by Doug Lennick
Self-Regard. Happiness is a by-product of believing in oneself and living according to your own values and standards.
Optimism. In the case of setback and disappointment, the ability to recover and claim a happy state is contingent on one's level of optimism.
Interpersonal Relationships. Well-developed relationships help shield you from the negative effects of life's daily demands, thus enhancing and sustaining pervasive feelings of happiness.
Self-Actualization. Happiness comes from a willingness to learn and grow on a journey aligned with your values. Your level of self-motivation and feelings of an enriched life ultimately drive your life achievements and overall happiness.16
Results of these subscales are combined to provide an overall assessment of one's happiness level, referred to as the Well-Being Indicator. As an example, co-author Doug's EQ-i Well-Being Indicator results appear in Figure 6.2.
Source: MHS Assessments
FIGURE 6.2 THE EQ-I WELL-BEING INDICATOR
CHARACTERISTICS OF HAPPY PEOPLE
Another way of helping determine your current level of happiness, and at the same time explore potential ways to increase your happiness, is to compare yourself to demonstrably happy people. Take a look at the following list of characteristics typical of the happiest people. These qualities are based on an enormous body of research.17 How many of these characteristics are true of you?
Routinely express gratitude for what they have
Feel optimistic about the future
Reach out to provide help to others, including co-workers and strangers
Appreciate living in the moment
Spend substantial time with family and friends, deepening and enjoying such relationships
Engage in physical exercise on a regular basis
Strongly commit to long-term goals
Demonstrate composure and strength when facing difficult life circumstances18
It's useful to reflect on which of these characteristics are qualities that describe you, because those are strengths you'll want to protect to maintain a high level of well-being. It's also important to make note of any characteristics of the happiest people that you lack, because these characteristics represent attitudes and behaviors that you can actively develop to increase your level of happiness.
PLANNING TO BE HAPPY
It's not a coincidence that the happiest people tend to set goals for the long term. The happiest people don't necessarily just set goals to be happy. They often find much happiness in setting long-term financial goals, goals for future adventures, goals for a major career change, and goals for future physical accomplishments such as a triathlon. That said, one of the most satisfying life goals you can set for yourself is a goal to be happy. You deserve to be happy. Everything you do to live in alignment with principles and values will automatically help you be happy. Because of the intersection of money, health, and happiness, setting and achieving financial and health goals will also go a long way toward increasing your happiness. However, setting a specific goal to be happy will open you up to the possibility of even greater well-being. So, begin by thinking about the characteristics of the happiest people listed above as potential key activities for achieving your goal to be happy. Then review the key happiness-promoting activities and practices discussed next.
KEY ACTIVITIES AND PRACTICES FOR BEING HAPPY
Practicing Gratitude
Some people roll their eyes when they read an article or see a Facebook post that encourages them to “practice gratitude.” Practicing gratitude may seem hokey. If you thought the earlier exercise which included tuning into the “gratitude channel” was a little silly, that's understandable. But, in the words of the nineteenth-century poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, try to “suspend disbelief,” because there is a lot of research confirming the benefits of developing an “attitude of gratitude.” For example, Dr. Robert Emmons, the world's leading authority on gratitude, has conducted numerous studies on the connection between gratitude and well-being. According to Dr. Emmons, “grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism, and that the practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness.”19 Other research shows that gratitude improves self-esteem and fosters resilience. Gratitude also benefits physical health, and even helps people sleep better.20
So how do you practice gratitude? Try one of the following activities:
Tune into the Gratitude Channel. We suggested this practice previously as an experiment to demonstrate the power of the mind to change attitude, improve your physiological state, and manage difficult emotions. But “tuning into the gratitude channel” is even more effective when used on a regular basis to promote a state of emotional well-being. Choose a specific time each day or several times a week to think about one or more people or life circumstances for which you are grateful and reflect on why you are grateful.
Keep a Gratitude Journal. If you like to write, choose a time of day when you can take up to 15 minutes to write down three to five things for which you are grateful. Dr. Lyubomirsky's research indicates that it's often most effective to do this once a week rather than more frequently, so that the impact doesn't wear off.21 But you may find it personally more beneficial to write in a gratitude journal every day. Other research suggests that spending up to 15 minutes writing in a gratitude journal right before going to bed each night improves the quality of sleep.
Express Gratitude to Others. Martin Seligman studied the well-being benefits of writing and hand-delivering a letter of gratitude to someone who was especially appreciated. Research participants who completed this activity experienced large increases in their sense of well-being, an effect which lasted even a month after the gratitude visit.22 This is an activity you can plan to do on a regular basis. Not only will you feel better; expressing gratitude directly to someone is bound to increase their happiness as well.
Building Optimism
Like practicing gratitude, deliberately cultivating optimism may seem a little clichéd. When things are tough, we may be annoyed to hear someone tell us to “Look on the bright side.” But it's a fact that happy people focus on what's going well rather than on what's not going well in daily life. Cultivating optimism has an important benefit beyond feeling upbeat. To achieve happiness, you need to know what you want for yourself (WDYWFY), and you need faith that it's possible to get what you need and want. When you are optimistic about the future, you're much more likely to set goals for the future and more willing to make the effort needed to achieve such goals. That's why emphasizing the positive may turn out to be a key activity in your happiness plan. Try this practice to build optimism.
Visualize Your Best Future Self. Once a week or so, put yourself in a relaxed state, and spend 5 or 10 minutes imagining the best possible future for yourself. If you enjoy writing, you can write out your vision of your best future self, either after, or instead of, the visualization exercise. Doing this on a regular basis has been shown to produce increases in feelings of well-being up to several weeks after the exercise. Some research has also found that people who engage in this activity report feeling physically healthier months afterward.23
Practicing Acts of Kindness
One of the most consistent findings in happiness research is that the happiest people have the best relationships with others. Satisfying social connections are also strongly associated with longevity. To have good relationships, we need to be compassionate, which we demonstrate by showing kindness and caring to others. Compassion is one of the universal principles, and it's well recognized in the teachings of the world's major religions. The current Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism is famous for this saying: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” In the Jewish faith, there is the concept of a “mitzvah,” which means to do a good deed or perform an act of kindness. In the Kabbala traditio
n of Judaism, one of the main teachings is that “the world is built on kindness.” In the Christian churches, kindness is considered an important virtue, closely linked to charity, which emphasizes the idea of showing love rather than just talking about it. In the Quran, the holy book of Islam, Muslims are taught to be kind to all of creation, including parents, children, neighbors, and animals.24 In the last few years in the United States, the idea of “practicing random acts of kindness” has become popular. These practices usually involve small acts of generosity, such as paying for the coffee order of the stranger behind you in the Starbuck's drive-through lane or putting money in a parking meter about to expire.
THANKSGIVING ACT OF KINDNESS
For a number of years Doug would take his son Al with him to a mid-scale restaurant on Thanksgiving Day. There would always be some people eating alone, often because they didn't have friends or family who invited them for dinner. Doug would go up to the cashier and tell him or her that he wanted to pay for dinner for everyone who was eating alone. Doug did this in the spirit of practicing acts of kindness, and in alignment with his value of serving others. He also wanted his son Al to recognize how lucky they were as a family, and how much they had to be thankful for. Doug also hoped this tradition would encourage Al to practice acts of kindness as he grew up.
There is considerable anecdotal evidence that such acts of kindness give pleasure to the person performing them. But there's a catch: According to research, such small acts of kindness may not increase your happiness level unless you perform a number of acts of kindness in the same day. If you spread out your acts of kindness, say one act every day or so, you're not likely to experience a happiness boost.25
That doesn't mean you should rule out performing occasional random acts of kindness, since they're likely to benefit or please the recipient. But if you want to experience a sustained level of greater happiness, it's best to find more substantial ways to demonstrate compassion.
Volunteer. One of the best ways to practice kindness is through regular involvement in volunteer activities. To reap all the rewards of volunteering, choose events or organizations related to a cause you really care about. Find opportunities that take advantage of your skills or will allow you to learn new skills that interest you. Find a setting that is consistent with your personality or social needs. A few years ago, Linda, a lifelong New Yorker, retired to a small beach town in Florida. She started volunteering at the gift shop of a historical lighthouse as a way of trying to connect with her new Florida community. During her weekly shift, she was the only person staffing the dark and airless shop, and visitors were scarce. She quit after two weeks because she felt bored, claustrophobic, and lonely. A friend introduced Linda to a research project for which each week a group of volunteers spent a morning going up and down 10 miles of beach trying to spot an endangered species of whales and recording weather and ocean traffic conditions that could affect them. Linda became a conscientious member of the team. The project connected to her values, which included love of animals and appreciation of nature. As a bonus, Linda became friends with several other volunteers. By the end of the project, Linda was a lot happier. She felt better about herself because she had contributed to a meaningful cause. She enjoyed her hours on the beach in the company of friendly people who shared many of her values. Even though she was practicing kindness, Linda felt almost selfish because she was having such a good time. But as co-author Doug says, “Goal achievement, which includes being happy, is a rightfully selfish process, provided the goals are aligned with principles and values.”
Practicing Forgiveness
One of the biggest barriers to happiness is holding on to anger about harm done to us by others. Another less well-understood obstacle to well-being is inability to forgive ourselves—when we hold onto disappointment about ways in which we have failed others or made mistakes that clash with our ideal self. The only cure for such unhappiness is forgiveness. We need to be able to forgive others for mistakes they've made, and perhaps more importantly, we need to forgive ourselves when we let ourselves down. In short, our well-being and happiness depends on putting the universal principle of forgiveness into practice.
When it comes to forgiveness, “Let it go” is a powerful mantra. Every day we suffer frustrations and slights that can irritate or upset us. It's normal to have those feelings. But keep in mind from our earlier discussion of the body's stress response that every minute we spend feeling angry has negative physical consequences: When we're angry or upset, stress hormones elevate, our blood pressure rises (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease), and numerous other organ systems required for optimal health are negatively affected. That suggests that being able to forgive ourselves and others would improve not only our emotional well-being but our physical health as well. And in fact, many studies have found that the act of forgiveness can lower blood pressure, stabilize heart rate, as well as reduce depression and anxiety. When people do us harm or make mistakes, it's common for many of us to hang on to the negative feelings that their actions provoked in us. We remain angry or fearful, and the longer those feelings last, the longer we put our health and emotional well-being at risk.
As Doug often says, “Forgiveness is about giving up all hope for a better past.” You really can't improve your past. But by forgiving yourself and others, you can go a long way to improving your future.
Pascale Kavanagh, a GenXer, shared her story of forgiveness with the magazine Real Simple. Pascale's mother viciously abused her physically and emotionally throughout childhood. Her mother continued to harass and berate her well into adulthood. Pascale's mother was a successful physician, a reminder that domestic abuse knows no racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic boundaries. After college, Pascale moved across the country to get as far away from her mother as possible, married, and in 2002 was fortunate to give birth to her own daughter. In 2010, Pascale's mother suffered a series of major strokes, which left her permanently and severely brain damaged. Since Pascale's father and brother had both died, she felt obliged to take care of her mother, a duty she didn't accept graciously. Initially Pascale felt rage, but after months of seeing her mother so incapacitated, her anger went away. Pascal just let it go. As Pascal says now, “I've become less interested in holding on to all forms of bitterness I see now that forgiveness is not so much about what you receive from people,” she says, “but what you give them.”26
Practicing forgiveness of others does not mean that we should ignore our initial feelings of anger, frustration, or fear. In fact, in order to forgive, it's important to begin by acknowledging our emotions about any harm we have experienced. What forgiveness means is that we take time to process negative emotions caused by others' actions, and then move as quickly as possible to let go of the negative emotions stimulated by others' behavior. It's not necessary to forgive others because they deserve our forgiveness. It's important to forgive others so we can release the power others have to make us miserable, emotionally and physically.
9 Steps to Forgiveness
Fred Luskin, director of the Stanford University's Forgiveness Projects, suggests these steps for practicing forgiveness:27
Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK. Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience.
Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else.
Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, or condoning of their action. What you are after is to find peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the “peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story.”
Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts, and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes—or ten years—ago.
Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings.
At the moment you feel upset, practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body's flight or fight response.
Give up expecting things from other people, or your life, that they do not choose to give you. Recognize the “unenforceable rules” you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace, and prosperity and work hard to get them.
Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you. Instead of mentally replaying your hurt, seek out new ways to get what you want.