Self-Help Happiness Blog

New Brunswick has done it again, once more making happiness news.  Maclean’s reports that Saint-John is home to Canada’s happiest people.  In 2007, New Brunswick scored happiest among Canadian provinces in the Relative Happiness Index.

I am sure this will help boost their moods as they clean up after the unusual spring floods.

I am starting a special blogroll just for blogs specifically about happiness and positivity.  The list below will grow automatically over time, and I uinvite anyone with a happiness blog or a positive thinking blog to join the blogroll.  There are three steps to do this.  First, make sure your blog qualifies:

1. The topic of the blog must be happiness or positive thinking.*
2. Please the following code in your sidebar, in a page linked directly from your sidebar or in a post linked directly from your sidebar. 
3. Email me with the location of the blogroll on your website.  I can be reached by going to http://www.thehappyguy.com/contact-The-Happy-Guy.html
4. Once approved, I will add your site.
5. I suggest you create a post announcing that you have joined this blogroll and post a link to this page for others interested in joining.  All our blogs will get more traffic as a result.

*Please note that this is NOT a blogroll for general psychology blogs, general self-improvement blogs or blogs about overcoming a specific disease or condition.

Here is the current list of happiness and positive thinking blogs

While the Daily Dose of Happiness is on a temporary hold (testing of the new system is going well, so it should not have to wait much longer) I thought I would share this letter with you:

Hello Happy Guy;
 
I have been receiving your daily doses for some time now and every once in a while you get that ONE that just sticks to you like peanut butter.  I am having a tough time at my current job and had a situation yesterday with an Executive Level Employee.  My first instinct to his condescending comment to me was to lash out and get angry; but just as fast as my instinctual reaction, came the recall of this dose….  Needless to say, I did not allow this person to be my master!  I just smiled and killed him with a very polite comment and he was completely thrown off and I walked away with my head held high.
 
It’s definitely a learning process, but without this dose, I would probably still be obsessing over it.
 
Thank you! 

I say Bravo.  Life is about choosing how you want to live, how you want to act, how you want to react.  Don’t let someone else push your buttons.  They are your buttons; you push them!

 

Michele Moore of  The Happiness Habit is an interesting blogger.  What do I mean by “interesting”? 

In modern times, this overused and trampled word is a void-filler.  Two people lost for words at a conference will say, “Whadaya think will happen?”  “Dunno.” “Should be interesting.”  “Yup, should be interesting.” “Yup, interesting all right.”

The ancient Chinese had a curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

But when I say “interesting”, I actually mean “interesting”.  (Sorry to disappoint you.)  Her posts are refreshingly controversial and thought provoking.   Here are just a few examples:

• Positive Psychology can be dangerous.
• Lessons from The Godfather
• Is Happiness for Everyone?

It is this last one that most intrigues me, in Is Happiness for Everyone?, we see a mug shot of a smiling Steve Jobs glaring smugly at the title, as if he knows something we don’t.  The question Michele raises is not so much whether happiness is for everyone as much as whether the pursuit of happiness is for everyone.

“For some of us other things are more important than happiness… security, social significance, power, prominence, or perhaps creativity or making a lasting, important, indelible impact or contribution.”

People pursuing power or creativity, for example, are not necessarily unhappy.  The pursuit of these goals might be what makes them happy.  But the pursuit of happiness might not.  For others, the pursuit of happiness is everything.  But there is a catch for those pursuing power, creativity and even happiness; one person might be almost completely satisfied with his life chasing whatever he wants to chase, because his happiness is in the chase.  Another person might follow the exact same path, but be totally miserable, because his happiness is in the “if only” that he will never catch.  If only I had power.  If only I could be a little more creative.  If only I could achieve this, I will be happy. 

If only’s never make a person happy.  Enjoying the journey, the pursuit of power, the drive for creativity, the gathering of happiness; these are the motors that drive our happiness.

In a recnt Daily Dose of Happiness I wrote:

SAFETYHaving just read an article in Maclean’s called “Butchers and Monsters”, about how the Chinese government bullies the people in the territory it controls, I am reminded of how lucky I am to live where and when I do. I know most of our readers share that luck, but not all.It’s not just that this is a safe place, but also it is a safe time. Most people throughout history have had to live in the shadows of a bully ruler who could pretty much do whatever he chose with peasants in territory he controlled.  Most people throughout history have had to live in fear that a village or kingdom or principality nearby or farther
away would invade, loot or otherwise destroy their village.Those of us with the good fortune to be living in times of peace in the land of people will never be able to truly understand how it is to live looking over your shoulder.  But let us be grateful that we will never truly understand.

This edition drew a number of interesting comments.  Some were political, such as whether Western media is reporting China with bias and opinions on illegal immigration, which are interesting topics but beside the point.  Others addressed the heart of the topic, essentially questioning the notion that we live in relatively fear-free times/place.  I would like to share a couple of them with you here.

You forget about those who live with sick and mean people. I look over my shoulder 24/7 where I live, for fear of being yelled at, evicted for the flip of a hat reason, chased down hallways… I’m 24 and going to school to better myself so I can leave. Sure, we live in a free country but not all of us live in a free home.

To which I replied…

That is true.  There is no escaping the various characteristics of individuals.  Still, consider that you can go to school.  In Afghanistan, women are still trying to get that simple right, and facing incalculable risks as a result, in many cases from within their own home, nut also from death squads roaming the countryside hunting down women who dare to pose as humans.

Which resulted in…

Wow, well I guess you make a good point.. I have read about those women, and my heart breaks at the injustice of it. I do have a crappy home life, but it is true that I am not being killed for trying to better my situation — just put through the ringer in the process, is all. Thank you for the perspective. 

Another response from a reader was this one.

Hello “The Happy Guy”I’m responding to your email because I really don’t believe in what you said below - that we here in Canada are all safe.  I think we tend to take that for granted.  I used to think that before 9/11 happened. The people who lost their lives during the 9/11 crisis thought they were safe too.  With our biggest ally at war right now, we never know who
El-Qaida (sorry, I don’t know how to spell it) will hit next and how many people will die.

Yes, I agree that we are way better off than Chinese citizens and many other parts of the world, but are we truly safe?  Think about it.

To which I replied…

There is no such thing as complete safety.  A comet could enter our atmosphere tomorrow and wipe out all life on earth.  The shock over 9/11 is testament to how safe we are, how we can sit back and relax and enjoy life without constant fear.  When something like this does happen, it’s such an aberration that, in addition to the sadness at the loss of life, there is a total shock that it could even happen here.  We really are blessed to be able to live day to day without much fear of being butchered, raped and pillaged, and that we can say pretty much whatever we wish and choose to do pretty much whatever we wish without being brutally assaulted by soldiers or guards for so-doing.

I hope this gives people some additional food for thought, as I believe appreciation is paramount for happiness.
 

Here comes an idea from Stephanie Agresta, the “Internet Geek Girl”.  On April3, she celebrated Good People Day.  Now, I checked this up on several of my calendars, and it does appear that this is just something she made up out of thin air.  Call it a novelty, a new invention, a groundbreaking idea. 

I have long advocated that Thanksgiving Day is the most important day of the year, and this is like a subset - albeit a very important subset - of showing appreciation.  It is a chance to honor and show appreciation for people outside of the customary “obligation” cards or gifts of Christmas or other well-established holidays.

How would you celebrate Good People Day? 

In an article entitled Money tilts the happiness scale, a persuasive argument is made that money and happiness are connected.  More specifically, wealth and happiness.  The article suggests that with wealth comes the ability to spend more time doing things we really enjoy, rather than things that are unpleasant (such as earning income).  If money buys a housekeeper, for example, that eliminates time spent doing housework.  If, on the other hand, money buys a fancy car and you still have to do the housework, the money probably hasn’t made you any happier.

It should be noted that “work” is one of those activities that does not bring most people happiness, so the pursuit of money is not the pursuit of happiness.  Wealth, not income, is positively correlated with happiness.

Yes, it appears that God is good for children, too. 

We have known for a long time that faith and spirituality is good for one’s happiness.  But that has always been something tested on adults.  Well, some clever researchers have tried to measure whether spirituality is also good for children.  It turns out that spirituality has three times the effect on children that it does on adults.  You can read more about the child spirituality survey here.

When you spend a lot of time talking about happiness, one can forget that sadness has value, too.  One thing I have always told people is that it is OK to mourn a loss. It is not just “normal”, but it is necessary.

What is not necessary is to remain in a rut of sadness and self-pity.  One needs to mourn, then push the sadness aside and get on with making the most of this wonderful world we live in.  The object of our mourning needs to be transformed from a sadly-missed part of our present to a wonderfully-remembered part of our past.

There is an interesting article on happiness versus sadness in Newsweek right now.  Interestingly, the article makes a case for happiness, but not too much of it over the long run.  Here is a quick excerpt:

On a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is extremely happy, 8s were more successful than 9s and 10s, getting more education and earning more. That probably reflects the fact that people who are somewhat discontent, but not so depressed as to be paralyzed, are more motivated to improve both their own lot (thus driving themselves to acquire more education and seek ever-more-challenging jobs) and the lot of their community (causing them to participate more in civic and political life). In contrast, people at the top of the jolliness charts feel no such urgency.

Pity us 40-somethings.  We are are at the low dip of a U of happiness, according to the latest research. 

In our 20s we feel there is a big prize to be gained and we rush out into the world gung-ho, conquistadors chasing the gold.

In our 40s, we realize there is no prize, at least not for us.  We won’t be Prime Minister or star quarterback or super model or even just filthy rich. We are at that point where we reflect upon all our failures and why we didn’t make something of our lives.

In our 60s comes reflective wisdom, where we realize that the prize didn’t matter anyway, because that’s just not what life is all about

Read more about the sudy conducted at Warwick University and Dartmouth College here.