The pursuit of happiness may be simple but it is seldom easy. As renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow, reports,
“You have to work at it.”
Other key elements are:
—The pursuit of happiness
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
…adding five substantive conversations to your weekly social calendar could boost your spirits dramatically.
–Skip the Small Talk:
Meaningful Conversations
Linked to Happier People
See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.
People have three basic wants that make them susceptible to social influence.
- First, people have a hedonic motive, or a desire to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
- Second, people have an approval motive, or a desire to be accepted and to avoid being rejected.
- Third, people have an accuracy motive, or a desire to believe what is true and to avoid believing what is false.
As we shall see, most forms of social influence appeal to one or more of these motives.
—Psychology
Page 16-22
By Schacter, Gilbert, & Wegner
See also, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, on this blog.
Compiling research from psychologists and economists (including colleague Richard Thaler), Professor Hsee provides tips on how to make the people around you—employees, significant others, friends, relatives—happy.
Details in The University of Chicago Magazine.
— Prof. Christopher K. Hsee
Chicago Booth
When people undertake to control their minds while they are burdened by mental loads–such as distracters, stress, or time pressure–the result [will] often be the opposite of what they intend. …
Individuals following instructions to try to make themselves happy become sad, whereas those trying to make themselves sad actually experience buoyed mood.
…
When people in these studies are encouraged to express their deepest thoughts and feelings in writing, they experience subsequent improvements in psychological and physical health. (See also Resistance is Futile on this blog.) Expressing oneself in this way involves relinquishing the pursuit of mental control, and so eliminates a key requirement for the production of ironic effects. After all, as suggested in other studies conducted in my lab with Julie Lane and Laura Smart, the motive to keep one’s thoughts and personal characteristics secret is strongly linked with mental control. Disclosing these things to others, or even in writing to oneself, is the first step toward abandoning what may be an overweening and futile quest to control one’s own thoughts and emotions.
When we relax the desire for the control of our minds, the seeds of our undoing may remain uncultivated, perhaps then to dry up and blow away.
The Seed of Our Undoing by Daniel M. Wegner
From Psychological Science Agenda
January/February, 1999, 10-11.
Novelist Amy Bloom surveys the literature on happiness for the New York Times and distills these five essentials. I have recently rediscovered the importance of number 2.
The Fundamentally Sound, Sure-Fire
Top Five Components of
Happiness:
- Be in possession of the basics — food, shelter, good health, safety.
- Get enough sleep.
- Have relationships that matter to you.
- Take compassionate care of others and of yourself.
- Have work or an interest that engages you.
I don’t see how even the most high-minded, cynical or curmudgeonly person could argue with that.
–Amy Bloom
NYTimes.com
See also, Have Some Happy, on this blog.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, …, taught mindfulness at a high-stress biotech company; these beginners meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks. [Professor] Davidson’s measures showed that after the eight weeks they had begun to activate that left prefrontal zone more strongly — and were saying that instead of feeling overwhelmed and hassled, they were enjoying their work. So while the Calvinist strain in American culture may look askance at someone sitting quietly in meditation, this kind of “doing nothing” seems to do something remarkable after all.
Of course, there’s no guarantee of greater happiness from meditation, but the East has given us a promising path for its pursuit.
via Sitting Quietly, Doing Something – Happy Days Blog – NYTimes.com by Daniel Goleman
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.
–Dr. George Vaillant, Psychiatrist
Harvard Study of Adult Development
What Makes Us Happy?, in the June, 2009, issue of the Atlantic has attracted a lot of attention. It is an interesting story, or collection of anecdotes, but does it provide any useful guidance for CEOs or their executive coaches?
Vaillant sorts people according to their (more…)
Dan Gilbert at TED.
See also Are you sacrificing the real now for an illusory future?
Singing and dancing have been shown to modulate brain chemistry, specifically levels of dopamine, the “feel good” neurotransmitter. Our species uses music and dance to express various feelings: love, joy, comfort, ceremony, knowledge and friendship. And each one is distinct and widely recognized within cultures. Love songs cause us to move slowly and fluidly, for example, while songs of joy inspire us to dance in a full-body aerobic way.
–Daniel J. Levitin
Professor of psychology and music
McGill University
The Science of a Human Obsession.
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