Who, what, where, when, why and how is happiness?
The previous tenant of my new apartment left me with two things:
1. A very bad roach problem
2. Free magazine subscriptions
The roaches eventually disappeared in about a week, probably killed by my constant shrieking. The magazines, however, continue to arrive monthly, crisp, clean and glossy, filled with advice on how to get slim in just 20 minutes; Woman's Day, discovering the amazing science behind mucus; Popular Science and demystifying this interminable financial recession; Business Week.
Needless to say, I flip through the magazines only for the pictures. However, this month, an article in Woman's Day caught my attention. Tucked right between a tampon ad and one for depression medication was the headline: the pursuit of happiness.
Woman's Day and AOL Living surveyed 12,000 women on happiness.
The results were quite interesting:
Are you happy?
67 percent- happy enough
22 percent- not very
11 percent- blissfully
I was happily surprised by these numbers. Of course, it would nice to be blissfully happy more often, but I consider blissful moments treasured because they're uncommon, like prom night or visiting Machu Picchu. Part of the joy comes from the rarity in these experiences.
On average, Americans are 69 percent happy and happy 54 percent of the time, says Dr. Martin Seligman, author of "Authentic Happiness." Seligman also writes: "At any given time, one-fourth of Americans are mildly depressed."
What makes you very happy?
31 percent- my "me" time
23 percent- my children
15 percent- friends
15 percent- faith
12 percent- marriage
3 percent- job
I'm guessing that most of the women who were asked this question were married and had kids. Still, I found it very interesting that "me" time was ranked the highest form of happiness.
I think back to my own childhood and recall my mom taking one time-out for herself in all her years of parenting. She told my siblings and me that we were not to bother her under any circumstances for half an hour, while she was going to rest in her room.
We had no idea what she was talking about, after all, this had never happened before. We 
were stupid kids, what can I say? Within minutes, we were pounding on her door, begging to be let in, crying that there were terrorists in the house, the toilet was flooded, the kitchen was on fire, anything to get her attention. But there was no response. For that miserable half hour, my mom stood firm and refused to invite us into her "me" time. I now realize that it was the best half hour of her life.
I was also shocked at how low career ranked on the list. Maybe when you are settled in life, your personal ambition becomes secondary, but for me, building a writing a career and becoming a novelist is basically my daily motivation for everything.
Still I have never had the pleasure of giving birth, saying "I do," or making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for two children that look like a combination of me and Bradley Cooper. Maybe those things will mean more to me one day than writing the top read blog on PT for nearly a week!
The key to happiness was ranked accordingly:
20 percent: love, 18 percent: family, 16 percent: religion, 10 percent: contentment, 9 percent: fun, 7 percent: gratitude, 5 percent: money, 4 percent: sense of control, 3 percent: time alone.
Here, "time alone" ranks the lowest, which contradicts the previous results, where "me time" was the most valued. Perhaps the things that make us happy one moment will change in the next.
While I agree that love is my primary key to happiness, I would place money within the top three. People always say things like "money can't buy happiness," but in many ways, I think it does.
Money provides stability, comfort and shopping sprees, which are all very valuable when it comes to ensuring our well-being.
While most happiness research shows that super rich people aren't happier than anyone else, a recent study suggests that money can turn that frown upside-down in a couple of ways:
- Giving- when people spend money on other people, it makes them happier. People feel good about being selfless. I wonder how may homeless people got rich after this news came out.
- Experience spending- people associate experience type purchases, like vacations or even a nice dinner out, with happy memories. Even bad memories, like getting a leech bite in your butthole while trekking in Nepal are outweighed by the good ones, such as river rafting down one of the most beautiful rivers in Asia.
To echo the sentiments of wise Frito from "Idiocracy": I like money.
However another study, conducted at the University of Rochester, surveyed young adults who had just graduated college and were on their way to achieving their hopes and dreams. The surveys measured "intrinsic" goals, like loving relationships and self-growth, as well as "extrinsic" goals, which include money and fame.
The results showed that attaining intrinsic goals "contributed strongly to the subjects' well-being, and also worked against ill-being."
However, attaining extrinsic goals does not improve psychological well-being and can actually harm you:
"Their attainment of those goals does not help their happiness, satisfaction, vitality and wellness at all. It contributes zero to that. And the more unsettling finding is that it actually contributes to their greater ill-being, which is to say more anxiety and depressive symptoms."
Is happiness a choice?
78 percent- yes
22 percent- no
It was Abraham Lincoln who said, "A person will be just about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
In my youth, I believed happiness came from securing things, whether it was an overpriced Anthropologie dress, getting a good grade, or getting a really cute guy-- I thought that external possessions were the keys to happiness.
It was only in the past year that I discovered that I could choose to be happy, whenever I wanted it. It took a lot of difficult experiences, some good reading, a trip abroad, and this corny, yet helpful motivational site.
What I really admire about a lot of happiness programs, like the Option Institute and Authentic Happiness at the University of Pennsylvania, is the approach that you exercise control in your happiness-- it's not like winning the lottery. It doesn't just randomly happen.
Some final happy thoughts to keep in mind:
- A German research study found that Sunday is the least happy day of the week.
- Another German study suggests that happiness is not a warm gun, but a u-shaped curve that bottoms out in your 40s. The basis for this reasoning is that most people's failed endeavors are realized in their 40s. This age group is also most likely to be divorced and often must face the realization that even if they are successful, they will probably never do much better than where they currently are.
- Happiness even smells good:
"Scientists have found that people can judge whether someone is in a positive mood from their body odour alone. In one experiment men and women were shown scary films while their armpit odour was collected on gauze pads. A week later researchers asked strangers to decide which pads came from people in a good mood and which came from frightened people. They were able to do this with surprising accuracy."
- And lastly, check out this beautifully written and thoughtful blog entry on happiness by the writer Paolo Coelho. Even geniuses aren't always sure what makes them happy
You know what makes me really happy? The end of this entry.
