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The Happiness File

April 28th, 2008 | by Jeniffer |

photo credit: geishaboy500

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”-Martha Washington

Quick–on a scale of one to ten, how happy are you?

This may not be as trivial a question as it may at first appear.

Studies suggest that people who see themselves as happy live up to nine years longer than people who report themselves as not happy.

According to Wikipedia, “Happiness is emotion in which one experiences feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense joy.”

It is like a drug, a highly-sought after “high” which eludes us more, the more we seek it.

Sit, rest. Be still within yourself, and make your world, beliefs, and your thoughts in alignment with who you really are, and happiness will find you.

What Is Necessary For Happiness?

According to the BBC Television series, “The Happiness Formula” ( which aired in 2006), there are a certain set of ingredients necessary to achieve happiness.

The first ingredient is close ties with family and friends. Friendship and close relationships have a larger effect on a person’s happiness than does  their income. Marriage is equally important. Being married can add up to seven years to a man’s life, or four years to a woman’s.

Secondly, it is vital to have a sense of  spirituality in your life, a belief in something greater than you are.

Third, it is necessary to not only have goals, but for those goals to be in alignment with your core values and beliefs. They must be goals which you are interested in, and which utilize your strengths, talents, and abilities.

“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”-Benjamin Disraeli

Is Happiness All In Your Head?

Do you see happiness as a state of mind, or a state of feeling?

Do you believe that after you achieve a certain set of circumstances in your life–ie after you make your first million–you will be happy?

Is happiness something you chase after, busily acquiring things in an effort to make yourself happy?

Are you one of the many people who, literally, shop for happiness? There are many people out there, who head to the mall when they are feeling that something is missing in their lives. Witness people with hundreds of pairs of shoes, or closets filled with clothes not worn, or with hundreds of knicknacks in some worthless collection, for which they have spent thousands of dollars. Many, many people get themselves in debt, seeking happiness.

In fact, happiness cannot be bought.

It comes from inside you, not from things outside of your self.

“People spend a lifetime searching for happiness, looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them.The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.”-Ramona Anderson

Your Outlook and Your Happiness

“…happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.”-H.H. the Dalai Lama

How you view the world and your life have a great deal to do with how much happiness you feel.

If you feel you are deprived of something, say a higher income than you currently have, then you will tend to have a negative outlook. In doing so, you will make it impossible for yourself to be happy.

To be happy, you must be optimistic. You must feel right about your life and your circumstances, seeing opportunities to express who you are and what you know, and to grow as a person, rather than seeing only obstacles and hardships.

It is good if you enjoy what you do, as well as if you are able to feel you are somehow contributing something to the betterment of sociey, your family, or the earth. People need to feel useful, not grudgingly like someone put to hard labor for little wages, but happily, doing work which echos who you are inside, and what you believe to be true of yourself and your life.

Seek work that fulfills you. Find something which helps to give your life meaning, and you will be happy. What’s more, you will be so busy enjoying yourself with what you are doing, that you may not realize you are, until one day you look back on the last few months, and realize you are truly, deeply, incredibly happy.

That is the nature of happiness.

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”-Benjamin Disraeli

Other Stuff To Be Happy About:

-Happy people are less at risk for developing conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, colds, and upper respiratory infections.

-Upon receiving a vaccination for the flu virus, people who say they are very happy develop approximately 50% more antibodies than those who say they are not.

-Laura Kabzansky of Harvard University, tracked 1300 men over a period of ten years, to discover that those who reported themselves as optimistic had 50% less heart disease than those who did not.

-The daily habit of writing down things which you are grateful for has been shown by Robert Emmons, of the University of California, to result in a happier state. These happy, grateful people displayed greater enthusiasm, had more energy, and took better care of themselves and their health than those who kept no such gratitude journal.

-A positive outlook fosters creativity and generosity. Negative people tend to have their internal radars set for negative things; they look for problems and obstacles to what they want in life. Happy people, on the other hand, tend to look for and therefore discover opportunities.

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if  you are looking for the meaning of life.”-Albert Camus

Now, get out there, and get happy!

Have a comment, suggestion, or story of happiness to tell? Why not share? Comments are always most welcome!