Secrets of Happy People
Based on the Book The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven, Ph.D.
and published in 2001 by HarperCollins for Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Secrets of Happy People is not just one person's intuition. It reflects the research conclusions of noted scientists studying the lives of regular people. The conclusions reached by these scientists should be of interest to anyone who wants to know what they can do to enjoy life more. The following takes a brief look at just a few of the important differences between happy and unhappy people. For more information, read the entire book.
Your life has purpose and meaning. You are not here just to fill space or to be a background character in someone else's movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us. Studies of older Americans find that one of the best predictors of happiness is whether a person considers his or her life to have a purpose. Without a clearly defined purpose, seven in ten individuals feel unsettled about their lives; with a purpose, almost seven in ten feel satisfied.
Use a strategy for happiness. We assume that happy and unhappy people are born that way. But both kinds of people do things that create and reinforce their moods. Happy people let themselves be happy. Unhappy people continue doing things that upset them. Happy people do not experience one success after another and unhappy people, one failure after another. Instead, surveys show that happy and unhappy people tend to have had very similar life experiences. The difference is that the average unhappy person spends more than twice as much time thinking about unpleasant events in their lives, while happy people tend to seek and rely upon information that brightens their personal outlook.
Friendship beats money. If you want to know if people are happy, don't ask them how much money they have in the bank. Don't ask how much money they make. Ask them about their friends. Contrary to the belief that happiness is hard to explain, or that it depends on having great wealth, researchers have identified the core factors in a happy life. The primary components are number of friends, closeness of friends, closeness of family, and relationships with co-workers and neighbors. Together these features explain about 70 percent of personal happiness.
Be open to new ideas. Never stop learning and adapting. The world will always be changing. If you limit yourself to what you knew and what you were comfortable with earlier in your life, you will grow increasingly frustrated with your surroundings as you age. Not surprisingly that includes learning how to use a computer and the Internet. In research on older Americans, what predicted satisfaction more than finances or the state of their current relationships was their willingness to adapt. If they were willing to change some of their habits and expectations, their happiness was maintained even when their circumstances changed. Those who were resistant to change, on the other hand, were less than one-third as likely to feel happy.
You may already have what you think you want. We often forget to sit down and think about where we started and where we are now. The human tendency is to always want more. A better approach is to remember where you started and appreciate how much you have accomplished. In research on highly educated professionals, almost half of the subjects could not become satisfied even as they accomplished their apparent goals because they did not recognize their accomplishments and instead created an irrational negative image of themselves.
Don't let your religious beliefs fade. Religion can show us the way in a world in which bad things happen. It can teach us that much of what we see is so complex we cannot understand why and how it occurred. Everywhere in our world there is mystery. Everywhere there are questions. Religion offers answers, religion offers consistency, religion offers hope. Research on the effect of religion on life satisfaction found that regardless of what religion people affiliated themselves with, those who had strongly held spiritual beliefs were typically satisfied with life, while those who had no spiritual beliefs typically were unsatisfied.
Volunteer. Every community has countless opportunities for giving of yourself. Be a reading tutor. Give your time to help a local charity. Anything you can do will not only help the community, it will also help you. Volunteers feel good about themselves. They have a sense of purpose, feel appreciated, and are less likely to be bored in their lives. Volunteers experience rewards that cannot be attained in any other way. Even if you don't have a lot of time or skills, find an hour a month and give yourself to a good cause. Analysis of volumes of research on this subject shows a strong consensus that volunteering contributes to happiness by decreasing boredom and creating an increased sense of purpose in life. Volunteers, on average, are twice as likely to feel happy with themselves as non-volunteers. Learn more.
Exercise. People who exercise, whether that involves an intense workout or just a regular long walk, feel healthier, feel better about themselves, and enjoy life more. Research on physical activity finds that exercise increases self-confidence, which in turn strengthens self-evaluations. Regular exercise, including brisk walks, directly increases happiness 12 percent, and can indirectly make a dramatic contribution to improving self-image.
Don't forget to have fun. Every day leave yourself some time to enjoy life, to be silly, to laugh. Regularly having fun is one of the five central factors in leading a satisfied life. Individuals who spend time just having fun are 20 percent more likely to feel happy on a daily basis and 36 percent more likely to feel comfortable with their age and stage in life.
There will be an end, but you can be prepared. One of the great sources of anxiety as we age is that we will never get a chance to do that thing we always wanted to do, or to finish some important task, or to mend fences that may have fallen into disrepair as our relationships evolved. Don't wait until the end of your life to figure out what you wished you had done. Think of those things now and do them. Research on senior citizens finds that those who are most comfortable with their own mortality do not ignore the matter, but prepare themselves for it.
What does it all mean? You decide. Your future -- how you feel about it, yourself, and everything else -- follows from the decisions you make, the priorities you develop, and the perspective you see things through. Great unanswered questions plague us, century after century. Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? Why do our lives matter? Answers to these questions are very hard to come by because the truth lies not within someone else, but within you. You have been given life, and with it you have been given the opportunity to define it. You life's path and purpose will be drawn on a map created by you. In a study that followed the exploits of over 100 adults for a period of two years, it was found that the effect of "good" and "bad" events quickly faded. That is, the subjects' happiness was not dependent on the sum of events but rather on what the subjects made of those events.
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