How to Be Happy
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Find joy in the people and places around you!
Last night, I had dinner with a friend who has everything I
want: a beautiful brownstone house filled with expensive
furniture, a smart and funny husband, an adorable baby girl and
a published novel.
She just told me that she’s miserable.
“I know it’s terrible,” she said. “I have nothing to complain
about. But I’ve always been miserable. I get it from my mother
— she was a real grump.”
I was surprised; I had always thought she was happy. Not that I
ever asked her. Of course she’s happy, I figured, she has all
the toys. This deduction is a common mistake, says David Niven,
Ph.D., author of “The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People.”
“One thing that continually shocks people is that the events of
a person’s life have little to do with how happy he or she is,”
says Dr. Niven.
Rather, as my friend suspected, genetics is about 50 percent
responsible for our level of happiness, says Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D., author of the groundbreaking book
“Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.” Fortunately, we
have a significant amount of control over the other half.
Here are some ways to tend to your mental health and happiness
today:
Appreciate the moment:
Many of us view happiness as a future state: something we’ll
achieve when we get that great job, beautiful home or handsome
husband. And while we do often feel quite elated when we attain
these goals, the bliss is usually short-lived — and quickly
followed by a desire for something else, whether it’s more
money, a renovated kitchen or flowers on Valentine’s Day.
“That’s why winning the lottery or getting a promotion doesn’t
work.
You’re always looking toward the next step,” explains Dr.
Csikszentmihalyi. To break that looking-ahead cycle, you need
to cultivate an appreciation of your life as it is now —
dissatisfying job and all.
Csikszentmihalyi says people have a natural tendency to think
about what’s not working in their lives and ignore the good
stuff. So make a list of everything that you love about your
life — Thursday-night Chardonnays with the girls, the nature
trail nearby, the way your two-year-old looks in her Halloween
costume — and then remind yourself to really savor them.
Give yourself a higher calling:
Csikszentmihalyi says that people are happy when they feel that
they are contributing to something greater than themselves,
whether through their job, family or community. “Happy people
don’t ruminate about themselves and their problems. They say,
Life is short. I’d better do something useful.” But you don’t
have to have a large family or a job vaccinating orphans in
order to lead a fulfilling life.
Take the real-estate agent I know. Truly invested in helping
people find the right home, he will often steer prospective
tenants away from listings he considers subpar, depending upon
their needs and desires. If he was strictly out for his
commission, he wouldn’t get nearly the same job satisfaction
(and, in the long run, he probably wouldn’t make as much money,
either). So think about the ways you can transform your
perspective of your daily tasks.
Build small acts of kindness into your day:
You can always build small acts of kindness into your day, such
as giving up your seat on the bus, putting a quarter in a
stranger’s ready-to-expire parking meter or clicking on The
Breast Cancer Site (www.thebreastcancersite.com), where you can
help fund mammograms for poor women. These things do make a
difference in others’ lives. You flow, girl (or guy).
Find your flow:
We’ve all had those moments when things feel completely right in
our world. Perhaps you were cross-country skiing through a
beautiful ice-coated forest or creating a scrapbook of snapshots
and ticket stubs from your trip to Los Angeles. You spent the
day completely immersed in the activity, and when you finally
looked at your watch, you were startled to realize how much time
had passed.
Csikszentmihalyi says these moments of complete absorption are
when people are happiest, a state he calls “flow.” “These are
the moments people treasure in their lives, and the more of them
you get, the better off you are,” he says.
To find your flow, first get a hobby — an activity you do for
pure enjoyment. Think about the stuff you loved to do as a kid
— ballet lessons, pottery, pickup basketball — and then just go
with it.
Examine your options:
One crucial difference between happy people and unhappy people
is that the former believe they have choices. Two workers could
be toiling away at the same understimulating job with the same
impossible-to-please boss but have completely different
experiences: one feeling that the situation is hopeless, the
other seeing a way out, either through moving up in the company
or dusting off her resume.
So even if the happy person stays on the job, she still feels
she is doing so by choice.
Cultivate friends and activities that will increase your sense
of options:
Anything from taking night classes to joining an Internet dating
service to sitting down with a good friend and brainstorming
about your dreams for the future.
Actually, you’re already doing one of those things. Studies
show that people who use computers tend to be happier than
people who don’t. “People feel a sense of possibilities when
they use their computer,” says Niven. “It gives you access to
information and to connections. If you have an interest in an
obscure hobby, there may not be anyone in your town who shares
it, but you can probably find at least 100 people online who
do.”
Nurture your relationships:
Having a strong connection to others — be they family or friends
— is a crucial part of mental health; but unfortunately, many of
us simply focus on what our relationships are or aren’t giving
us rather than asking ourselves what we can do to bolster the
people in our lives.
But Csikszentmihalyi says the key to having fulfilling
relationships is to invest in others without expecting anything
back. “It can’t be quid pro quo,” he says. Paradoxically,
those who expect the least from loved ones, usually get the
most. “That’s the interesting thing,” says Csikszentmihalyi.
“The less you try, the more you succeed.”
By Sara Eckel
Reprinted from MSN.com
© 2001 Microsoft Corporation
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