Happiness

A while ago, a friend asked me if I thought that happiness was a learned behavior or if it was more of something you were just born with- and if you didn't have it, tough nuts. Zach has sometimes called me Happy-pants, usually prefaced with a "calm down." I would say I'm a pretty happy person. It takes a lot to really worry or stress me, and when I am worried or stressed, it usually doesn't take long to de-stress me, and I'm pretty clear about what I need to do to get my feet back under me.

For instance, this past weekend, I had bought tickets to see a production of Trey Parker's Canibal! The Musical, at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. The theater is about two and a half miles from my house, so Boyfriend and I decided to ride our bikes. Unfortunately, due to oppressive heat and wind that seemed to ALWAYS be blowing against us, the 12-15 minute bike ride took about 25 minutes, and we JUST missed the closing of the doors. I was so angry because my good friend's cousin was in the production, and I had heard it was hilarious, and the tickets were non-refundable, non-transferable. So I was fuming, and Boyfriend making suggestions of other things we could do or asking what he could do to fix it was only making it worse. So, I sent him away (he's lovely for not taking that personally) and I sat and fumed really nastily for 5-10 minutes, then decided that I had had enough of that, and we went to find a free production.

Now, I think that happiness is both innate and learned. I've always been a bit of a pollyana. That's not necessarily a good thing. My mom used to compare me to Scarlett O'Hara at the end of Gone With the Wind.

 "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."

I love that picture of her. Classically pouty for Scarlett. Anyway, I'm a champion of not paying attention to stressful things.

However, I took a class in my last semester at Flagler, taught by Erin Hightower, called Positive Psychology, and it changed my life. We used a book written by Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches the positive psych class at Harvard, that I really think helped me to make my happiness a little healthier, and to help me to be happier more often.

 Happier is almost like a workbook, with the idea in mind that you can train yourself to be happier. The book defines happiness as a more stable contentment, and not spikes of elation that we all experience. Here is a chart of what someone's happiness may look like over the course of the month.

I hope you can read the above Graph that I made, but the general idea is that we have a "happiness baseline." We have spikes when good things happen, and the dips when bad things happen, but generally we return to the baseline. The book Happier strives to -using a combination of more "spikes" and adding things that are proven to slowly add contentment - "raise" your baseline.

Some of the things that Happier suggests you do are exercises in gratitude, and quantifying things that make you happier.  One study that it mentions examined the letters that nuns wrote to their loved ones and colleagues. The nuns whose letters included expression of gratitude had longer lives than those whose didn't. If you google "Gratitude and Positive Psychology," you'll get a wealth of information about how expressing gratitude can help maintain a longer, happier life.

As far as quantifying things that make you happier, the entire books is peppered with opportunities to write responses to questions and consider things about yourself. It helps to draw out patterns about when you're happiest, and how you can recreate these moments. It's very logical and Cognitive-Behaviorally oriented, I do believe.

Lastly, I opened the question to my Facebook family when I started writing this blog, to see what they thought. Here are their answers! (For now, I'll update it tomorrow after people have had more time to comment.)

So there are some other ideas. I do think some people are born naturally sunny, but, like all things, I think it's a trait that's learn-able.

I highly recommend giving Happier a read. It's not hippie-jargoned nonsense, it's quantifiable, supported science that suggest of making yourself happy.