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The keys to happiness, why we don't try
(LiveScience)
Updated: 2006-03-02 08:51
"It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people
don't make it." —Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook
Psychologists have recently handed the keys to happiness to the public, but
many people cling to gloomy ways out of habit, experts say.
Polls show Americans are no happier today than they were 50 years ago despite
significant increases in prosperity, decreases in crime, cleaner air, larger
living quarters and a better overall quality of life.
So what gives?
Happiness is 50 percent genetic, says University of Minnesota researcher
David Lykken. What you do with the other half of the challenge depends largely
on determination, psychologists agree. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Most
people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."
What works, and what doesn't
Happiness does not come via prescription drugs, although 10 percent of women
18 and older and 4 percent of men take antidepressants, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services. Anti-depressants benefit those with
mental illness but are no happiness guarantee, researchers say.
Nor will money or prosperity buy happiness for many of us. Money that lifts
people out of poverty increases happiness, but after that, the better paychecks
stop paying off sense-of-well-being dividends, research shows.
One route to more happiness is called "flow," an engrossing state that comes
during creative or playful activity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has
found. Athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the
feeling. It comes less from what you're doing than from how you do it.
Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California at Riverside has discovered
that the road toward a more satisfying and meaningful life involves a recipe
repeated in schools, churches and synagogues. Make lists of things for which
you're grateful in your life, practice random acts of kindness, forgive your
enemies, notice life's small pleasures, take care of your health, practice
positive thinking, and invest time and energy into friendships and family.
The happiest people have strong friendships, says Ed Diener, a psychologist
University of Illinois. Interestingly his research finds that most people are
slightly to moderately happy, not unhappy.
On your own
Some Americans are reluctant to make these changes and remain unmotivated
even though our freedom to pursue happiness is written into the preamble of the
Declaration of Independence.
Don't count on the government, for now, Easterbrook says.
Our economy lacks the robustness to sustain policy changes that would bring
about more happiness, like reorienting cities to minimize commute times.
The onus is on us.
"There are selfish reasons to behave in altruistic ways," says Gregg
Easterbrook, author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People
Feel Worse" (Random House, 2004).
"Research shows that people who are grateful, optimistic and forgiving have
better experiences with their lives, more happiness, fewer strokes, and higher
incomes," according to Easterbrook. "If it makes world a better place at same
time, this is a real bonus."
Diener has collected specific details on this. People who positively evaluate
their well-being on average have stronger immune systems, are better citizens at
work, earn more income, have better marriages, are more sociable, and cope
better with difficulties.
Unhappy by default
Lethargy holds many people back from doing the things that lead to happiness.
Easterbrook, also a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institute, goes back to
Freud, who theorized that unhappiness is a default condition because it takes
less effort to be unhappy than to be happy.
"If you are looking for something to complain about, you are absolutely
certain to find it," Easterbrook told LiveScience. "It requires some effort to
achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it. Most people take
the path of least resistance. Far too many people today don't make the steps to
make their life more fulfilling one."
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