Self-Help Happiness Blog

…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:

• be socially active
• attend more religious services
• vote
• read more.   

Interesting, the three articles I read on the study each quote different stats.  Geesh…sloppy journalism.  Here’s the original source:

http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/sociss/release.cfm?ArticleID=1789

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.

Let me share a little story with you.  I have two daughters.  Little Lady is a little overweight.  Not surprising, as she loves to eat.  As a result, we try to curtail her eating somewhat.  You might describe our message to her as, “Thou shalt measure thyself when eating.”

Little sister was hard to feed as a baby, and although she is no longer underweight, we still put an effort into ensuring she eats enough, especially of fruits and vegetables.  You might describe our message to her as, “Thou shalt eat in abundance.”

These are two different messages directed at two different children for two different reasons.  Often, Little Sister will leave food on her plate, and we try to coax her to eat a little more.  Little Lady, having scraped her own plate clean, wants to eat up what Little Sister leaves behind.  But our message for Little Sister to eat it is not a message for Little Lady to eat it.

Our children receive different messages for a reason, even though neither of them fully understands the reasons or wants to understand the reasons.

This brings me to some feedback I received recently from my Daily Dose of Happiness:

Happy guy  I want to ask you something are you a christian . DO you believe in Jesus. I really like your help but I ‘m learie 

My reply was:

It just so happens that I am a Christian.  Like most people, I was born into my faith, and I am most comfortable with it.  My words, however, are for all God’s children, regardless of how God has chosen to communicate with them.  I hope he is communicating to some of them, however they practice their spirituality, through me.  :-) 

Sometimes people get so wrapped up in their faith, that they become blind to all of God’s other messages.  Sometimes they forget that what their faith is about is God, and God is not confined to any faith system.  Sometimes they forget that people of other faiths might also be brothers and sisters with the same parents, but receiving different messages through other faith systems.

Let us all embrace each other and revel in the miracle of life that we have been given, however we receive God’s message.

Here is a little something from Jagad Guru Chris Butler:

“In his book Small Is Beautiful, noted British economist E. F. Schumacher wrote:

Insights of wisdom … enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and nation against nation, because man’s needs are infinite and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.*  

It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the atma (spirit soul). Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food. To try to satisfy one’s spiritual craving with material things leads to endless consumption, greed, envy, violence, and war. Western people have as much sense gratification as one could ever want, yet they are not satisfied. Why? Because they are spiritually empty.”

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - wisdom in daily life 

© 2007 Science of Identity Foundation

* E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 38