When you’re happy, you can start a happiness virus through your social network, according to a Harvard and UC San Diego study.
So update your Twitter and Facebook status with good things and spread the love!
No conclusive info about when you’re down, although I know that’s as good a people repellant as B.O.
The Forbes Magazine 90th anniversary issue highlights some excerpts from the September 15, 1917 issue. One titled “The Pursuit of Happiness” reveals what was old is new again. Or that things are the same only different:
Business was originated to produce happiness, not to pile up millions. Too many so-called “successful” men are making business an end and aim in itself…They are so obsessed with the material that they cannot enjoy the immaterial, the intangible, the ideal, the spiritual–quiet thought, self-communion, reflection, poise, inward happiness, domestic felicity…Mere getting is not living.
Interestingly another article lambasts millionaires who donate money to “perpetuate his name” while treating workers like dirt.
I like this socially conscious Forbes.
The 2006 General Social Survey (GSS) by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago revealed that “The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching and protecting others and creative pursuits…”
People who reported being happiest have jobs such as:
It is very interesting to me NOT to see in the top:
Perhaps the stress around the jobs counteracts any happy effects?
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A few SuperViva members in New York started a blog to support and empower other women with group meetings and a blog - Sistars !
They have a detailed outline of how they put together an event to create Vision Boards (also called Treasure Maps) and added a nice slide show of their party to boot.
Good work gals!
I spent way too much time thinking about whether to suggest reading “Stumbling on Happiness
The subtitle is “Why do we fail so often to know what will make us happy in the future?”
Now I think it might be worth a look after acting on a suggestion he makes: Project how you will feel if you make a certain decision or action. (I may be saying this wrong but that’s what I took from it.)
Just now I was considering walking to an outdoor cafe to do some writing. Secretly, I don’t like their coffee much and knew I could make better at home. However I like people watching. But I also wanted to send out a newsletter, which I could only do at home. I tried to ponder why I like being at that cafe and imagined being there; and, I admitted it usually isn’t as fulfilling as I think it will be when I’m on my way there.
In the end I decided sending the newsletter would make me happier and free me from having to think about it more. (Procrastinating would only stress me out!)
So I decided to send the newsletter, have coffee, then if I feel like it walk to the cafe and maybe have something to eat.
This is a long winded way of saying if you like thought-provoking books and self-analysis, Daniel Gilbert has written a well researched and documented book that will make you think.
One review sums it up well: “This is a book that describes what science has to tell us about how and how well the human brain can imagine its own future, and about how and how well it can predict which of those futures it will most enjoy.”
