“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.” — Leo Buscaglia

Maybe it’s finally time to rescue the concept of ‘the pursuit of happiness’ from the hands of the so-called self-help gurus. That’s the message in an article in Huffington Post by Roger Fransecky (”Happiness Is A Choice“).

Starting from considering the popularity of a Harvard course in positive psychology, the article explores the study of well-being — not the traditional topic of psychology, which has tended to be more interested in mental problems than how to enjoy life more. Continued

Ruth Ostrow, writing for one of The Australian’s blogs, shares a story that illustrates that it’s never safe to assume you know whether something is going to turn out well or badly (“Despair’s serendipity”).

We all know that some people see a glass as half full, while others see it as half empty. What’s worse is when you see some unpleasant event as directed at you personally, instead of the chance event that it is. There’s something about the human mind that seems to want to find a specific meaning in whatever happens — usually one that has some personal reference. Continued

Researchers have found that chimps use hugs and kisses to offer sympathy to others who get pushed around. There is also suggestive evidence of such behavior in large-brained birds and dogs (”Chimps Calm Each Other With Hugs, Kisses: Study (PICTURES)“).

A gentle attack on one of today’s sacred cows amongst coaches and gurus

Karen Salmansohn hasn’t much patience, it seems, with the idea of random acts of kindness (”To Hell With Random Acts of Kindness“). Instead, she want you to try conscious acts of kindness with the people you already know and love.

Quoting research by Gallup, she claims, amongst other things:

• If you feel close to other people, you are four times as likely to feel good about yourself and life.
• People who claim to have five or more true friends with whom they can discuss important problems are 60% more likely to say that they are “very happy.”
• People with a best-friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work — though only 30% of employees report having a best friend at work.

Continued

Maybe high expectations aren’t quite as positive as you thought

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen has a piece in TIME magazine’s ‘Work in Progress’ blog that throws an odd sidelight on what it may really mean to approach your work in a positive frame of mind (”Positive thinking leads to…job dissatisfaction?“).

She cites a forthcoming research study by Dr. Olivia O’Neill, assistant professor of management the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, showing that: employees “higher in positive affect had higher salary expectations, and changed organizations more frequently, which leads to lower overall job, career, and life satisfaction.”

If I’ve got that right, she’s saying people who have a positive outlook on life expect more from their work than they get. As a result, they end up with worse careers and lower levels of satisfaction with their life. Whew! That seems like a good reason to be miserable. Continued

Are happiness and achievement truly a case of cause and effect?

Photo credit: D B King

For all the people out there who strive constantly to increase their productivity and add to their achievements (and they are legion) there’s no more challenging question that to prove the link between what you get done and whether or not you feel happier afterwards.

The general assumption is that achieving some goal creates happiness, but is it correct?

That’s the area explored in a recent article by Jonathan Mead called “The Cult of Productivity & the Art of Purposeless Living.” In challenging the convention links between these two aspects of life (Achievement causes happiness), he points to the way so many people today become obsessed with doing more, making more money, being a better person and a host of similar goals — all harmless, even laudable, in themselves, but all capable of causing a great deal of unhappiness when they become obsessive. Continued

Handling more with less effort may depend on how much green you see

I don’t mean the ‘folding green’ — money — I mean the real thing: plants and green leaves. That’s the conclusion of this article, Want More Productive Employees? Try Adding a Few Plants.

The author of a survey of office workers in Texas and the Midwest, Dr. Tina Marie Cade of Texas State University, found employees who worked in offices with green plants or views of green spaces felt better about their jobs and the work they performed:

Employees who worked near live interior plants or a window view of greenery reported significantly higher job satisfaction and thought far better of their bosses and coworkers than those who were confined to windowless gloom. The plant-exposed employees also considered themselves happier in life overall, while all of the respondents who said they were “dissatisfied” with their quality of life were plant-deprived—though it remains to be seen whether happier people are simply more likely to fill their offices with plants, as opposed to the plants providing the happiness.

It seems both women and men demonstrated more innovative thinking, generating more ideas and original solutions to problems in the office environment that included flowers and plants. Continued

According to The Globe and Mail (a Canadian newspaper), a growing number of parents are espousing a radical philosophy: deciding that it’s time their children got some life skills by actually living. As a result, they’re allowing far more unstructured time and more freedom for children to play, free from constant interference from adults (“The free-range child”).

Here’s how the writer expresses it:

As so-called hyperparenting continues to dominate modern childrearing with its flash cards, over-programming, hovering and handholding, a number of conscientious objectors are taking a big step back.

They are not slacker parents – they don’t celebrate 3 p.m. martinis and serve Happy Meals for dinner.

But they are returning to a parenting style in which kids’ time is filled with free play, unsupervised activities and plenty of downtime. Some call it free-range parenting.

Continued

Sometime, the blogosphere throws up something that’s odd, amusing and profound, all at the same time. That’s certainly the case in this article by Terence Blacker on one of the blogs of British newspaper The Independent (“Ignore the experts: here’s the secret of happiness”).

Here’s part of what he writes:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer to the question of how to be comfortable in one’s skin, to enjoy moments of fleeting contentment, is not to be found on a campus or even in the pages of the Journal of Happiness Studies but in the world of ordinary, everyday experience. When a former bra-fitter in Colchester said this week, “It’s best not to dwell on the past”, she was on the right track.

     The past for Eve Graham included being the lead singer of a group called the New Seekers, whose song “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” sold 12 million records. At one point during the 1970s, Eve and her band had five singles in the American charts. The work dried up and so, because of a legal dispute, did the royalties. Eventually, she ended up in the lingerie department of Debenhams. “I don’t earn a penny when a New Seekers record sells, and that can be irritating, but you can’t let it rule your life,” she says now.

Continued

Our days are full of sounds of all kinds: traffic noise, people talking, machinery whirring, background muzak playing endlessly, the sounds of walking or running. It seems people cannot get enough sound, given the number you see with iPods playing, the cars that drive up alongside you at the lights and suddenly assail you with a thumping beat, the endless music in stores, malls and elsewhere. But there’s one sound you almost never hear: silence.

I don’t think it can always have been this way. Our ancestors — probably not much further back the our great-grandparents — would have lived in world where something approaching silence was the norm, punctuated only by the sounds of nature. So it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether all the noise is doing us any harm; whether we are prevented from being what we could and should be, because we are constantly distracted by all that noise. Continued