Happiness is more than a good feeling or a yellow smiley face. It's the feeling of truly enjoying your life, and the desire to make the very best of it. Happiness is the "secret sauce" that can help us be and do our best. ... Happy people have better relationships. Happy people learn better.
Seven reasons why happiness is important:
- Happy People Earn More
- Happy People Get More Success
- Happy People Help Others More
- Happy People Have Better Relationships
- Happy People Have Better Marriages
- Happy People Have Better Health
- Happy People Are More Resilient
1. Happy People Earn More
Yes. People who are happier with their lives have been found to have higher incomes and more material wealth. According to the United Nations World Happiness Survey, published in 2015, throughout the world, income is the #1 predictor for happiness, and the more you make, the happier you become.
According to Cornell University economics professor Robert Frank, increased yearly income is the most significant way to increase happiness.
2. Happy People Get More Success
Yes. Success doesn’t make us happy; rather, being happy makes us successful, as many studies have proved.
Happy people are more likely to ace job interviews, and secure better jobs. They are evaluated more positively by superiors on a job, show higher performance and productivity, and handle managerial position jobs better.
Happiness also makes you more productive, and improves your ability to problem-solve. In fact, people who were primed to feel happy in an experiment by economists at Warwick University were found to be 11% more productive. In a job, a happy person is more likely to succeed better. They are also less likely to show disruptive behavior and work burnout.
In a 2007 study that followed more than 6,000 men and women aged 25 to 74 for 20 years, Dr. Laura Kubzansky, Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Society and Health Psychophysiology Laboratory at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that emotional vitality — a sense of enthusiasm, hopefulness, and engagement in life — appears to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. She has found that optimism cuts the risk of coronary heart disease by half.
3. Happy People Help Others More
Yes. Happy people are more ‘prosocial’, that is they seem more inclined to help others. Happy people volunteer at higher levels than their unhappy friends and colleagues for charity and community service groups, as religious, political, health-related, and educational organizations.
4. Happy People Have Better Relationships
Yes. Relationships have been proven by many researchers to be the single most important factor responsible for the survival of human species. Happy people have more friends and better social support, and also, they are more satisfied with their friends and their group activities. The top 10% happiest college students, in a study, have been found to have high-quality relationships. They have been found to be less jealous and to have stronger contacts with their family members.
My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result—social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge—most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3. The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are. —Shawn Achor
5. Happy People Have Better Marriages
Yes. Happy people have more fulfilling marriages. They tend to be more satisfied within their marriages. Researchers have found that there is indeed a very strong relationship between happiness and satisfaction with marriage and family. Happy people who are either married or in committed relationships more often describe their partner as being their “great love” than their less happy friends.
6. Happy People Have Better Health
Yes. Happy people have better physical health and report fewer unpleasant physical symptoms. They have fewer emergency room and hospital visits, make fewer calls to the doctor, use less medication, and have fewer work absences. They also experience less pain.
Yes. Happy people are mentally healthier than their less happy social group members. They have fewer symptoms of mental diseases, such as hypochondriasis, schizophrenia, social phobia, anxiety, or depression. Happy people are also less likely to report a history of drug abuse.
- Healthy people are not happier. The reverse is true: happy people are healthier. – Heli Koivumaa-Honkanen
- It is often said that people spend the best years of their life trying to make money and sacrificing their health and their family, only to spend the rest of their days paying that same money in an attempt to recover their lost health and their estranged family. – Jose de Jesus Garcia Vega
7. Happy People Are More Resilient
Yes. Resilience is our “bouncing back” capacity, that is, how fast and well we can recover from our difficulties. Happiness is about being able to make the most of the good times – but also to cope effectively with the inevitable bad times, in order to experience the best possible life overall.
To be happy, you have to learn how to pick yourself up after a fall, how to come back strong after a failure, how to let go negative feelings people heap on you, and find the resilience to all that.
Strengths and Interests
The things we're good at, and like to do, are our strengths. We all have strengths, even if we haven't discovered them yet.
Strengths include:
- the things we're interested in — for example, music, art, science, building things, cooking, reading
- any skills we have — like painting, playing an instrument, or playing a sport
- our good qualities — such as kindness, humor, or leadership
Happiness increases when we discover a strength and practice it. The more we practice a strength, the better we get until we really master it.
When we get really good at doing something we enjoy, we can get lost in it. That's called flow. Experiencing flow helps boost happiness. Finding daily ways to use our strengths is a key ingredient for a happy life.
Good Relationships
The people in our lives matter. Good relationships are one of the best ways to enjoy happiness, health, and well-being.
Developing certain emotional skills can help us form and keep good relationships. When we are there for the people in our lives — and when they're there for us — we are more resilient, resourceful, and successful.
Here are some of the skills that help us build good relationships:
- learning how to understand and express our emotions
- using empathy to understand how someone else feels
- using kindness
- showing gratitude
- developing assertiveness to say what we want and need
Finding Meaning and Purpose in Life
Our lives can be busy with day-to-day activities and responsibilities. Many of us multi-task, so we might race ahead, thinking about the next place we need to be. But slowing down to pay attention to what we're doing and why builds happiness.
Pay attention to the effects of your actions. Notice the ways (big or small) that you make a difference. Live life based on the values that are important to you. Take time to think of what really matters to you (like helping others or protecting the planet).
In what way do you want to make the world a better place? Notice any small daily actions that point you in that direction. They help give your life a sense of meaning and increase happiness.
Achievement
When our lives are rich with positive emotions, great relationships, strengths to practice, and a sense of purpose, we are ready to accomplish things.
Setting and achieving goals gives us something to put our energy into. It lets us see how we make a difference.
Put effort into things that matter to you. Do your best at whatever you try, without a need to be perfect. If things don't work out at first, keep an optimistic mindset and try again. Believe in yourself and your dreams.
Set realistic goals and small action steps to turn dreams into realities. To make a success even sweeter, celebrate it with people you care about.
Get Happier
OK, so you can learn how to be happier by managing your mindset, calming your mind, becoming more confident, using your strengths, building your self-esteem, doing things you enjoy, and creating good relationships. That's a lot of things to think about! You can't tackle them all at once. But you can start small and pick one thing to work on.
The best way to reach any goal is to begin with small, specific actions. After doing these for a while, they become habits — things that fit into your day without you thinking about them too much. That's when you move on to build a new daily habit. Achieving small, specific goals can add up to big happiness!
Final Words
Happiness is the most important thing we want for the people we love. We always want our loved ones to be happy, even at the cost of our own happiness. You do need happiness in your life for more than just feeling good. That’s why it matters so much.
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