Self-Help Happiness Blog

Good news? Bad news? It all depends on how you look at things.

Consider the following factual news that could send a pessimist around the bend and over the edge:

POVERTY: Almost half of the world’s population earns a below-average income.

ILLITERACY: If current trends continue, by 2022 almost every child born will be illiterate.

DISEASE: Fully 98 percent of people are at risk of getting cancer.

DEATH: By 2060, at current mortality rates, two out of every three people in the world will be dead.

See? It pays to be optimisitc, no matter how bleak the news might seem.

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 ran across this list of the world’s healthiest foods.  Of course, every list is subjective, but I like how this list is organized. 

If you look carefully, the categories are actually in order.  For instance, vegetables is the first category, whereas natural sweeteners are at the bottom.

And if you click on any of the 129 healthy foods, you get a very detailed explanation of why and how it is healthy.  I was surprised to see spices on the list, thinking they were just flavoring eaten in too small a quantity to really provide much health at all.  But I learned better.  I now know that I need just two teaspoons of cinnamon in my cake to get 10% of my daily intake of iron.  Of course, I would have to eat the whole cake.  But even a little cinnamon added to one’s diet helps with several minerals.

Of course, the healthier we eat, the happier we feel, so get cooking with fresh, natural, home-made ingredients.

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.

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.