[acb-hsp] Don't Think About Happiness

[Linda Porelle]

I'd say that a braille notetaker or braille display was involved in
man-handling this article. inin equals star, right? And the first P
before the inin, that's People, yes?
Gotcha, smile!


On 2/27/13, peter altschul <paltschul at centurytel.net> wrote:
> 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.
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