Connecting Happiness and Success_A Guide to Creating Success Through Happiness

by Ray White

  Obviously, mindfulness does not dismiss entirely ideas of responsibility or planning for the future. Just as with the young man I was mentoring, time should be specifically set aside to plan for the future; and when that time arrives, we should mindfully focus our full energy on that too.

  Think about work and vacation. How many people plan and think about their vacations while they are at work, then go on the vacations and think about work? Use mindfulness to think about work when you're at work and to be on vacation when you're on vacation. Focus on enjoying your current activity. Make time to plan the next activity.

  Many of the challenges of finding happiness stem from the problem of comparison. We find people and things we believe are better, and we compare our life to that life. Because of what we choose as our point of comparison, we find ourselves lacking and focus on attaining some holy grail in the future or berate ourselves for the mistakes we made in our past.

  “Change the way you see things, and the things you see will start to change” Wayne Dyer

  If we focus our point of comparison on growth in ourselves and on what we have instead of what we don’t have, we can truly start to appreciate the gift of the present. Are you happy to have a family member or friend? You could be completely alone in the world. Are you happy to have enough money to buy food? You could be going hungry every day. Are you happy to see the green trees and blue sky? They are beautiful parts of nature and should be appreciated because they may not always be within our sight. There can be pleasure in getting up every morning and preparing for a job. There can even be pleasure in getting up every morning and preparing to look for a job. When you eat your breakfast, what aromas, tastes, and sensations do you experience? Take a moment to appreciate what is here and now. It is truly a gift only you are able to experience in that moment.

  As a society, we tend to group with people who are similar to us. We typically live and spend time with people who have the same nationality, similar income levels, similar values, similar education levels, similar interests, etc. When we start comparing ourselves to others, we look to the best in our comparison group. We compare ourselves to people who represent our aspirations; and because we tend only to see the aspirational parts of those people while ignoring the harsh or undiscovered realities, we never seem to measure up. We then begin focusing on the future and how we are going to work harder and do more to be prettier, or richer, or drive a nicer car. When we feel we have reached that level, we stop and re-compare, only to find that there is yet another level to chase.

  One solution is to expand from a mindset of comparison to a habit of mindfulness and gratitude. What do we have right now that we can appreciate? There are millions of people around the world who are not as well off as we are. We can focus on how our car is not as new or nice as our neighbor’s, or we can look at how many people don’t have cars to drive to work at all. Our houses are not big enough or close enough to work, but we do have houses when millions don’t. How about having running water and bathrooms? Over three billion people--more than 2/5 of the world’s population-do not have running water and bathrooms in their homes. Are you familiar with the phrase “Stop and smell the roses”? What is your commute like? Are you focused on how long it is, how boring it is, how much traffic there is, or how many people there are? Could you pause and appreciate the scenery along the way--the ponds, the architecture, the trees, the flowers? How about the people? There are thousands of interesting people getting off and on buses and trains every day. What makes them happy? What could you do to make them smile? How beautiful is the sky today? How refreshing is the rain? How exciting are the thunder and lightning?

  In the next section, called Positive Relationships, we'll discuss the importance of your family and friends. But in relation to mindfulness, are your kids driving you crazy because they are slow to get going in the morning, or they can’t find their shoes, or they need help getting their breakfast? Pause for a short second and imagine if you didn’t have them there. Would you miss those hugs, those sleepy looks in the morning, those excited days when they had met a new friend or found a subject or teacher that they connected with? Be mindful of and grateful for what you have. No matter what it's like, there are things we can pay attention to and appreciate in our lives.

  "Sometimes we develop grand concepts of what happiness might look like for us; but if we pay attention, we can see that there are little symbols of happiness in every breath that we take." — His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa

  Mindfulness is about taking a moment to experience and appreciate all the wonderful things in and around your life. You can’t wait to be happy in the future, because by definition the future never comes. To be happy, you have to find ways to be happy right now. Practicing mindfulness will help you focus more on being happy today, enjoying the “present.”

  Connecting Mindfulness

  In a previous chapter we discussed Pleasure vs. Happiness and knowing when pleasure was taking away from rather than adding to our happiness. Mindfulness is a great tool to help us be aware of when that is occurring. If we think about what we're doing and why we're doing it, we can monitor our behaviors and make adjustments. For example, Brene Brown in Daring Greatly gives an example of eating chocolate. Are we savoring the taste and texture of the chocolate and really enjoying the sensations, or are we stuffing handfuls of chocolate in our mouths in an attempt to forget about some negative event or thought in our lives? We can use mindfulness as a tool to determine when we are savoring and should continue our activities, and when we are numbing and should probably stop and attempt to deal with our current feelings and challenges.

  In a later chapter we will discuss habits and activities you can do every day to be happier and more successful. Mindfulness is one tool that helps create those daily habits. Being aware of what you are doing and thinking is a key to being able to make positive changes.

  Being mindful also helps lead to Flow, a state of mind in which we're so focused on what we're doing in the present that we lose track of time and temporarily forget about the myriad other challenges going on in our lives.

  Activities for Mindfulness:

  1.Be present in the moment – when eating, commuting, etc.

  2.Be present in the moment with a person – pay full attention to him or her.

  3.Stop multitasking.

  4.Meditate – focus on your breathing. Count slowly to eight while breathing in, hold for an eight count and then exhale for an eight count. Focus completely on the breath coming in and out of your body.

  5.Designate one meal a day — or even one a week — during which you take the time to notice the aroma, flavor, and texture of what you're eating.

  6.Curl up in a favorite chair at some point after you return home from work and spend at least a half-hour reading a book purely for pleasure.

  7.Take the time to really listen to someone you love — to give that person the space to speak without interruption, for as long as it takes.

  8.Choose a place that interests you – it could be in the city or the country – and spend a couple of hours just exploring it without any specific end in mind.

  9.Buy a journal; and before you go to bed, take a few minutes to reflect on what you feel grateful for that day, and what went right.

  Chapter 11

  Why Relationships are Important

  “. . . relationships with other humans are both the foundation and the theme of the human condition: we are born into relationships, we live our lives in relationships with others, and when we die, the effects of our relationships survive in the lives of the living, reverberating throughout the tissue of their relationships” Berscheid

  How can you be healthier, happier, more successful, and live longer? The answer is positive relationships. Positive relationships form a foundation for happiness and success. We all have relationships we have chosen (our friends), relationships we have inherited (our family), and relationships that are a result of our circumstances (colleagues and classmat
es). How we navigate and participate within these relationships has a significant impact on our happiness as well as our health, longevity, and success. Creating positive relationships will make us happier, while surrendering to and becoming victims of negative relationships and the related drama will be an obstacle to our happiness. One of the most robust findings in the happiness research is that happy people have better social relationships.

  Whelan and Zelenski conducted research in which they showed participants film clips that were positive, neutral, or negative. They wanted to determine if the film clip would change the participants’ level of happiness, and if that change would result in more or less social interest. They were able to confirm that by showing participants the positive film clips and making them happier, the participants were also more interested in social contact. Positive relationships help people become happier, and happier people are more likely to be in positive relationships.

  We all have a need to belong and to find positive relationships that help satisfy that need. The word positive refers to whether the relationship involves caring and concern. Unpleasant or unsatisfying interactions result in a negative relationship. Delongis’s research showed that it is not just having a relationship, but having a positive relationship that creates the benefits of health and well-being.

  Hang out with people, even to do little things. Interactions that may seem inconsequential, like making small talk or just enjoying each other’s company, are important to a relationship. Making small talk about trivial things helps people feel happier and healthier. But talking on the phone is not enough. Seeing each other in person is more effective than just talking on the phone, which has ramifications because of today’s technology. Facebook, texting, and online video chats are better than no contact, but nothing is better than spending time in person. Face-to-face contact and doing even mundane things together can solidify a positive relationship.

  Choose happy friends. Hanging out with happy friends instead of sad friends makes us happier. Each happy friend increases our probability of being happy by 9%, while each unhappy friend makes our probability of being happy decrease by 7%. Geographic distance is a proxy for amount of interaction. When a friend who lives 1 mile away is happy, it increases our probability of being happy by 25%. A happy sibling who lives less than a mile away increases our probability for happiness by 14%. (Apparently we often like our friends better than our siblings.) Happy next door neighbors also increase our probability of happiness.

  In a survey of 800 college alumni, students who had a preference for close friends and a positive marriage were happier than those who showed a preference for high income and success at work. Active pursuits with other people or going out and working with a charity make us happier than working long hours so we can earn more money to buy more stuff. Research also shows that happy people in positive relationships were much less likely to become criminals.

  Relationships are connected to some of our strongest emotions. When the relationships are positive, we feel happiness, elation, contentment, and calm. When relationships are negative or non-existent we feel anxiety, depression, grief, jealousy, and loneliness. Close relationships with our friends and family help us build our self-worth and self-image. They provide support in times when we struggle, unconditional love, and a reason for doing many of the things we do, which all help give our lives meaning. They also provide us with a sense of identity and belonging. Knowing we are part of something bigger in life helps us be happier.

  Remember the last time you had a peak experience. A time when you laughed and laughed or got really excited or felt like everything was right with the world. More than likely those times all involved other people and positive relationships with those people. People and relationships are the source of our greatest joys, as well as our most gut-wrenching traumas.

  Happier people spend time with their friends and family. They are more likely to have a circle of friends, a romantic partner, and companions for other activities in their lives. They are also more likely to have a strong, long-lasting marriage. As a result, they receive emotional and other forms of support from friends, co-workers, and other people in their lives on a regular basis.

  Overwhelmingly, researchers draw similar conclusions about the link between happiness and positive relationships:

  “Relationships constitute the single most important factor responsible for the survival of homo sapiens” – Berscheid

  “Like food and air, we seem to need social relationships to thrive.” - Ed Diener, Robert Biswas-Diener

  "The strongest predictor of happiness is not money, or external recognition through success or fame; it's having meaningful social relationships." June Gruber, Yale University

  “…70 years of evidence that our relationships with other people matter, and matter more than anything else in the world.” George Vaillant

  “The number one predictor of happiness is the time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. The most important source of happiness may be the person sitting next to you. Appreciate them; savor the time you spend together.” Tal Ben-Shahar

  Your happiness affects other people. Christakis and Fowler, in their book Connected, found that you influence your friend’s happiness by about 15% and you can influence your friend’s friend’s happiness by as much as 10%. They illustrated happiness connections with network maps that show happiness groups. The colors radiate outward, with the least happy people being on the fringes of the network and the happiest people forming the center of the network. So nurturing positive relationships is not just good for you; it’s good for those around you, and even for those around them.

  “Friendship redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.” Francois Bacon

  People with close friends are happier. Relationships make us happiest when we feel closely connected. Having a lot of friends is important. But having a few close friends we can comfortably share our secrets, small successes, and failures with is a key to being happier. It is not the quantity of friends, but the quality. Having people with whom we can discuss our daily thoughts about what is going on in our lives is what makes the difference. Having the most friends on Facebook is not a good happiness goal. Having a few friends with whom we can share ourselves and be authentic with is much more effective.

  We all need our time alone, a break from the world. But the research shows we are happiest when we are with other people. Research on introverts and extroverts found that even introverts who have a natural tendency to be around people less often are still happier when they are with someone they like.

  George Vaillant, a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, titled his 2009 article “Yes, I Stand by My Words, ’Happiness Equals Love—Full Stop.’” For 40 years, Vaillant, has been leading a 70-year Harvard project called The Study of Adult Development. He summarized his findings this way: “The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people… It was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of these men’s lives.”

  The Harvard study followed and measured various aspects of men’s lives beginning, when they were college students in 1940 and through their lives into their 80s.

  The results of his study were that men with indicators for strong positive relationships were healthier and made 60% to 140% higher incomes by age 80.

  Other findings include the warmth of relationships men had in childhood were predictors of whether they were more likely to become officers or privates during the war. Even better news: the men could change their destiny if they had as few as one loving relative, mentor, or friend somewhere in their lifetime. The men who were less emotionally connected earlier in life could change and adjust to become happier and more successful later in life. Changes could take place as late as their 70s or 80s. In 2009, only 12% of the men with negative relationships are still alive, while 33% of the men with positive relationships are still living.

  Other research ha
s shown that social relationships do not guarantee happiness, but that social relationships are necessary for happiness. The happiest participants in the research had more and better relationships and spent less time alone than the average participant. The characteristic that was most consistent in the happiest participants was their commitment to their relationships with friends and family. They made time to be with the people they were closest to.

  It is natural for us to doubt ourselves, have fear, and be insecure about our plans and actions. Being in a positive relationship is an antidote for those feelings. Other people can confirm we are on the right track, support our dreams, and help us get through those tough times when we really doubt ourselves. They can offset our negative moods and give us something different to think about instead of spending all our time ruminating over our past mistakes.

  Another positive aspect of relationships is providing us a group to identify with. We know more and feel better about who we are when we can identify with other people who have similar beliefs and behaviors. I have two kids in high school and was speaking with one of the school’s more experienced teachers. His belief was that every student needed to belong to at least one organization while in high school. We are lucky to have more than 50 school organizations at our local high school, which range from things as common as sports to smaller groups like the chess club. Many are formed and run by the students. The important point this teacher was making was that belonging to some group was a key to surviving and flourishing in high school, because it gave the kids an identity that helped them navigate the ups and downs of their teenage years. Those kids that did not choose to become involved were often isolated and did not have the social support structures that acted as a safety net when they faced the inevitable disappointments of those tough high school years, when they were transitioning from teenagers to young adults. They were less likely to drop out of school or get caught up in drugs and alcohol if they were connected with and could identify with at least one group.