Have you seen this Facebook app to support the positive psychology exercise “Three Good Things”?  Participants in this exercise record Three Good Things, and the reasons why they happen, every day. There are some other versions of this exercise out there (including an iPhone app and one on happier.com), but this is a way to make these exercises more effective using social interaction.
This one is for all the parents and soon-to-be parents reading…
Parenting is pure happiness.
Full of mumminess and pappiness
You jump for joy
When you hear “It’s a boy”
And the room is filled with clappiness
Feel free to add your own limericks to complete the story. Let’s see how creative you can be. After all, what follows are sleepless nights, first steps, birthday parties, ballet lessons and hockey games..Â
As a follow-up to yesterday’s blog post on dying to be happy, I thought I would share with you the lyrics from Tim McGraw’s song, “Live Like You Were Dying”, which just played on Y101 A few minutes ago.Â
He said I was in my early forties
with a lot of life before me
when a moment came that stopped me on a dime
and I spent most of the next days
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout the options
and talking bout sweet time
I asked him when it sank in
that this might really be the real end
how’s it hit you when you get that kinda news
man what’d you do
and he said
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.
He said I was finally the husband
that most the time I wasn�t
and I became a friend a friend would like to have
and all the sudden going fishin
wasn’t such an imposition
and I went three times that year I lost my dad
well I finally read the good book
and I took a good long hard look
at what I’d do if I could do it all again
and then
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.
Like tomorrow was a gift and you got eternity to think about
what’d you do with it what did you do with it
what did I do with it
what would I do with it?
Sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I watched an eagle as it was flying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
I want to share with you the message that was sent out today to subscribers of A Daily Dose of Happiness. This is particularly timely because of the credit crunch that is making everyone suffer, but if you are a sensitive sort, you might not want to read any further; I am about to rain on most people’s parade.Â
The credit crunch is a product of - let’s not mince words - greed. All of our greed. We wanted more, more, more (SFX: maniacal laughter in background). Well, we got more, more, more than we could ever hope to throw away without even opening the excess packaging. Sooner or later we have to pay for it. Sooner or later has arrived.
Today’s Daily Dose of Happiness MessageÂ
You know that whole debate about money buying happiness. It gets overly simplified, like far too many things.
I recall attending a Zig Ziglar seminar a few years ago. He said, “Money is not the most important thing in life, but it comes reasonably close to oxygen.”
His point is well taken, but how much oxygen do you need? There is a point at which more oxygen can be a life-saver. There is also a point where more oxygen becomes overkill.
Likewise with money. The first dollar you make this year will be very, very important for your happiness. At some point, when your basic needs are secured, the value of money starts falling dramatically. The 100,000th dollar you make this year will likely bring some extra momentary pleasure, but is unlikely to actually make you happier.
The key is to find the point at which money stops making you happier. Any investment of additional time to earn more money will actually reduce your happiness (more money that does not add to your happiness, less time that would have).
Any further compromise of values or principles required to earn more money will likewise reduce your happiness (more money that does not add to your happiness, less integrity that would have).
Instead of accepting that we have to pay for all the excess of the past couple decades, we want the government (that’s us, remember?) to buy us even more excess. Yes, we in the Western world really are embarassingly spoiled rich kids. The problem, as any credit counselor can tell you, is that you cannot spend your way out of debt.  And as we dig our way into even greater debt, I just cannot see how that creates more happiness. I fear we are collectively handing over the keys to what I call “The Merchants of Misery” in my book, Climb Your Stairway to Heaven.
Haven’t I always said it? Happiness is contagious. Just smiling at people in a room can pick up the mood of a room…and in the process help you keep your own mood up (because happiness is contagious whether you are giving or receiving).
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, and James Fowler are co-authors of a 20-year study called Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network. Here is the abstract of the study
Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible inthe network, and the relationship between people’s happinessextends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to thefriends of one’s friends’ friends). People who aresurrounded by many happy people and those who are central inthe network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinalstatistical models suggest that clusters of happiness resultfrom the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for peopleto associate with similar individuals. A friend who lives withina mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probabilitythat a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2%to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), andnext door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seenbetween coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographicalseparation.
In other words, it is in your own self-interest to make people around you happy. Smiles, random acts of kindness, humor, music…adding all these uplifting features to your neighborhood will make your life better. I wonder why the effect was not seen between coworkers; it really should have been, considering how close many people are to their coworkers, spending huge portions of their day with them and being incredibly affected by their moods.
…is a blank screen. According to a 31-year study of 30,000 people, TV sucks. My wife won’t want to hear this, because she is tired of hearing me lecture about how I would rather do things than watch others do things. Of course, my idea of doing things is not always what the study says will bring most happiness, being somewhat of a hermit…
“TV doesn’t really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,” says University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson, the study co-author. “It’s more passive and may provide escape, especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.”
Robinson and his research team compared the activities of people who described themselves as happy with peeople who described themselves as unhappy. The unhappy people watched 20 percent more television than the happy people.  Those who considered themselves to be happy were more likely to:
Another Blog Post one from A Daily Dose of Happiness…and this one is ideal to forward to anybody who might be feeling a little down. Share it with your Twitter and faceBook friends, too. Some of them will appreicate it…Â
Up escalator. Down escalator. No, that’s not the name of a new Dr.
Seuss book. It’s a pairing of two very handy mechanisms that are
both quite necessary. True, we could survive without escalators, but
we would still need to go up and down stairs…you can’t just keep
going up.
In life, we need both ups and downs. If you plan to chase happiness
means that you’ll try to avoid all downs, you are in for trouble.
Downs are inevitable. Things happen that just don’t go your way,
and human beings are hard wired to react. When someone close to you
passes away or just goes away, you are supposed to feel down. When
someone hurts you. When a friend fails. When you fail. When traffic is
particularly thick or your wallet is particularly thin. There are so
many times when you will feel down.
Yes, even the happiest people feel down.
But a happy person does not stay down long. A happy person moves
fairly soon from mourning a loss to celebrating a life. From feeling
like a failure to grasping the lesson and renewing his determination.
From feeling frustrated to just letting the universe unfold.
Up. Down. They are both fine – the question is how long you stay
down.
I know, I know. You heard that is was a picture that is worth a
thousand words. Well when I tweeted this though (posted at http://twitter.com/amabaie ), one of my followers replied “does this
mean a picture of a smile is worth 2000 words?”
Cute. But that’s not the point. A smile is a picture. It says so
many things. It says, “I’m happy”.
It says “You’re OK”.
It says “I like you”.
It says “Don’t worry”.
It says….well, I’m not going to let this post go on for 1000
words. Why not hop on over to Twitter and tell me what else you think
a smile says? Just type in @amabaie and say your piece.
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