Optimizing Happiness
Interesting findings in SciAm article on UC Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky:
Her aim is not merely to confirm the strategies’ effectiveness but to gain insights into how happiness works. For example, conventional wisdom suggests keeping a daily gratitude journal. But one study revealed that those who had been assigned to do that ended up less happy than those who had to count their blessings only once a week. Lyubomirsky therefore confirmed her hunch that timing is important. So is variety, it turned out: a kindness intervention found that participants told to vary their good deeds ended up happier than those forced into a kindness rut. Lyubomirsky is also asking about mediators: Why, for example, does acting kind make you happier? “I’m a basic researcher, not an applied researcher, so I’m interested not so much in the strategies but in how they work and what goes on behind the scenes,” she explains.
Initial results with the interventions have been promising, but sustaining them is tough. Months after a study is over, the people who have stopped the exercises show a drop in happiness. Like a drug or a diet, the exercises work only if you stick with them. Instilling habits is crucial. Another key: “fit,” or how well the exercise matches the person. If sitting down to imagine your best possible self (an optimism exercise) feels contrived, you will be less likely to do it.
The biggest factor may be getting over the idea that happiness is fixed–and realizing that sustained effort can boost it. “A lot of people don’t apply the notion of effort to their emotional lives,” Lyubomirsky declares, “but the effort it takes is enormous.”
This last is an important observation that points to the idea that more happiness may not be better as long as there is some cost to increasing one’s happiness level. When you hit the point where the cost of the marginal unit of effort is greater than the benefit of the marginal unit of happiness, then you’re as happy as you want to be, even if you could in some sense be happier.
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Being Kind is important as if does increase one’s happiness. It feels good. For example if you went out and performed an act of kindness for someone else you have actually not only helped someone else you have helped to lift your own spirits.
Many studies have been researched, it has been proven that your business, can profit in being kind of up to 15%.
Kindness is a verb, to benefit from it, it takes action. The result would be that you are happier.
Mari-Lyn
“When you hit the point where the cost of the marginal unit of effort is greater than the benefit of the marginal unit of happiness, then you’re as happy as you want to be… .”
Couching the discussion this way is useful, since it conceives of happiness as an equilibrium, which focuses attention on costs as well as benefits. One implication seems to be that in the long run, you could increase happiness not just by shifting the marginal benefit curve upward(which everyone seems to focus on), but also by figuring out how to shift the marginal cost curve downward (which people tend to overlook). For instance, rather than just learning to to take more enjoyment from certain happy things, one could also increase his equilibrium simply by learning to hate happiness-producing activities less.
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title . Thanks for informative article