Results of Happiness

Happiness. We all need more happiness in our life. It seems that every news station broadcasts the terrible disasters of the world. People are dying. Wars are waging. People are hungry. Politics are more divisive than ever. Everywhere we look we see calamity and strife. Depression is at an all time high. Kids with ADD and ADHD are reported more now than ever. 

Yet, through it all, we strive as a human species to obtain happiness. A sense of well-being and value that drives our everyday motives and actions.

A happy individual could be described as a person that experience frequent positive emotions and feeling such as joy, contentment, cheerfulness, delight, enjoyment, and well-being. Although a happy person experiences negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety, frustration, and anger, these negative emotions tend to be more infrequent (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon et al. 2005).

The vast majority of U.S. citizens rate personal happiness as very important (Diener, Suh et al. 1999) and think about their personal happiness at least daily (Freedman 1978).

Happy people experience the same level of heartache, setbacks, and frustration as the non-happy person. The difference lies within how a person responds to the traditional experiences in life that causes the proverbial roller-coaster.

There are several specific interventions and lessons that can be implemented that have been proven to increase happiness such as gratitude (Emmons and McCullough 2003), forgiveness (Pargament, McCullough et al. 2000), and positive self-reflection (Lyubomirsky, Sousa et al. 2004).

Results

Gratitude

Studies have shown that individuals that have gratitude:

• • Have better relationships
  • Improved physical health
  • Lower stress
  • Improved energy and vitality
  • Reduction in negative emotions such as frustration and regret.
  • Get better and more restful sleep
  • Improve self-esteem

Hope

• • Are more likely to find alternatives when something negative happens
  • Teams with higher Hope have higher sales and performance
  • Entrepreneurs are more satisfied business owners
  • Have a strong will to succeed
  • Higher hope predicts higher sales
  • People with higher hope have higher GPA
  • Are more creative
  • Hope predicts academic achievement over intelligence, personality, or previous achievement (Day, Hanson et al. 2010)

Efficacy (Confidence)

• • Improved self-esteem
  • Better performance
  • More likely to achieve goals
  • Able to persist and work towards goals

Resiliency

• • Lower burnout
  • Able to bounce back when faced with difficult times
  • Think more clearly during times of stress
  • Seek for solutions
  • Feel more in control of own life

Optimism

• • Have greater work happiness
  • Perform at a higher level than their non-optimistic counterparts
  • Able to forgive oneself for past mistakes
  • Are less complacent

Bibliography

Day, L., K. Hanson, J. Maltby, C. Proctor and A. Wood (2010). “Hope uniquely predicts objective academic achievement above intelligence, personality, and previous academic achievement.” Journal of Research in Personality 44(4): 550-553.

Diener, E., E. Suh, R. E. Lucas and H. L. Smith (1999). Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress.

Emmons, R. A. and M. E. McCullough (2003). “Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life.” Journal of personality and social psychology 84(2): 377.

Freedman, J. L. (1978). Happy people: What happiness is, who has it, and why, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Lyubomirsky, S., K. M. Sheldon and D. Schkade (2005). “Pursuing happiness: the architecture of sustainable change.” Review of general psychology 9(2): 111.

Lyubomirsky, S., L. Sousa and R. Dickerhoof (2004). “The medium is the message: The costs and benefits of thinking, writing, and talking about life’s triumphs and defeats.” Manuscript submitted for publication.

Pargament, K. I., M. E. McCullough and C. E. Thoresen (2000). “The frontier of forgiveness.” Forgiveness: Theory, research and practice: 299-319.