The How of Happiness

#happiness #books

Foreward

Is it possible to become happier?

How happy are you and why?

How to find happiness activities that fit your interests, your values, and your needs

Happiness Activities

  1. Expressing Gratitude:
    • Robert Emmons defines gratitude as a sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life. The practice of gratitude involves a focus on the present moment, on appreciating life today and what made it so.
    • Studies show that people who count blessings/express gratitude were more likely to experience positive emotions.
    • 8 ways gratitude boosts happiness:
      1. Promotes savouring positive life experiences.
      2. Bolsters self-worth and self-esteem. When you realise how much people have done for you or how much you have accomplished, you feel more confident and can help unlearn the habit of focusing on failures and disappointments.
      3. Helps coping with stress and trauma. Traumatic memories are less likely and less intense in those people who are regularly grateful. Expressing gratefulness can help you adjust, move on, and begin anew when facing personal adversity like chronic illness or loss.
      4. Expression of gratitude encourages moral behaviour. Grateful people are more likely to help others and less likely to be materialistic.
      5. Gratitude can help build and strengthen social bonds. Studies show that people who feel gratitude towards particular individuals experience a higher quality relationship with them.
      6. Expressing gratitude tends to inhibit invidious comparisons with others. If you are truly appreciative for what you have, you are less likely to pay attention to or envy others.
      7. The practice of gratitude is incompatible with negative emotions such as anger, bitterness, and greed. It's hard to feel guilty, resentful, or infuriated when you're feeling grateful.
      8. Gratitude helps fight against hedonic adaptation by preventing people from taking good things in their life for granted and from adapting to their positive life circumstances.
    • How to practice gratitude:
      • Gratitude journal. 3-5 things for which you are grateful, from the mundane to the magnificent. Focus on all the things that you know to be true - for example, something you're good at, what you like about where you live, goals you have achieved, your opportunities, specific individuals who have cared or have made sacrifices for you. On average doing this once a week is most likely to boost happiness.
      • Paths to gratitude. Fit to your individual personality, instead of writing you could choose a fixed time to contemplate objects of gratitude and reflect, or identify one thing each day you take for granted. You could substitute one ungrateful thought per day to a grateful one. Friends and family can help you keep you accountable and motivated.
      • Keep the strategy fresh. Variety is extremely important. You might show gratitude after particular triggers, write in a journal, talk to a friend, express gratitude through art.
      • Writing letters of gratitude showed an improvement in happiness levels, even if the letter wasn't sent to the person.
  2. Cultivating Optimism:
    • Optimism strategies include: looking at the bright side, noticing what's right, giving yourself the benefit of doubt, feeling good about your future. Cultivating optimism is similar to cultivating gratitude, celebrating the present and the past but differs in anticipating a brighter future.
    • There's a distinction between "big optimism" and "little optimism." The difference is how specific or small are one's positive expectations - for example, “my flight tomorrow will arrive on time” (little optimism) “we are on the threshold of a glorious age” (big optimism). Little optimism makes people behave in constructive ways in specific situations, whereas big optimism produces an overall feeling of vigour.
    • Two ways of defining optimism: an expectation of a positive future, and the ways that people tend to explain their outcomes. For example, a person who had tried and failed to sell their car would be called optimistic if they attributed their failure to causes that were external, transient, and specific, as opposed to causes that were internal, long-lasting, and pervasive. Such explanations are important as they influence our reactions to circumstances and make it more or less likely that we'll succeed, fall into depression or illness. Optimism is also not only thoughts like "I will secure that job" but about exactly how it will be accomplished.
    • Why does optimistic thinking boost happiness? If you are optimistic about the future or confident that you will be able to achieve your lifelong goals, you will invest effort in reaching those goals. For that reason, optimistic thoughts can be self-fulfilling. Optimists are more likely to persevere and to engage fully in the face of difficulty. They also set a greater number of goals and more difficult goals for themselves.
    • Optimistic thinking prompts us to engage in active and effective coping. Optimists routinely maintain high levels of well-being and mental health during times of stress. They are likely to make plans and take direct action when faced with adversity. They are good copers, even when confronting with grave health diagnoses, they don't deny the situation and are likely to accept the reality of their condition and make efforts to make the best of it and grow from it.
    • How to practice optimism:
      • Best Possible Self diary. Shown empirically to enhance well-being, take 30 minutes to think and write about what you expect life would be like 5-10 years from now. Write down imagining that you tried your best, worked hard, and achieved all your goals.
      • Goals and subgoals diary. Identify your long range goals and break them down into subgoals. If a discouraging thought comes to mind, pinpoint it and try to come up with alternative scenarios or possible resolutions. Recall times in the past you've been successful in something and recognise the strengths and resources that you already have, allowing that to motivate and invigorate you.
      • Identify barrier thoughts. Identify automatic pessimistic thoughts such as “I feel so stupid for giving the wrong advice to my officemate; he’ll never ask me again to collaborate on a project” or “ever since my relationship ended, I feel unlovable and unappealing” and consider ways to reinterpret the situation. Ask yourself questions like:
        • What else could this situation or experience mean?
        • Can anything good come from it?
        • Does it present any opportunities for me?
        • What lessons can I learn and apply in the future?
        • Did I develop any strengths as a result?
    • Is this naïveté or foolishness? If you're the person who values in "seeing things as they really are," reframing negative events in a positive and optimistic way or anticipating a sunny future would be wrong or at least unrealistic. Optimism is not providing the recipe for self-deception. The world can be horrible and a cruel place, and at the same time it can be wonderful and abundant. These are both truths, there is only choosing which truth to put in your personal foreground. Optimists are more vigilant of risks and threats, and aware that positive outcomes are dependent on their efforts. Like with anything in life, you should aim for a moderation in optimistic thinking.
  3. Avoid Overthinking and Social Comparison:
    • It's common to believe that when we are feeling down, we should focus inwardly and find solutions that might ultimately resolve our problems and relieve unhappiness. However, overthinking can cause negative moods and could create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Becoming happier means to disengage from overthinking from major and minor negative experiences, and not let them affect your life as a whole.
    • Overthinking draws on a person's mental resources, reducing concentration and their performance. If you are the type of person who is "jolted by every pebble in the road," you need to imitate the behaviour of the happy person and work to break free of overthinking.
    • While social comparisons can be useful, much of the time "upward" comparisons may lead to feelings of inferiority, distress, and loss of self-esteem, while "downward" comparisons may lead to feelings of guilt, need to cope with others' envy and resentment, and fears of suffering the same fate. The more social comparisons you make, the more you are likely to make unfavourable comparisons and suffer the consequences.
    • You can't be envious and happy at the same time. Happiest people take pleasure in other people's successes and show concern in their failures. The happier the person, the less attention they pay to how others around them are doing. Incessantly comparing ourselves with others is part of the wider-ranging habit of overthinking.
    • How to shake off ruminations and social comparisons:
      • Cut loose. Immediately stop overthinking and stop focusing on comparison with others. Distract and redirect your attention to something else: read or watch something that's funny or suspenseful, listen to a song, meet a friend, to a physical activity, anything that absorbs you, compels you, and isn't potentially harmful.
        • Stop technique. Think or say to yourself "stop" or "no" when you find yourself resuming overthinking. Use your intellectual powers to think about something else.
        • Set aside a time in a day (say 30 minutes) to ruminate. If you find negative thoughts creeping in, you can say to yourself that you will have the opportunity to think about it later.
        • Talk to a sympathetic and trusted person about your thoughts and troubles. Someone who would not make you feel even worse, and also not to abuse your opportunity.
        • Writing out your ruminations can help you organise them, make sense of them, and find patterns. Writing can be a way to unburden your negative thoughts.
      • Act to solve problems. If you're feeling weighed down by your problems and responsibilities, take a small step now. Don't wait for something to happen or someone else to step in and help you.
      • Dodge overthinking triggers. Avoid situations that appear to trigger your overthinking.
      • Learn how to meditate.
      • Take in the big picture. Ask yourself, "will this matter in a year?" Your answer will create a bigger picture view of your problems and diminish your worries. If your trouble is significant and will matter in a year, consider what the experience can teach you. Focusing on the lessons you can learn from the stress or ordeal can help soften the blow. Post-traumatic growth can include patience, perseverance, loyalty, courage, open-mindedness, forgiveness, generosity, or self-control.
  4. Practicing Acts of Kindness:
    • As well as being moral and righteous, being kind brings benefits for the recipient as well as the doer. Sometimes it may be in the doer's self-interest to be kind and good even when it's unpleasant or receives nothing in return.
    • Being kind and generous leads you to perceive others more positively and charitably, and fosters a heightened sense of interdependence and cooperation in your social community. Helping others makes you feel advantaged by comparison and providing assistance can deliver a welcome distraction from your own troubles.
    • When you commit an act of kindness, you view yourself as an altruistic and compassionate person. You may learn new skills or discover hidden talents.
    • Helping others can lead people to like you, appreciate you, offer gratitude, and reciprocation in times of your need. It can satisfy a basic human need for connecting with others.
    • Studies on volunteers show that it is the behaviour of the volunteers that enhances their happiness, and not the other way around.
    • How to practice kindness:
      • Timing is everything. Select which acts to do, how often, and how much. If you do too little, you won't achieve much happiness benefits. If you do too much, you may end up feeling overburdened. Suggestion of one day a week where you do one special large act of kindness, or alternatively 3-5 little ones.
      • Variety is the spice of life. Varying you acts of kindness prevents hedonic adaptation. Some ideas include: giving the gift of time, surprising someone, do something that doesn't come naturally, work to develop your compassion, and doing a kind deed which you tell no one and which you don't expect anything in return.
      • Chain of kindness. Acts of kindness often have a "pay it forward" effect that has a real world impact.
    • Some caveats to kindness. Certain helping behaviour can be detrimental, for example full-time caregivers. A kind act needs to be done freely and autonomously in order to bring maximum improvement to well-being. Other people might not always welcome your kindness, so don't behave self-righteously or condescendingly.
  5. Nurturing Social Relationships
    • Social relationships and happiness cause an upward spiral, where if you improve and cultivate your relationships, you will reap the gift of positive emotions. The feelings of happiness will help you attract more higher-quality relationships, which will make you even happier, and so on.
    • Humans are powerfully motivated to seek and maintain strong, stable, and positive interpersonal relationships. We resist breakup of relationships and friendships, and without a sense of belongingness we suffer negative physical and mental health. This can be explained through evolutionary basis.
    • One of the most important functions of a social bond is social support. There may be no better coping mechanism than confiding or sharing a problem with a friend or intimate. Social support can be practical, emotional, and informational. People with strong social support are healthier and live longer.
    • Strategies for investing in relationships:
      • Make time. The successful couples spend 5 hours more per week being together and talking. Spend 5 minutes every day expressing appreciation or gratitude for particular behaviours. Find out one thing that each of you is going to do that day, when you meet again have a "reunion conversation" and listen.
      • Express admiration, appreciation, and affection. One of the key conclusions of happy relationships and marriages is that they are characterised by a ratio of positive to negative affect of 5 to 1. For every negative statement or behaviour, there are 5 positive ones. You can increase the number of times you show affection to your partner verbally, physically, or other behaviours like kindness. Giving genuine praise not only makes your SO happy but strives them for greater heights.
      • Capitalise on good fortune. Take delight in your friends', family members', and partner's successes. Good and poor relationships are distinguished not how the partners respond to each other's disappointments but how they respond to good news. If your partner shows genuine pleasure, support, and understanding, the relationship receives a boost in intimacy and closeness.
      • Manage conflict. Happy couples fight differently. Looking up rather than look down when your spouse is sending a signal to make up, to voice a complaint rather than a criticism, or to make a tiny gesture to stay connected while fighting.
      • Share an inner life. Deep sense of shared rituals, dreams, and goals underlies thriving relationships. Every week try to do at least one thing that supports your partner's roles and dreams.
    • Research shows that married people are happier than their divorced, separated, widowed, or single peers. Deep long-term friendships are also important for happiness, and others including pets.
    • Strategies for making friends:
      • Make time. Once a friendship forms, create rituals that allow you to get together and be in touch on a regular basis. However, don't control all your interactions and don't overdo it.
      • Communicate. Self-disclosure, revealing intimate thoughts and feelings are critical to friendships. Hold off giving unsolicited advice or turning attention back to yourself by recounting your own story. Just as with a romantic partner, convey feelings of affection and admiration from time to time.
      • Be supportive and loyal. Be helpful and supportive when your friends need it and affirm their successes. Instead of feeling envious, try to bask in their reflected glory. Other universal rules of friendship include standing up for your friends when they're not there, keeping secrets, not putting down their other friends, and reciprocating favours.
      • Hug. Frequent hugging is an intimacy and friendship booster.
  6. Developing Strategies for Coping
    • No life is without stress, adversity, or crisis. The possibilities are endless.
    • Two types of coping: problem-focused and emotion-focused. Some people try to take the situation into their own hands, act on it, and resolve it. Emotion-focused coping is when the event or situation is uncontrollable, or you are so overwhelmed by negative emotions that you're unable to take action.
    • Strategies for emotion-focused coping include cognitive and behavioural strategies. People who involve themselves in pleasant activities give themselves a breather from their distress and are more ready to act on their problems. Cognitive strategies include positively reinterpreting the situation, acceptance, or turning to religion.
    • Finding benefit in trauma represents a true personal transformation. Some common experiences include: renewed belief in their ability to endure and prevail, improved relationships, feeling more comfortable with intimacy, and developing a satisfying philosophy of life.
    • It is hard to find meaning in a meaningless and arbitrary traumatic event. Those who do, are better able to cope. The meaning included gaining new perspective on themselves - they should spend more time with friends and family, live life to the fullest, and take more risks.
    • Strategies for coping:
      • Finding meaning through expressive writing. Research shows expressive writing about past traumatic events has many beneficial effects.
      • Construing benefit in trauma through writing or conversing. First through writing or talking, acknowledge that your trauma has caused you a great deal of pain and suffering. Then consider your response to it that you are proud of. Next, consider how much you have grown as a result. Are you more compassionate, grateful, sensitive, patient, tolerant, or open-minded? Finally, think about how the trauma has positively affected your relationships.
      • Coping via thought disputation. This involves disputing or challenging your own pessimistic thoughts. When bad things happen, we are overwhelmed with negative emotions. The 5 elements of the ABCDE disputation technique: A for adversity, B for belief, C for consequence, D for disputation, and E for energise.
        1. Write down the nature of adversity, the bad event or problem you are facing.
        2. Identify any negative beliefs triggered by this problem.
        3. Record the consequence of the problem, how you are feeling and acting as a result.
        4. Dispute the negative belief, challenging it, thinking of other possible reasons for the problem.
        5. Consider the more optimistic explanations for your problems, which can energise and lift your spirits.
  7. Learning to Forgive
    • What is forgiveness? It involves suppressing or mitigating one's motivations for avoidance and revenge, replacing them with more positive or benevolent attitudes, feelings, and behaviours.
    • Forgiveness is not reconciliation - it does not necessarily involve the reestablishment of the relationship with the transgressor. Nor is it equivalent to pardon, condoning, excusing, denial of harm, or an unwillingness to accept what had occurred.
    • How do you know when you've forgiven someone? It's when you have experienced a shift in thinking, such that your desire to harm that person has decreased and your desire to do them good has increased.
    • Why forgive? Forgiving is something that you do for yourself and not for the other person who has wronged you. Forgiving people are more likely to be happier and allows them to move on.
    • How to practice forgiveness:
      • Appreciate being forgiven. Before you forgive another person, appreciate an instance of when you yourself have been forgiven. Recall those times you did harm to another person. If those individuals forgave you, how did they communicate? Another way to appreciate being forgiven is to seek forgiveness yourself. Describe what you have done and acknowledge that it was wrong.
      • Imagine forgiveness. Imagine empathising with the offender and granting them forgiveness.
      • Write a letter of forgiveness. Describe the detail of the injury and how you were affected by it. End with an explicit statement of forgiveness and understanding.
      • Practice empathy. Try to notice every time someone does something that you do not understand and work out their thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
      • Consider charitable attributions. An effective way to generate generous attributions is to write the letter that you'd like to receive from the transgressor in response to your forgiveness of them. What explanations might they offer for their conduct? As you write down their response to you, you may sense your perception of them and the situation shifting.
      • Ruminate less. Rumination is a considerable barrier to forgiveness. Research shows catharsis theory, or fantasising about how you might cause pain to someone increases rather than decreases hostility.
      • Make contact. Sometimes it is appropriate and healthy to send your forgiveness letter. It could restore your relationship with that person but be prepared for it to backfire.
      • Remind yourself. Forgiveness is difficult but ultimately a meaningful and rewarding path. When you find yourself slipping into the old furies and bitterness, remind yourself on a daily basis. Make forgiveness a habit.
  8. Increasing Flow Experiences
    • Flow is a state of intense absorption and involvement with the present moment.
    • Coined by Csikszentmihalyi, creating flow is to establish a balance between skills and challenges. If the challenges of the situation overwhelm your level of skill or expertise, you will feel anxious or frustrated. If the activity is not challenging enough, you will become bored. If we train ourselves to obtain flow in as many circumstances as possible, we will have happier lives.
    • Why is flow good for you? It is a natural high that is fulfilling and doesn't cause any damage to the self or society. To maintain flow, we continually have to test ourselves in ever more challenging activities. We have to stretch our skills or find novel opportunities to use them.
    • The experience of flow leads us to be involved in life, to enjoy activities, to have a sense of control, and to feel a strong sense of self.
    • How to increase flow experiences:
      • Adopt new values. Be open to new and different experiences and learn until the day you die. Try to imitate the rapt concentration on the face of a child, who is learning wonderful new things everyday.
      • Learn what flows. Establish the precise time periods and activities which you find yourself in flow, and then multiply them.
      • Transform routine tasks. Even tedious activities can be transformed into something more meaningful and stimulating. Create microflow activities with specific goals and rules.
      • Flow in conversation. During your next conversation, focus your attention as intensely as possible on what the other person is saying and your reactions to their words. Give yourself the goal of learning more about the speaker and respond with follow-up questions.
      • Smart leisure. What percentage of your leisure activities are you truly concentrating, using your mind, or exercising your skills? If this percentage is low, you're unlikely to be in flow during your leisure time. Decompression is important but probably not as needed as long.
      • Smart work. People tend to see work in one of 3 ways, a job, a career, or a calling. Those who place their work in the job category perceive it as a necessary evil, a means to an end. A career is essentially a job with advancement and more positive life opportunities. Those who see their work as a calling enjoy working and find what they do to be fulfilling and socially useful. They work not for the financial rewards or for advancement but because they want to, it is inseparable from the rest of their lives. It's worth considering how your own job could benefit from a new perspective.
  9. Savouring Life's Joys
    • The ability to savour the positive experiences in your life is one of the most important ingredients of happiness. You savour the past by reminiscing about the good old days. You savour the present by wholly living in, being mindful of, and relishing the present moment. This overlaps with flow and gratitude. You savour the future by anticipating and fantasising about upcoming future events. This is an element of optimistic thinking.
    • Savouring any thoughts or behaviours is defined as generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment. Savouring requires stepping outside of experience and reviewing it, whereas flow involves a complete immersion in the experience.
    • Strategies to foster savouring:
      • Relish ordinary experiences. Learn how to appreciate and take pleasure in mundane, everyday experiences.
      • Savour and reminisce with family and friends. Mutual reminiscence is often accompanied by positive emotions.
      • Transport yourself. Recalling experiences in positive ways can boost self-esteem.
      • Replay happy days. Repetitively replaying your happiest life events can prolong and reinforce positive emotions and make you happier.
      • Celebrate good news. Try to enjoy the occasion to the fullest.
      • Be open to beauty and excellence. Admire an object of beauty or display of talent. Strive to feel reverence and awe. People who open themselves to the beauty and excellence around them are more likely to find joy and meaning in their lives.
      • Be mindful. High mindful people who are attentive and keenly aware of their surroundings have positive mental health.
  10. Committing to Your Goals
    • 6 Benefits of committed goal pursuit:
      • Having goals gives us something to work for and look forward to.
      • Goals bolsters our self-esteem, stimulating us to feel confident and efficacious. The accomplishment of every subgoal is another opportunity for an emotional boost.
      • Pursuing goals adds structure and meaning to our daily lives.
      • Helps master our use of time, to identify higher-order goals, to subdivide them into smaller steps or subgoals and to develop a schedule to accomplish them.
      • May help us cope better with problems.
      • Engaging with other people and make social connections.
    • What kind of goals should you pursue? Intrinsic goals are those that you pursue because they are inherently satisfying and meaningful to you. By contrast, extrinsic goals reflect what other people approve or desire for you, as a means to an end.
    • Intrinsic goals make us happier because they are more inspiring and enjoyable. They satisfy our need for autonomy, sense of competence, and relatedness.
    • The more the goal fits your personality, the more likely it is to increase your happiness.
    • Pursuing activity goals rather than seeking to better your circumstances is more happiness inducing.
    • Choose goals that are intrinsic, authentic, approach-oriented, harmonious, activity-based, and flexible rather than goals that are extrinsic, inauthentic, avoidance-oriented, conflicting, circumstance-based, or rigid.
    • Publicly announcing your commitment to particular goals raises the likelihood that you will carry through that goal, in part because we want to appear consistent to ourselves and others.
  11. Practicing Religion and Spirituality
    • Those who practice religion seemed to be happier, healthier, and recover better after traumas. Two reasons being those who are active in their churches reported greater social support and were able to find meaning in traumas.
    • Religious people are physically healthier because many religions prohibits unhealthy practices and promotes moderation.
    • Members of a religion share basic assumptions and beliefs, as well as important political and social values. This fact enables social, emotional, and material support, and creates a sense of community. This reinforces your identity and affirms your lifestyle.
    • It's possible religious people are happier has nothing to do with their religious and spiritual beliefs, but everything to do with the simple fact that religions bring them into contact with other similarly minded and caring people. However a belief in God can guide your life, find meaning, and purpose.
    • Spirituality is defined as a "search for the sacred." A search for meaning in life through something that is larger than the individual self. Spiritual people are relatively happier than nonspiritual people.
  12. Taking Care of Your Body
    • Meditation is the practice of cultivating your attention. These are some important elements during its practice:
      • Be nonjudgemental: Observe the present moment impartially, with detachment, without evaluation.
      • Be nonstriving: don't be too focused on achieving as opposed to progressing toward your goals.
      • Be patient: Don't rush or force things but allow them to unfold in their own good time.
      • Be trusting: Trust yourself and that things will work out in life.
      • Be open: Pay attention to every little thing as though you are seeing it for the very first time.
      • Let go: Set yourself free of your ruminations. Nonattachment.
    • Why meditate? Research shows it has multiple positive effects on a person's happiness and positive emotions.
    • How to meditate: sit in a comfortable place, back straight. Close your eyes and focus on breathing in and out. If your mind wonders, let your thoughts pass and bring your attention back to your breath. The key is to detach from your thoughts.
    • Exercise gives many benefits, including increasing self-worth, positive flow, and social contact.
    • You will become happier if you act as if you were confident, optimistic, and outgoing.

The Five Hows Behind Sustainable Happiness

  1. Positive Emotion
    • Happiness consists of small acts that increase the number of positive experiences and emotions. If you suddenly experience a financial windfall, you would be happier if you spent the money on numerous mood-boosting things occurring on a daily basis than rather spend it all on a single big-ticket item. You would quickly adapt to the new item but not to the bursts of intermittent happiness.
    • Why do we continue to believe that large and dramatic events of our lives are the ones that matter? Because those are the ones we anticipate, remember and discuss.
    • By enacting the 12 strategies, you will create happy moments in your life that will not only make you feel happier but alter your whole way of thinking and being.
  2. Optimal Timing and Variety
    • For happiness activities, timing is important. For example, count your blessings after a difficult period, meditate and practice gratitude before in-laws visit, focus on goal pursuit and avoid overthinking when dealing with a supervisor. How do you achieve this? Through self-experimentation.
    • Variety is important because it is innately pleasurable and stimulating.
  3. Social Support
    • Social support partners can offer informational support, tangible support, and emotional support.
    • Any change in behaviour that requires effort and dedication will be made easier if the people around you are supportive. They can motivate you and remind you to continue your happiness activities.
  4. Motivation, Effort, and Commitment
  5. Habit