LIFE LIFT
Being Happy from the Inside Out by Judith Fertig
An age-old question rides a new wave of bestseller lists, university research and governmental soul-searching. The answers to “What are the secrets of a happy life?” might surprise us.
“
appiness is the only true measure of personal success,” advises Geoffrey James, of Hollis, New Hampshire, author of How to Say It: Business to Business Selling. His work confirms that the rollercoaster world of business does not always promote a sense of well-being. James believes, “The big enemy of happiness is worry, which comes from focusing on events that are outside your con- trol.” For him, something as simple as a good night’s sleep contributes to personal happiness. Each of us has certain things that help make us feel positive, and they of- ten come in small moments, advises Ed Diener, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Illinois and author of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Based on 25 years of research into the subject, he’s a recognized expert in what he calls “subjective well-being.”
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In a recent six-part BBC series on happiness, Diener told viewers, “It may
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sound silly, but we ask people, ‘How happy are you, on a scale of one to 10?’ The interesting thing is that it produces real answers that are valid—not perfect, but valid—and they predict all sorts of real things in their lives.”
Getting to Happy The moment-to-moment path to hap- piness follows a trail blazed by para- dox. A recent University of Missouri College of Business study by Marsha Richins, Ph.D., suggests that happi- ness is in the wanting, not the getting. As noted Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman, Ph.D., remarks, “Focusing solely on happiness as a foundation of a good life,” won’t get you there. Gretchen Rubin, the New York City-based author of The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, further finds that, “Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.” Trying each day to be emotionally centered, affable, kind, conscientious, generous, patient, principled, accomplished, spiritual and
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true to yourself—the kind of person that should be happy and that makes other people happy—can be tough. Widespread economic and associ-
ated financial challenges have made many question whether money can buy happiness, a common core assumption of the “happiness starts on the outside” approach. Apparently, money can sometimes buy feelings of well-being, but only to a certain degree, according to researchers Angus Deaton and Dan- iel Kahneman, at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs. In 2010, they surveyed 450,000 ran-
domly chosen residents across the coun- try via daily questionnaires. The study revealed that, “Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health and be- ing alone.” Yet they also discovered that, “High income buys life satisfaction, but not happiness,” and there is no further progress in happiness beyond an annual income of $75,000 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). On the other side of the world, in
the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan, where 70 percent of its 717,000 citizens are subsistence farmers and an annual income of $75,000 would be considered a fortune, people say they are generally happy, partly due to the nation’s “hap- piness starts on the inside” philosophy. Since 1971, Bhutan has been operating based on a gross domestic happiness (GDH) value system. Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley explains that the country has focused on growing both materially and spiritually, and citizen well-being has taken precedence over
economic growth. For decades, this was deemed an
oddity by many in the West, although now it appears prescient. “It’s easy to mine the land and fish the seas and get rich,” says Thakur Singh Powdyel, Bhutan’s minister of education. “Yet we believe you cannot have a prosperous nation in the long run that does not conserve its natural environment or take care of the well-being of its peo- ple, which is being borne out by what is happening to the outside world.” The country measures its success in main- taining GDH by conducting regular surveys of the population. The reigning
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