Stanford Research on Happiness and Meaning

I noticed the following characteristic about one friend who always sounded cheery.

When things go wrong (and there's often 1001 ways things go wrong, and 1 way where they go right) - We often slap ourselves and say "It could have been better if.."

However, I noticed my friend tend to think along these lines - "It could have been much worse, but that didn't happen. Somehow we got through it."

What doesn't kill you, make you stronger anyway.

If you're at all interested in this stuff check out Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert http://bit.ly/cfze2u. For a preview, here's his Ted Talk: http://bit.ly/bRAkXW

If you are interested in more details, here's one: http://serrastreet.blogspot.com/

It's great to see so many people are interested in this topic. To provide more color on some of the points above, here're some more details from research findings (most are direct quotes from her research article): How to reduce unhappiness? Overthinking can actually worsen sadness and make it harder to escape unhappiness. In ruminating, we just become stuck with our feelings. What do you do? Learn to disenage from overthinking about both major and minor negative experiences. Go for a walk, read, call a friend, etc. Or find distraction by thinking about something else. Thirdly, compartmentalize your feelings. Talking also helps you get over unhappiness. Often, shift thinking can help. That's also where meditation comes in. Socializing, exercising more and losing weight are more effective than watching TV. Someone asked why does deep, hard thinking make one happy? Research has found that "flow" often makes time seem to stand still. There's a strong correlation between the experience of flow in your brain and enduring levels of happiness. We experience flow when there's a good match between our strengths and the task we are engaged upon. A holistic view of life is critical to an ongoing level of happiness and meaning. Thinking of our lives holistically, as interconnected and overlapping domains, creates the possibility of multiplier effects. Finally, what's the impact of happiness to doing good business? Making your customers happy and your employees happy are crucial to building a strong business. Fostering a community and encouraging community services or charity are some ways to achieve so. Having a higher mission than pure profit pursuits has also been proven to make employees happier and businesses successful.

Don't forget men are from Mars and women from Venus. Personally, this seems like a study that validates what the author assumed ahead of time. I can damn well tell you volunteering made me miserable each time. Sometimes, "No good deed goes unpunished."