[acb-hsp] Don't Think About Happiness

[peter altschul]

6 Ways to Achieve Eternal Happiness -- According to Science
  Robert T.  Gonzalez February 26, 2013
  Science has all the answers, right? Wrong.  But it has a pretty 
good sense of things, a lot of the timeinin.  So what does 
science have to say about the pursuit of happiness? A lot.  Like, 
build-an-entire-industry-around-it, 
even-the-pseudo-scientific-stuff a lot.  So let's look at some of 
the more recent things science has had to say about happiness and 
how you can score some for yourself -- including one tip that 
might actually work (and you won't even have to pay us to hear 
it).
  *1.  Surround yourself with happy pinin
  Or, at the very least, surround yourself with people who 
surround themselves with happy people.  A longitudinal 
investigation conducted over 20 years in collaboration with the 
Framingham Heart Study revealed that shifts in individual 
happiness can cascade through social networks like an emotional 
contagion.  That's right, happiness is kind of like a disease.  
(The researchers don't mean Facebook, btw, but physical, 
old-school networks -- like live-in friends, partners and 
spouses; and siblings, friends and neighbors who live close by.)
  "Most important from our perspective is the recognition that 
people are embedded in social networks and that the health and 
wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of 
others," conclude the researchers, noting that the relationship 
between people's happiness was found to extend up to three 
degrees of separation (i.e.  all the way to friends of friends of 
friends).  "This fundamental fact of existence provides a 
fundamental conceptual justification for the specialty of public 
health.  Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated 
individuals."
  Also worth noting: the researchers found sadness to be nowhere 
near as "infectious" as happiness.
  *2.  Master a skillinin
  This one is kind of a tradeoff: a study published in a 2009 
issue of the 100% real Journal of Happiness Studies found that 
people who dedicate themselves to mastering a skill or ability 
tend to experience more stress in the moment, but reported 
greater happiness and satisfaction on an hourly, daily, and 
longterm basis as a result of their investment.
  "No pain, no gain is the rule when it comes to gaining 
happiness from increasing our competence at something," said Ryan 
Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State 
University in a statement.  "People often give up their goals 
because they are stressful, but we found that there is benefit at 
the end of the day from learning to do something well."
  *3.  Self-government is keyinin
  The same study that found mastering a skill could bolster 
overall, longterm happiness found that the minute-to-minute 
stresses of mastering a skill could be lessened by self-direction 
and a sense of fellowship.  "Our results suggest that you can 
decrease the momentary stress associated with improving your 
skill or ability by ensuring you are also meeting the need for 
autonomy and connectedness," explains Howell.  "For example, 
performing the activity alongside other people or making sure it 
is something you have chosen to do and is true to who you are."
  *4.  Smile for onceinin
  Darwin laid it out for us all the way back in 1872: "The free 
expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it," he 
wrote.  And recent studies -- involving botox, of all things -- 
suggest he was onto something.  SciAm's Melinda Wenner explains:
  Psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that 
people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic botox 
injections are happier, on average, than people who can frown.  
The researchers administered an anxiety and depression 
questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received 
frown-inhibiting botox injections.  The botox recipients reported 
feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they 
did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that 
the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost 
that could come from the treatment's cosmetic nature.
  "It would appear that the way we feel emotions isn't just 
restricted to our brain-there are parts of our bodies that help 
and reinforce the feelings we're having," says Michael Lewis, a 
co-author of the study.  "It's like a feedback loop."
  Either that, or botulism-to-the-face is like a shot of good 
feels? Let's just chalk this one up to smiling.  Note that this 
is different from harboring feel-good happy-thoughts (more on 
that below).
  *5.  Get therapyinin
  First of all, a side note: if you think you might benefit from 
psychotherapy, but are too worried about what your friends and 
family will think, get over yourself and do it.  Why? Because it 
works (especially if you find the form of therapy that's right 
for you.
  Anyway: in an interesting twist on the age-old question of 
whether money makes people happy, psychologist Chris Boyce 
compared the cost-effectiveness of psychological therapy versus 
monetary compensation following instances of psychological 
distress.  His findings, which were actually published in an 
economics journal, found therapy to be 32 times more cost 
effective at increasing happiness than cold, hard cash.
  "Often the importance of money for improving our well-being and 
bringing greater happiness is vastly over-valued in our 
societies," notes Boyce.  "The benefits of having good mental 
health, on the other hand, are often not fully appreciated and 
people do not realize the powerful effect that psychological 
therapy ...  can have on improving our well-being."
  *6.  STOP IT.  Stop trying to be happyddinin
  If you take away one thing from this post, let this be it: to 
be happy, there's a decent chance you'll have to stop trying to 
be happy.  Sorry to get all zen-master on you, but that's the way 
it is.
  Nevermind the fact that measuring happiness is a lot like 
trying to weigh an idea in pounds and ounces.  Yes, there are 
ways to gauge happiness, whether chemically or with a 
questionnaire, but when you get right down to it, "happiness" 
means different things to different people, and is one of the 
single most nebulous ideals in existence and one of the biggest 
downsides to this truth is that setting a goal of happiness can 
actually backfire.
  Some of the most important research on happiness to emerge in 
recent years stands in direct opposition to the cult of 
positivity typified by bullshit positive-thinking self-help books 
that place a lopsided emphasis on setting grand personal goals of 
happiness.  In a review co-authored in 2011 by Yale psychologist 
June Gruber, researchers found that the pursuit of happiness can 
actually lead to negative outcomes -- not because surrounding 
yourself with positive people, mastering a skill, smiling, 
getting therapy or practicing self-governance aren't conducive to 
happiness, in and of themselves, but because "when you're doing 
it with the motivation or expectation that these things ought to 
make you happy, that can lead to disappointment and decreased 
happiness," says Gruber.
  So be the zen master.  Stop trying to focus on becoming happier 
and just be.  Surround yourself with people not to become happy, 
but to enjoy their company.  Master a skill not to increase your 
happy feels, but to savor the process of becoming.