a well-ordered social environment and a trusting relationship. And yet many people experience a "dissatisfaction dilemma"--they just do not feel happy even when they have in place favorable life circumstances, such as the ones just mentioned. The way to resolve the dilemma is to squeeze into each day as much immediate happiness as possible. By using every opportunity to feel happy, you awaken positive feelings that can buoy your spirits.
Here are just a few possibilities:
# In the morning, become aware of the rising sun; at breakfast deeply inhale the fragrance of your coffee.
# While riding to work on the train, watch the landscape rather than pointlessly riing through papers from the office.
# When you get to work, greet your co-workers with a "good morning" before you check your e-mails.
# After an hour or two, take a small break; you will feel better, and it will improve your concentration on the next task as well.
# Buy a flower during lunchtime and beautify your desk.
There is only one important rule here: the more the better. It is the number of such happiness motivators that count--not their quality. Many seemingly trivial acts add up to the joy of living.
You can also stimulate long-term satisfaction intellectually. If you maintain positive thoughts, you will indeed start to feel happier. This is not to say that habitual happiness can be grounded in figments of the imagination. It must be based on a solid foundation, which means fulfilling your desires, hopes and expectations as best as you can. But to do so, you first have to know what you want. On this score, somatic markers can help.
Scientists now know that sensory information is under permanent scrutiny by an automatic, internal process that promptly monitors experiences that pour in from our external world. The ability of an individual to know what is good for him or her is relative to how carefully the person can perceive and heed this internal commentary of somatic markers. Such markers are perceived either as a physical sensation or as a feeling, or a mixture of both. They originate in our emotional memory of experiences, which is a group of brain structures that store and evaluate every meaningful moment we have gone through. Bad experiences send out negative somatic markers; pleasant ones produce positive signals.
You can train yourself to be consciously aware of your somatic-marker signals. By doing so, you will build that intellectual foundation of positive thoughts. In the long run, only individuals who have the self-confidence to guide their lives by their own system of values, regardless of public opinion or fashionable trends, can find true satisfaction. Somatic markers can provide invaluable guidance, helping you make the right decisions, realize long-term goals, and find the necessary motivation to transform your resolutions into action. In the process, you will create the preconditions that ensure long-term happiness.
Small acts that create immediate pleasures can add up to long-term satisfaction
(As published in Scientific American, March, 2005, by Maja Storch)
Little events sometimes have far-reaching consequences. For example, the reason I'm no longer driving a delightful but temperamental Alfa Romeo is because of a chocolate Easter bunny. I used to bring my car to a repair shop that employed a mechanic with whom I was most pleased. Then one day he phoned to inform me that he had resigned. "But why?" I asked him. "A new owner has taken over," he replied. "The working atmosphere isn't like it used to be. I just didn't feel good there anymore."
Immediately the psychologist in me was intrigued. "So what was different?" I wanted to know. "Well, I guess it was just little things," he said. "Like, at Easter, the owner's wife would always slip a chocolate bunny into everyone's toolbox. It made you feel like someone out there was making an effort." The Easter bunny didn't come anymore, the esteemed mechanic left, and my next car was a reliable but less glamorous Saab.
Behind this trivial story lurks a central topic of psychology: how personal happiness originates. Psychologists hope that once we understand this, we might be able to create these feelings at will.
Short-Term Joys
Personal happiness has two components: one is short-lived and immediate, and the second is long-term and "habitual." The instant variety could best be described as an intense experience of joy. These feelings range from sensual pleasures to so-called flow experiences--brought on by acts in which we become totally immersed and lose all sense of self. Instant happiness can also emerge when you are just relax-ing on your balcony after a hard day's work, with your feet up as you watch the sun go down. Short-term pleasures create a stirring of emotions that psychologists refer to as positive affect.
Many people can motivate themselves before beginning an unpleasant task by anticipating the good feeling of success they will get when the job is completed. And simple acts of social caring can create positive affects for others: a smile, a word of praise, a kind letter--or a chocolate Easter bunny.
Also in this issue of Mind
* Illusions Mind the Gap
* Features What's Wrong with This Picture?
* Features Unleashing Creativity
Most individuals underestimate the power this factor can have in both their private and professional lives. One extravagant annual company picnic does not create a healthy working environment; it takes many immediate, smaller happy moments to achieve this atmosphere. All employers should demonstrate to their employees that they care. Even if employers are focused only on the bottom line, for only minimal time and expense they can noticeably increase job satisfaction and, therefore, productivity. The same applies to family relationships and partnerships. Each person--alternating each week, for instance--can take a turn "being responsible" for positive feelings by bringing home owers, getting tickets for a movie, or planning a weekend outing together.
A very different tactic can also elicit immediate feelings of happiness--the reduction of anything that makes you unhappy. Let us say you are in a meeting at work at which another employee shoots down one of your proposals with an unannounced set of statistics. Because he did not submit his figures before the meeting, you have not prepared a reply. Everyone is impressed with his pie chart, even though you are sure no one really understands it. You are overtaken by a wave of anger, and, worse, you can think of nothing to say.
By becoming aware of your somatic markers, you can build a foundation of positive thoughts.
To dissipate the unhappiness that will most likely stay with you after such a meeting, you can use a device we have developed at the University of Zurich called the idea basket. Imagine that there is a basket in front of you and that you are going to fill it with suggestions from your colleagues and friends. Begin by making a detailed list of which situations, circumstances and triggers have led to specific negative emotional experiences. Then ask as many trustworthy and discreet people as you can to come up with appropriate ways to respond.
Try to get ideas from people in as many different social groups as possible. Certainly ask your favorite co-worker, but also approach your son's kindergarten teacher, the neighborhood bricklayer, even your 14-year-old daughter--despite her adolescent behavior that sometimes leaves you wondering how sound her thinking really is. Often those whose minds have stored experiences through very different connections produce the most surprising and helpful ideas. Once your suggestion basket is full, choose several options that could reduce the negative aspects and then resolve to act on them. Even if you cannot fully transform the negative into a positive in a given situation, curing it even halfway can greatly improve your happiness.
Long-Term Satisfaction
By creating an ongoing series of short-term highs and reversing lows, you are already on your way to long-term, habitual happiness. This state expresses itself as an all-encompassing feeling of satisfaction with life. According to psychological surveys, factors that can strongly contribute to this state are financial security, a well-ordered social environment and a trusting relationship. And yet many people experience a "dissatisfaction dilemma"--they just do not feel happy even when they have in place favorable life circumstances, such as the ones just mentioned. The way to resolve the dilemma is to squeeze into each day as much immediate happiness as possible. By using every opportunity to feel happy, you awaken positive feelings that can buoy your spirits.
Here are just a few possibilities:
# In the morning, become aware of the rising sun; at breakfast deeply inhale the fragrance of your coffee.
# While riding to work on the train, watch the landscape rather than pointlessly riing through papers from the office.
# When you get to work, greet your co-workers with a "good morning" before you check your e-mails.
# After an hour or two, take a small break; you will feel better, and it will improve your concentration on the next task as well.
# Buy a flower during lunchtime and beautify your desk.
There is only one important rule here: the more the better. It is the number of such happiness motivators that count--not their quality. Many seemingly trivial acts add up to the joy of living.
You can also stimulate long-term satisfaction intellectually. If you maintain positive thoughts, you will indeed start to feel happier. This is not to say that habitual happiness can be grounded in figments of the imagination. It must be based on a solid foundation, which means fulfilling your desires, hopes and expectations as best as you can. But to do so, you first have to know what you want. On this score, somatic markers can help.
Scientists now know that sensory information is under permanent scrutiny by an automatic, internal process that promptly monitors experiences that pour in from our external world. The ability of an individual to know what is good for him or her is relative to how carefully the person can perceive and heed this internal commentary of somatic markers. Such markers are perceived either as a physical sensation or as a feeling, or a mixture of both. They originate in our emotional memory of experiences, which is a group of brain structures that store and evaluate every meaningful moment we have gone through. Bad experiences send out negative somatic markers; pleasant ones produce positive signals.
You can train yourself to be consciously aware of your somatic-marker signals. By doing so, you will build that intellectual foundation of positive thoughts. In the long run, only individuals who have the self-confidence to guide their lives by their own system of values, regardless of public opinion or fashionable trends, can find true satisfaction. Somatic markers can provide invaluable guidance, helping you make the right decisions, realize long-term goals, and find the necessary motivation to transform your resolutions into action. In the process, you will create the preconditions that ensure long-term happiness.
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