Being Happy

Time Magazine had agreat article ( it was in the cover Feb 28, 2005) about happiness.  Here are some takes that I find relevant.

- The lack of money will make you unhappy but more money after a certain point will not make you happier.  Pretty obvious, but based on what everybody is doing, this is one of the least acknowledged universal truths in  Practical Wisdom!

- Higher Education or Higher IQ will not make you happier.  Oh Oh.  I guess the more you know, the more you want, the more you envy.  Now it must be that people trying to be more learned must be doing it the wrong way or for the wrong reasons.  Hey, all you erudite savants, what are we trying to attain from our scholarly pursuits if not happiness?  Isn't more learning supposed to allow us to appreciate more, and be more satisfied with life?  Can we do a better job on this, or at least on convincing these doubters?

Maybe after so much education, we are convinced that we cannot be happy unless we are successful.  Why not think that we cannot be successful unless we are happy?

- Being young does not make you happier.  Huh?  It seems people from 65 to 74 are happier than people from 20 to 24, and also less prone to dark moods.  Those people who have aged must have known that 90% of their life's worries never did come true ... and oh, many of them must have thought -- if I only made an earlier decision to be happy........  Well, it is never too late to be happy.

- Watching more TV makes you less happier.   Or maybe I think, happy people watch less TV.  Gosh! I hope my kids are not THAT unhappy... 

- Married People are happier than Singles.   Or rather, happier people have more inclination to get married?

Here are definitely the things that shows statistically make people happy:

- Strong Religious faith definitely lifts the spirit.

- Friends and Family.  And a commitment to share and enjoy with them.

- Blogging!   No, really, I made this one up.  Though my blogging here and sharing ideas have definitely contributed to MY fulfillment.

Here is also something significant:

Happiness has three components: pleasure, engagement (depth of involvement with one's family, work, romance and hobbies), and meaning (using your personal strengths to serve some larger end). Of those three, pleasure is the least consequential, and people who build their lives around pursuing pleasure may not generally end up satisfied with their lives.

I am pleased to be one of the people who will continue to preach engagement and meaning as ways to win in business and in life!

One last bit:

A study from University of Minnesota under David Lykken in 1996 found that 50 percent of life's satisfaction comes from genetic programming ( which influence such traits as having a sunny easygoing personality, dealing well with stress, or feeling low levels of anxiety and depression ), and only 8 percent comes from circumstantial factors like income, marital status, religion and education.

Conclusion: There is nothing more important that will make you happier than your own determination to be happy. It is within us to change our levels of happiness.

It is not inevitable or your destiny to be unhappy.