Scientists and academics have spent entire careers investigating what makes people happy. But hidden in obscure scholarly journals and reports, their research is all too often inaccessible to ordinary people. At last, social scientist and psychologist David Niven, Ph.D., distills the scientific gobbledygook of over a thousand of the most compelling and important studies on happiness into easy-to-digest nuggets of advice. Each of the hundred practices, attitudes, and habits for happiness is illustrated with a clear example and illuminated by a straightforward explanation of the science behind it to show you how to transform a ho-hum existence into a full and happy life.
Believe In Yourself: Across all ages and all groups, a solid belief in one's own abilities increases life satisfaction by about 40 percent, and makes us happier both in our home lives and in our work lives.
Turn Off The TV: Watching too much TV can triple our hunger for more possessions, while reducing our personal contentment by about 5 percent for every hour a day we watch.
Enjoy What You Have: People who have the most are only as likely to be happy as those who have the least. People who like what they have, however, are twice as likely to be happy as those who actually have the most.
Don't Forget To Have Fun: 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.
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. Take the example of Peter, an attorney in Philadelphia, and his dog, Tucket. Tucket was very sick. Gradually he was becoming paralyzed by a tumor on his spinal cord.Peter could not find a veterinary doctor who could save his dog. Desperate to find someone who could help, he turned to a pediatric neurosurgeon. The doctor agreed to try to help Tucket, and in return he asked Peter for a donation to the children's hospital he worked in.Jerry has never met Peter or Tucket. Jerry is a blue-eyed, blond-haired, five-year-old boy who loves to eat mashed potatoes. Jerry also has tumors on his spine and in his brain.With help from the donation Peter made to the hospital, Jerry underwent successful surgery performed by the doctor to remove the tumors.Tucket's surgery was also a success.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.
Lepper 1996
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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.What is the first sign of a healthy business? A healthy business plan. That is the argument of the Strategic Management Center, a business consulting firm. They believe every business must define its purpose and then create a strategy to accomplish that purpose.This same approach can be used by people. Define what you want, then use a strategy to get it.Ironically, children are better at this than adults. Small children know when being cranky will get them an ice cream cone. And they know when being too noisy will get them a cross reaction from their parents. Children understand that there are rules and predictable patterns to life, and they use a strategy to help them get what they want.Living a happy life as an adult is like trying to get that ice cream cone as a child. You need to know what you want and use a strategy to get it. Think about what makes you happy and what makes you sad, and use this to help you get what you want.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.
Lyubomirsky 1994
About the Author
David Niven, Ph.D., teaches at Florida Atlantic University and is the author of The Missing Majority. His research has been published in the Social Science Quarterly, The Journal of Black Studies, and The Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics, and he has won awards from Ohio State and Harvard Universities.
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The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People
by David Niven, Ph.D.
