Strategies for
Happiness - 7 Steps to Becoming a Happier Person
By
Tom Valeo
A popular greeting
card attributes this quote to Henry David Thoreau: ‘Happiness is like a
butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you
turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your
shoulder’
With all due
respect to the author of Walden, that just isn’t so, according to a
growing number of psychologists. You can choose to be happy, they
say. You can chase down that elusive butterfly and get it to sit on your
shoulder. How? In part, by simply making the effort to monitor the
workings of your mind.
Research has shown
that your talent for happiness is, to a large degree, determined by your
genes. Psychology professor David T. Lykken, author of Happiness: Its
Nature and Nurture, says that “trying to be happier is like trying to
be taller.” We each have a “happiness set point,” he argues, and move away
from it only slightly.
And yet,
psychologists who study happiness -- including Lykken -- believe we can
pursue happiness. We can do this by thwarting negative emotions such as
pessimism, resentment, and anger. And we can foster positive emotions,
such as empathy, serenity, and especially gratitude.
Strategy for
Happiness
1. Don’t Worry,
Choose Happy
The first step,
however, is to make a conscious choice to boost your happiness. In his
book, The Conquest of Happiness, published in 1930, the philosopher
Bertrand Russell had this to say: “Happiness is not, except in very rare
cases, something that drops into the mouth, like a ripe fruit. Happiness
must be, for most men and women, an achievement rather than a gift of the
gods, and in this achievement, effort, both inward and outward, must play
a great part.”
Today,
psychologists who study happiness heartily agree. The intention to be
happy is the first of The 9 Choices of Happy People listed by
authors Rick Foster and Greg Hicks in their book of the same name.
“Intention is the active desire and commitment to be happy,” they write.
“It’s the decision to consciously choose attitudes and behaviors that lead
to happiness over unhappiness.”
Tom G. Stevens,
PhD, titled his book with the bold assertion, You Can Choose to Be
Happy. “Choose to make happiness a top goal,” Stevens said, “Choose to
take advantage of opportunities to learn how to be happy. For example,
reprogram your beliefs and values. Learn good self-management skills, good
interpersonal skills, and good career-related skills. Choose to be in
environments and around people that increase your probability of
happiness. The persons who become the happiest and grow the most are those
who also make truth and their own personal growth primary values.”
In short, we may be
born with a happiness “set point,” as Lykken calls it, but we are not
stuck there. Happiness also depends on how we manage our emotions and our
relationships with others. Jon Haidt, author of The Happiness
Hypothesis, teaches positive psychology. He actually assigns his
students to make themselves happier during the semester.
‘They have to say
exactly what technique they will use,’ says Haidt, a professor at the
University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. “They may choose to be more
forgiving or more grateful. They may learn to identify negative thoughts
so they can challenge them. For example. when someone crosses you, in your
mind you build a case against that person, but that’s very damaging to
relationships. So they may learn to shut up their inner lawyer and stop
building these cases against people.” Once you’ve decided to be happier,
you can choose strategies for achieving happiness. Psychologists who study
happiness tend to agree on ones like these.
2. Cultivate Gratitude
In his book,
Authentic Happiness, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin
Seligman encourages readers to perform a daily “gratitude exercise.” It
involves listing a few things that make them grateful. This shifts people
away from bitterness and despair, he says, and promotes happiness.
3. Foster
Forgiveness
Holding a grudge
and nursing grievances can affect physical as well as mental health,
according to a rapidly growing body of research. One way to curtail these
kinds of feelings is to foster forgiveness. This reduces the power of bad
events to create bitterness and resentment, say Michael McCullough and
Robert Emmons, happiness researchers who edited The Psychology of
Happiness.
In his book,
Five Steps to Forgiveness, clinical psychologist Everett Worthington
Jr. offers a 5-step process he calls REACH. First, recall the hurt.
Then empathize and try to understand the act from the perpetrator’s point
of view. Be altruistic by recalling a time in your life when you were
forgiven. Commit to putting your forgiveness into words. You can do this
either in a letter to the person you’re forgiving or in your journal.
Finally, try to hold on to the forgiveness. Don’t dwell on your
anger, hurt, and desire for vengeance.
The alternative to
forgiveness is mulling over a transgression. This is a form of chronic
stress, says Worthington. “Rumination is the mental health bad boy,”
Worthington says, “It’s associated with almost everything bad in the
mental health field -- obsessive-compulsive disorder, epression, anxiety
-- probably hives, too.”
4. Counteract
Negative Thoughts and Feelings
As Jon Haidt puts it,
improve your mental hygiene In The Happiness Hypothesis,
Haidt compares the mind to a man riding an elephant. The elephant
represents the powerful thoughts and feelings
-- mostly
unconscious -- that drive your behavior. The man, although much weaker,
can exert control over the elephant, just as you can exert control over
negative thoughts and feelings.
“The key is a
commitment to doing the things necessary to retrain the elephant,” Haidt
says. “And the evidence suggests there’s a lot you can do. It just takes
work.” For example, you can practice meditation, rhythmic breathing, yoga,
or relaxation techniques to quell anxiety and promote serenity. You can
learn to recognize and challenge thoughts you have about being inadequate
and helpless. “If you learn techniques for identifying negative thoughts,
then it’s easier to challenge them,” Haidt said. “Sometimes just reading
David Burns’ book, Feeling Good, can have a positive effect.”
5. Remember,
Money Can’t Buy Happiness
Research shows that
once income climbs above the poverty level, more money brings very little
extra happiness. Yet, “we keep assuming that because things aren’t
bringing us happiness, they’re the wrong things, rather than recognizing
that the pursuit itself is futile,” writes Daniel Gilbert in his book,
Stumbling on Happiness. Regardless of what we achieve in the pursuit
of stuff, it’s never going to bring about an enduring state of happiness.”
6. Foster
Friendship
There are few
better antidotes to unhappiness than close friendships with people who
care about you, says David G. Myers, author of The Pursuit of
Happiness. One Australian study found that people over 70 who had the
strongest network of friends lived much longer. “Sadly, our increasingly
individualistic society suffers from impoverished social connections,
which some psychologists believe is a cause of today’s epidemic levels of
depression,” Myers writes. “The social ties that bind also provide support
in difficult times.”
7. Engage in
Meaningful Activities
People are seldom
happier, says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, than when they’re in
the ‘flow.” This is a state in which your mind becomes thoroughly absorbed
in a meaningful task that challenges your abilities. Yet, he has found
that the most common leisure time activity -- watching TV -- produces some
of the lowest levels of happiness.
To get more out of
life, we need to put more into it, says Csikszentmihalyi. “Active leisure
that helps a person grow does not come easily,” he writes in Finding
Flow. “Each of the flowproducing activities requires an initial
investment of attention before it begins to be enjoyable.”
So it turns out
that happiness can be a matter of choice -- not just luck. Some people are
lucky enough to possess genes that foster happiness. However, certain
thought patterns and interpersonal skills definitely help people become an
“epicure of experience,” says David Lykken, whose name, in Norwegian,
means “the happiness.”
Happiness
grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers'
gardens. -Douglas Jerrold
Happiness
is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally
the by-product of other activities. -Aldous Huxley |