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Happiness can ripen with age, study
finds
If the Rolling Stones couldn't get no
satisfaction in their youth, new research suggests they might have a better
shot now that they qualify for the seniors' discount.
A study published in the latest edition
of the Journal of Positive Psychology investigates the origins of life
satisfaction across adulthood and finds the secret to happiness evolves as
we age, while the things that dissatisfy us most remain constant.
The team of social scientists, drawing
from a multi-year study of 818 people aged 18 to 94, were surprised to find
that self-reported health was not a significant predictor of life
satisfaction. The researchers say this helps explain why older people, who
often experience a greater number of medical concerns, tend to rate their
happiness just as high -- if not higher -- as younger people.
By way of example, a cancer patient who
maintains a positive attitude will be more satisfied with life than the
healthy athlete who's too sad to smile.
"It's encouraging, especially when
you think about older Canadians," says lead author Karen Siedlecki, a
post-doctoral research fellow in Columbia University's cognitive
neuroscience division.
"Successful aging is a lot of the
time defined in terms of cognitive or physical functioning, and it's usually
inevitable that those things will decline. But this shows that the really
key components of successful aging may be how happy you are and how
satisfied you are with your life, and these factors don't tend to decline
with age."
The study revealed crystallized ability
-- the knowledge, skills and experience people require throughout their
lives -- was also not significantly associated with life satisfaction.
Siedlecki explains that while age is associated with a general increase in
knowledge, it doesn't significantly change the degree to which people live a
contented existence. By contrast, fluid ability -- the capacity to reason
abstractly and draw inferences -- was a significant predictor of happiness
among younger and middle-aged people, but didn't notably affect older
people.
"Intelligence is a really highly
valued resource in our society and is closely linked with our life
satisfaction" says Siedlecki. "But when we get older and leave the
workforce, other things may take on more value, such as our emotional ties
and bonds with friends."
- 2008 August 14 VANCOUVER
SUN
Happiness may hold the key to good
health: study
A happy heart just might be a healthier
one as well, new research suggests.
A study of nearly 3,000 healthy British
adults, led by Dr Andrew Steptoe of University College London, found that
those who reported upbeat moods had lower levels of cortisol - a
"stress" hormone that, when chronically elevated, may contribute
to high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and dampened immune function,
among other problems.
In the study, published in the American
Journal of Epidemiology, women who reported more positive emotions had lower
blood levels of two proteins that indicate widespread inflammation in the
body. Chronic inflammation is believed to contribute to a range of ills over
time, including heart disease and cancer. Researchers have long noted that
happier people tend to be in better health than those who are persistently
stressed, hostile or pessimistic. But the reasons are still being studied.
One possibility is that happier people
lead more healthful lifestyles, but not all studies have found this to be
the case, explained Dr Steptoe.
"We have therefore been searching
for more direct biological links between positive states and health,"
he told Reuters Health.
The current findings, according to Dr
Steptoe, add to evidence that happiness and other positive emotions are
"associated with biological responses that are health-protective".
The study, published in the American Journal, included 2,873 healthy men and
women between the ages of 50 and 74. Over the course of one day,
participants collected six samples of their saliva so that the researchers
could measure their cortisol levels; after taking each sample, participants
recorded their current mood - the extent to which they felt "happy,
excited or content".
On a separate day, the researchers
measured participant's levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6, two
markers of inflammation in the body.
They found that men and women who
reported happier moods had lower average cortisol levels over the course of
the day - even when factors such as age, weight, smoking and income were
taken into account.
Among women, but not men, positive
emotions were also related to lower levels of C-reactive protein and
interleukin 6. The reason for the sex difference is not clear, according to
the researchers.
Dr Steptoe said that the findings on
cortisol confirm the results of earlier, smaller studies; the results on C
reactive protein and interleukin 6, however, are new.
"These findings suggest another
biological process linking happiness with reduced biological
vulnerability," he said.
But if happier people are healthier
people, the more difficult question remains: How do you become happier?
"What we do know," Dr Steptoe noted, "is that people's mood
states are not just a matter of heredity, but depend on our social
relationships and fulfilment in life".
"We need to help people to recognise
the things that make them feel good and truly satisfied with their lives, so
that they spend more time doing these things." -
2008 January 5 REUTERS
Happiness is "The Secret" to the Law of Attraction
Why was Marci on NBC's "The Today
Show" this week? Because as one magazine just declared, "Happiness
is the newest fashion." People are finally figuring out that it isn't
the new flat screen TV, or the iPhone, or the new wardrobe that makes you
happy.
It's the old chicken/egg thing. And
happiness definitely came first. Marci figured out how to get happiness to
naturally bubble up from within, which is why the national media is
clamoring to get her attention. She figured out that to be happier all you
need is your brain -- and simple instructions on how to use it. And, you
should, because
* * *
Unhappiness brings early death
* * *
Research shows that unhappy people:
* Are 65% more likely to get a cold
* Have a greater risk of heart disease,
strokes, hypertension, infections, and Type 2 diabetes
* Release more of the stress hormone
cortisol. They have a higher heart rate and may be at higher risk for heart
attacks
* Are less likely to find a spouse
* Live nine years fewer than their happy
counterparts
So... when you are happy, you are likely
to live longer. You are more emotionally healthy, physically healthy,
creative, energetic, compassionate, and successful!
- Happy
For No Reason.com
The science of soul
Yes, helping others makes us feel warm
and fuzzy, but new research suggests that doing good deeds can actually help
people live longer, healthier lives. Positive action may be better
than popping pills
What if your doctor told you to take two steps toward being a better person and call him in the morning?
Patients at a California health maintenance
organization are being prescribed generous behaviour as part of a program
called Rx: Volunteer, one of various new research projects described by
Stephen Post in his book Why Good Things Happen To
Good People, out next week. Dr. Post chronicles the link between doing
good and living a longer, healthier life.
“The science shows that we're hardwired to be giving,” he says. “We're talking here about a one-a-day vitamin for the
soul.”
A growing number of researchers are supporting his
claim with studies that show how the human body benefits from everything
from gratitude to generosity.
Dr. Post, the president of Case Western Reserve
University's Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, believes in the
scientific equivalent to The Secret, the
self-help phenomenon that preaches positivity as a means to personal reward.
No, being a good person won't necessarily get you a
new car or help you lose 10 pounds, Dr. Post says, but there is a karma of
the brain, where the body physically rewards acts of kindness and
forgiveness. “The remarkable bottom line of the science of love is that
giving protects overall health twice as much as Aspirin protects against
heart disease,” he says.
For example, psychologist Robert Emmons studied
organ-transplant recipients and found that the more gratitude they felt, the
faster they recovered.
A 2001 study of trauma survivors by psychologist
Russell Kolts found that gratitude was associated with lower symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder.
And a Wellesley College study that has tracked 200
people since the 1920s, interviewing them for five hours every decade, found
that people who were charitable in high school had better physical and
mental health in late adulthood.
“The connection for mental health is particularly
strong, but the physical health results are also highly significant,”
psychologist Paul Wink notes.
Researchers at the University of Michigan found that
people who offered social support to others in a financial crisis saw a
marked reduction in their own anxiety about money.
The movement toward studying human goodness has even
spawned its own diagnostic manual, Character
Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification.
It was written to contrast the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual, which doctors use to classify human behaviour by
pathology.
And he thinks the culture is ready for a shift
toward the positive.
He was encouraged by the behaviour of some young
people in the aftermath of last month's mass shooting at Virginia Tech, who
reached out to one another online and promised to be kinder to strangers.
“The truth is ours we have a duty to be true to
ourselves. Smile at people you usually never even looked at talk to people u
hated,” Quebec student Pierre-Olivier Laforce wrote in a Facebook post
quoted in The New York Times.
And also last month Ryan Fitzgerald, an unemployed
20-year-old from Boston, received more than 5,000 calls after posting his
phone number on YouTube for strangers who needed to talk.
Mr. Fitzgerald said he was inspired by Juan Mann, an
Australian whose efforts to hug strangers landed him as a guest on Oprah
Winfrey's couch.
And the impulse to take a higher road is not just
infecting idealistic young people.
Toronto consultant Peggie Pelosi decided she needed
to rethink her priorities while working as a vice-president at a health
sciences company. After establishing a charitable partnership for her
employees, she watched their productivity soar. She now helps companies form
philanthropic partnerships and has written a book, Corporate
Karma: How Business Can Move Forward By Giving Back.
“I think there's a lack of opportunity for people
to find and express compassion,” she says of her baby-boomer generation.
“We've gotten to the point in our lives where we would like to have some
meaning.” - 2007
May 3 GLOBE
& MAIL
Having more money doesn't always bring
more happiness
There are ways to use your personal
wealth to make your life more satisfying
Happiness has been much in the media lately.
Will Smith's character pursued it by becoming a stockbroker. The New
Economics Foundation, a British think tank, is trying to measure it with
criteria that include the avoidance of meat and airplanes (happyplanetindex.org,
for anyone who wants to take the test.) Academic research has shown that
money can buy happiness -- but only to a point. It still can't buy you love.
Having more money does make you happier if you start out poor, and get
enough more money to raise your living standard. At the middle-class level,
it can protect you from having to worry about hunger and security.
But once you have enough money to meet your basic needs, having even more
money doesn't necessarily bring more happiness. It may only buy social
isolation, increased responsibilities and more headaches. Just ask those
sad, lonely and bankrupt lottery winners that pop up in the news from time
to time.
The relationship between money and happiness is in fact very complicated,
according to Ed Diener, a psychologist and expert with the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. People in wealthy nations tend to be happier
than those in poorer nations, but people who value money too highly tend to
be less happy than others, he says.
It's a tricky balance: Having some money can definitely help you get
happy, but caring about it too much can backfire. Here are some ways to use
your personal wealth to make your life more satisfying.
- Spend it on job training. Folks who have jobs they feel good about,
that make them feel competent and bring them some social standing and a
decent salary, are happier than those who have jobs that make them
miserable. Duh! Spending cash on skills that can get you a better job, and
generally make you more employable, is one way to buy happiness.
- Spend it on friends and family. The factor that correlates most closely
with happiness is satisfying relationships. People who have friends and see
them often; and who have good relationships with their relatives, are happy.
So, spend money travelling to see those who are far away; taking vacations
together, on parties and holiday celebrations and occasionally on picking up
the tab for your good buddies. You can't buy friendship, of course, but
putting some cash behind the friendships you already have is a good thing.
- Buy sporting goods. Exercise contributes to happiness in many ways,
according to the experts. There's the well-documented effect of raised
endorphins, those brain chemicals that make you feel good. But there's also
an improved fitness level that can make you feel better physically, and that
feeling of competency. Exercising with others, on a team, a tennis game, or
even in a class, can be more satisfying than solo exercise, especially as
you practice and get better and better at it.
- Skip the big screen TV and buy tools or toys. Over time, people are
happier when they are doing something; playing guitar in a band or playing
chess with a friend, or building models with their kids, than they are when
they are being passively entertained. Relaxation is good, but hobbies are
better.
- Give it away. People who give money to charity are happier than those
who don't, according to Arthur C. Brooks, a professor of public
administration at Syracuse University. That may be because they feel more in
control, or as if they are personally helping to solve society's problems.
Maybe it just makes them feel good about themselves.
- Pay your bills. There are few buzz kills more potent than a drawer full
of maxed-out credit cards. Having big debts hurts your potential for
happiness now and later, so focus on doing what it takes to pay off those
balances. Knowing you don't owe anyone anything may not be defined as
"happiness" but it feels great.
- Get more money. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but weirdly,
happiness seems to lead to more money. People who are outgoing, optimistic,
skilled and feel good about themselves (the happy people) tend to make more
money, say the social scientists. It's worth a try, right? -
by Linda Stern REUTERS 2007 July
27
Don't worry, be happy!
Recognizing negative ideas and checking them against real evidence can
defuse many pessimistic assumptions before they affect our happiness
Maybe there's a science to happiness. A set of
principles we could study, master, then apply to the disappointments,
disasters and dirty dishes in our own lives.
Whether gloomy by nature or not, we'd at least
have some emotional hydraulics to lift ourselves out of despair after the
inevitable arguments at home, mess-ups at work, personal insults. We might
even learn how to enjoy ourselves and thrive doing work we thought
miserable.
Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania, is determined to find the principles that
underlie the good life. Seligman is a driving force behind positive
psychology, the growing effort among sociologists, economists and other
social scientists to study how humans succeed, develop virtue and achieve
fulfilment.
He has spent 20 years researching depression and
his findings have helped influence how therapists treat the condition. That
background gives Seligman the authority to talk about happiness without
being written off as a self-help guru or Pollyanna. His recently released
book, Authentic Happiness (Free Press; $39.50), details the research
findings and how they apply to daily life.
| TAKE
THE QUIZ OF HAPPINESS |
|
Exercising our moral and
social strengths can make us happier, a researcher claims In
this quiz, qualities such as integrity and perseverance have a
lot to do with how fulfilling your life can be.
Martin Seligman's research
suggests that each person has several "signature
strengths."
Unlike natural abilities,
such as physical strength or perfect pitch, these strengths
are moral or social qualities, such as perseverance, integrity
and valour.
One way to find more
fulfilment in life, he believes, is to use our strengths as
often as possible in daily life.
Seligman has designed a
questionnaire to help identify these traits, asking how well
certain statements describe our character. Here's a selection
from the survey:
Answer whether the A
statements are: very much like me (5 points); like me (4
points); neutral (3); unlike me (2); or very much unlike me
(1). For the B statements, reverse the scoring, so that very
much like me is 1 point, and very much unlike me is 5 points.
Curiosity
A) "I am always curious about the world."
B) "I am easily bored."
Originality
A) "I like to think of new ways to do things."
B) "Most of my friends are more imaginative than I
am."
Bravery
A) "I have taken frequent stands in the face of strong
opposition."
B) "Pain and disappointment often get the better of
me."
Spirituality
A) "My life has a strong purpose."
B) "I do not have a calling in life."
Humour
A) "I always mix work and play as much as possible."
B) "I rarely say funny things."
Kindness
A) "I have voluntarily helped a neighbour in the last
month."
B) "I am rarely as excited about the good fortune of
others as I am about my own."
Leadership
A) "I can always get people to do things together without
nagging them."
B) "I am not very good at planning group
activities."
Humility
A) "I change the subject when people pay me
compliments."
B) "I often talk about my accomplishments."
Scores of 9 or 10 in any
specific category will usually identify one of our strengths,
though not always, Seligman says.
The complete questionnaire
appears on Seligman's Web site, at authentichappiness.com.
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"I believe psychology has done very well in
working out how to understand and treat disease," Seligman said in a
recent interview. "But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you
do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you
are working to get people to zero, to neutral.
"What I'm saying is, 'Why not try to get them
to plus-two, or plus-three?' Even people in great pain want more than to
merely endure. They want the good things in life, just like the rest of
us."
As a field of study, positive psychology is a work
in progress. For one thing, as other psychologists have observed, most
measures of happiness are self-reported questionnaires, which can be
difficult to interpret. A person who calls herself "very happy" on
a survey may or may not be truly content. For another, the research has yet
to explore the positive qualities of universal emotional states such as
envy, regret and frustration.
"Many of my patients would love to lift their
moods," said Alan Rappoport, a therapist in Menlo Park, Calif.
"The problem is that they're stuck. They know they ought to be able to
learn to be happy; they just can't yet get there."
Seligman has tried to provide a blueprint. To make
ourselves happier, he argues, we need to learn two important skills -- how
to mind our thoughts, moment to moment. And how to forget ourselves
altogether.
In previous work, Seligman has described an
effective technique for countering what he refers to as "catastrophic
thoughts."
The trick is first to recognize the despairing
idea -- "I'm the weakest employee in the department, and I'm probably
going to get fired" -- and then check it against real evidence, as if
the statement were being uttered by another person trying to make you
miserable. "Did anyone actually say I was doing consistently poor work?
So my last project fell apart -- yet the one before that was praised highly.
Given the expectations, everyone in the department is struggling."
By arguing with yourself in this way, Seligman has
shown, you can separate beliefs from facts, defusing many pessimistic
assumptions by editing them according to logic and evidence. In effect, you
act as your own therapist, talking hard sense to yourself precisely when
your thoughts begin to darken.
The same kind of self-disputing can be applied to
almost any variety of gloominess.
Psychologists find, for example, that depressed
people often turn small foibles and mistakes into stinging self-criticism.
If they get a bad grade, it's not because they didn't prepare: It's because
they're not very smart.
If they lose a tennis match, it's time to quit:
They've never been athletic. If they actually win, or get a good grade, it's
all luck.
In studies during the 1970s and '80s, Seligman and
other investigators showed that depressed people who learn to recognize and
disarm this kind of reflexive pessimism and self-attacking can free
themselves of feelings of worthlessness, fatigue and other symptoms of the
condition. They are no longer depressed. They have pulled themselves from
the depths.
Seligman argues that they can get to even higher
ground, using techniques that rely partly on the work of the Hungarian-born
psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a leading researcher in the field of
creativity. In experiments using moment-to-moment mood monitoring,
Csikszentmihalyi has shown that creatively successful adults and teenagers
tend to experience regular periods of what he calls "flow."
A widely recognized psychological state, flow is
the total absorption that occurs when people are involved in an activity for
its own sake, using their skills to solve a puzzle, complete a job or play a
game, whether tennis or chess. It's the equivalent of an athlete being
"in the zone" or a jazz player losing himself in a melody.
During "flow" moments, one's ego and
sense of time are set aside. "People who are in flow don't really feel
anything in the moment," Csikszentmihalyi said, "but we have good
evidence that afterward they feel very satisfied.
They think, 'Gee, that was wonderful.' " Not
surprisingly, people who love their jobs and their families report high
levels of flow and satisfaction, he said.
Seligman maintains that the way to find more flow
is to first recognize our natural skills, what he calls "signature
strengths." As opposed to innate gifts, such as physical beauty or
lightning quickness, the strengths are moral qualities valued in almost all
cultures, including valour, originality, perseverance and more than a dozen
others.
Each of us scores high in two or three of these
qualities, and it's when expressing them that we're most likely to enter a
state of flow, Seligman believes.
Who can flow through a miserable job? Not
everyone, perhaps. Seligman, however, believes that even tedious work can be
"re-crafted" to allow for some flow.
"Look at what hairdressers do," he said.
"They change what could be a very menial job into something they're
really good at. These are people who would score very high on social
intelligence as a signature strength."
Flow should not be mistaken for purpose. In the
end, Seligman says, there's deeper fulfilment in joining our signature
strengths to a larger cause, such as education, science, justice, religion.
- Benedict Carey Los
Angeles Times December 30, 2002
Can money buy true happiness?
Economists debating
It's an age-old question -- and one that
is being debated this week by economists at the American Economics
Association's annual convention: Can money buy happiness?
Andrew Oswald, a British economist at the
University of Warwick and one of the speakers at the convention, says the
connection between income and happiness is far from simple.
Humans, by their nature, are envious
creatures, says Prof. Oswald. In his research, he says he has found that
even if a person's income is rising, he or she tends to become less happy if
the incomes of other people they know are rising faster.
"Human beings seem to have a sort of
inbuilt need to do comparisons of themselves all the time," he says.
"This is a fundamental problem for economists because the evidence
shows that while you have economic growth and the country gets richer and
richer, the people inside it don't seem to get any happier."
While Prof. Oswald believes money can
make an individual happier, other factors, he says, can have a bigger
impact.
"If there was one dominant positive
force on happiness for people in modern society, it's undoubtedly
marriage," he says. "Our calculation is that marriage is worth in
happiness terms about US$90,000 a year.
"So in other words," he says,
"you would need an enormous amount of money to make you as happy as a
lasting marriage."
In general, he says, women report a
higher degree of happiness than men. His evidence also shows that happiness
peaks in your 20s, declines in your 30s then rises through to your 60s and
70s in a U-shaped formation.
Richard Easterlin, a professor at the
University of Southern California who has been considering the question for
the past quarter-century, agrees with Prof. Oswald in many respects.
"Those with more income are on
average happier than those with less," says Prof. Easterlin. "Over
the life cycle, however, the average happiness of a person remains constant
despite substantial income growth."
Prof. Easterlin believes that because
income generally rises over the course of a lifetime, people tend to believe
they were less happy in the past and will be better off in the future.
He and Prof. Oswald were among nine
economists invited to share their research on money and whether it can
purchase happiness at the Economics Association's annual convention, which
began yesterday in Atlanta.
Other scheduled papers included one by
professors from Harvard and the London School of Economics titled Inequality
and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different. Another paper was by
professors from Princeton University titled Toward a Meaningful Economic and
Psychological Measure of Well-Being.
Prof. Easterlin was unable to attend the
conference as a result of the bad weather that swept the United States
yesterday.
His research is based on surveys
conducted primarily in the U.S. and Europe. His survey work has included
such questions as, "Taken all together, how would you say things are
these days: Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy or not too
happy?"
He too found that people's sense of how
happy they are is generally linked to the fortunes of others. "If your
position improves, as compared to others -- as it would by winning the
lottery, or if it deteriorates, as it might with widowhood -- then there
will be a permanent effect on your happiness." If, however, everybody
gets richer or everybody becomes poorer, he explains, there is no great
change in a person's overall happiness.
Prof. Easterlin says his work was largely
ignored by economists in the early days who regarded the research as too
subjective for scientific scrutiny. "Economists don't pay a lot of
attention to what people say, or about how they feel, or about their
motives, expectations or values," he says. "Economists still
adhere to a behaviouristic paradigm, and tend to ignore subjective
indicators."
But lately economists have become
interested in happiness because it seems to offer insight into one of the
rudimentary principles of economic theory: that people try to be as happy as
possible in fairly predictable ways. If true, it stands to reason that
people would get happier over time.
Interest in the complex relationship
between money and happiness was also investigated back in the early 1960s by
a social psychologist named Hadley Cantril.
He carried out an intensive survey in 14
countries with diverse cultures at different stages of socio-economic
development. He asked questions about what people wanted out of life.
In every country, material circumstances,
especially the standard of living, are mentioned most often, mentioned by
about three-quarters of the population.
Next comes family life and relationships,
followed by personal or family health, followed by having a good job and,
finally, a high opinion of yourself.
So can money buy happiness? Like
Professor Easterlin says, yes and no. But perhaps Professor Oswald said it
best: Money does make you happy, but true love will probably make you a heck
of a lot happier.
-by Janice Scrim Financial
Post 2002
Is There a Formula for Joy?
Seligman defines three categories of happiness.
"The first is 'the pleasant life': the Goldie Hawn, Hollywood
happiness—smiling, feeling good, being ebullient. The problem with the
pleasant life is that not everyone can have it." And that, he says, is
a matter of genetic predisposition. Perhaps half of us have it, which means
the other half don't ever get to feel like Goldie.
But, says Seligman, "these people are capable
of the second form of happiness: 'the good life.' It consists first in
knowing what your strengths are and then recrafting your life to use
them—in work, love, friendship, leisure, parenting. It's about being
absorbed, immersed, one with the music."
Seligman calls his third and ultimate level
"the meaningful life." It consists, he says, "in identifying
your signature strengths and then using them in the service of something you
believe is bigger than you are." And you don't have to be
conventionally happy to achieve it. "Churchill and Lincoln,"
Seligman says, "were two profound depressives who dealt with it by
having good and meaningful lives."
Circumstances don't always define emotional
states. Seligman acknowledges that extreme poverty is a downer, but says,
"Once you're above the safety net, people in wealthier nations are not
by and large noticeably happier than those in poorer nations." Climate
isn't a crucial factor: "North Dakotans are just as happy as
Floridians." Nor is money: "If you look at lottery winners, they
get happy for a few months. But a year later, they're back where they
were." Even a catastrophe—cancer, say—does little to alter one's
overall outlook. "On average," Seligman observes, "people
with one life-threatening disease are not more unhappy than the rest of the
population. Of course, a cascade of bad things happening can make a
difference. But if you have one really bad thing, generally you're not more
unhappy."
The two factors that may matter most are marriage
and religious belief, Seligman says. "Married people are happier than
any other configuration of people. And religious people are usually happier
than nonreligious people." Are you single? Agnostic? You can still beat
the odds by lowering your stress level, says Dr. David Spiegel, director of
Stanford's Psychosocial Treatment Laboratory. "We did a study of
metastatic-breast-cancer patients in which we measured diurnal levels of
cortisol [a stress indicator]," Spiegel says. "The women who had
the highest levels had survival rates a year and a half shorter than women
with the lowest cortisol levels." He also cites a study of psoriasis
patients: "Half were given their salve treatments listening to music
while the other half listened to meditation tapes. Those who learned
meditation healed faster." The deductions? Don't worry, be happy. And
hatha yoga is better than none.
Baker had a good reason for having stress,
depression and neurosis: the death of his infant son. Yet he says he used
his own techniques to put his personal anguish in perspective. He cites the
national tragedy of Sept. 11: "In its aftermath, we know that many
people have a greater sense of what's truly important, a greater awareness
of their relationships and values."
To Baker, happiness isn't so much a woozy state of
self-satisfaction as it is a full-time job. It can be practiced and
mastered. "A lot of people think you can't manage emotion," he
says. "That's baloney. Look, we can manage our behavior: eat healthy,
exercise. We can manage our thought processes: bite our tongue, curb our
anger. I think that people even in a painful situation can begin to manage
their grief, agony, sadness—keep it within sensible limits and not let it
overwhelm them. Happy people are very good at managing emotion." And
what makes us happy? It is "the ability to practice appreciation or
love," says Baker. "That sounds sappy, but studies show that when
people engage in appreciative activity, they are using more neocortical,
prefrontal functions—higher-level brain functions." There you go,
skeptics: happiness is an exercise for smart people.
So, is the glass half empty, half full or, as the
engineers say, twice as big as it needs to be? Happiness may consist in
recognizing that we can't always be happy; that ambitions are worth fighting
for but not dying for; that a sense of humor, even of the absurd, is
necessary for a lifesaving sense of proportion. Consider this as well: that
we can work to attain happiness, but that it can still sneak up and surprise
us...for instance, when we finish reading a brisk, informative article on
happiness. - Reported
by David Bjerklie / New York Time
12 Jan 2002
- 2010 March
24 VANCOUVER SUN
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