How to be happier

In 2011, the Office for National Statistics started to measure how happy we are. This follows Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to assess the 'general wellbeing (GWB)' of Britons.

Is this all airy-fairy stuff or could it be important?

Back in 2000, NetDoctor ran a happiness survey. Happiness was not such a 'hot topic' then. But even so, the survey attracted huge amounts of publicity. And I'm convinced that the reason for this was because everyone wants to be happy.

Eleven years later, various scientific studies have emerged to tell us that happy people live longer, are less prone to heart disease, are less stressed and are more likely to form satisfying relationships.

A 2008 study by Harvard University even concluded that if you have a friend living less than a mile away from you who becomes happy, your own levels of happiness will rise by 25 per cent!

Politicians have clearly been influenced by science and have come to believe that a happy nation is easier to manage, is healthier, is less trouble and costs less to maintain compared to a miserable population.

Whether or not they're right, there's no doubt that happy people find life easier and also make it that way for those around them.

So, can we learn to be happier?

Many experts believe that we can learn to be happier.

However, we don't all appear to start with the same advantages because some individuals seem to be born happier than others.

Back in the sixties, psychologist Martin Seligman was working on the concept of 'learned helplessness' by experimenting with animals and humans.

He expected to find that we all become passive, sad and helpless if enough bad things happen to us. But to his amazement, he found that simply wasn't true.

Writing about that time in his book Authentic Happiness, he said: 'Not all of the rats and dogs become helpless after inescapable shock, nor do all the people after being presented with insolvable problems or inescapable noise. One out of three never gives up no matter what we do. Moreover, one out of eight is helpless to begin with…'

This discovery led to him to work on a different concept, 'learned optimism' and from this a whole new health movement, called positive psychology, evolved.

Prior to that time, mental health treatment focused entirely on reacting to a patient's misery, depression or anxiety – and trying to treat it.

Positive psychology looked at mental health in a more proactive way. It encouraged people to develop ways of experiencing more joy and happiness – and in that way to become more mentally, and physically healthy.

World Happiness Forum

Several decades on, the pursuit of happiness has been taken up by huge numbers of scientists, philosophers, doctors, educationalists, psychotherapists, psychologists and religious leaders. And many of them regularly come together at conferences run by an organisation called the World Happiness Forum.

Recently, I went to one of these conferences in London and listened to a wide range of speakers from diverse backgrounds.

What struck me was just how much common ground there was between them – despite their different specialties. And I realised that they were virtually all in agreement on the same ingredients for happiness, which I'm now going to outline.

Factors that increase our happiness

One of the main happiness factors is 'altruism', which is defined in the dictionary as 'regard for others.'

But, why should altruism make us happy?

Think for a moment about people you know who are mean-minded and whose mantra is 'look after number one'.

Are they optimistic, contented and cheerful? Usually not.

Many experts have researched the link between happiness and altruism, including Professor Felicia Huppert of Cambridge University.

She investigated the happiness of various populations in Europe and also looked at whether or not there was a tradition of altruism – in the shape of volunteering – in those countries.

What she found was that people who live in Scandinavian countries have the greatest sense of happiness and wellbeing of all Europeans, and inhabitants of countries from the former Soviet block have the least. The rest of us are somewhere inbetween.

She has also discovered that in Scandinavia, large percentages of the population – 70 per cent in Norway – were involved in volunteer projects of various kinds. But in the less happy countries, volunteering was almost unknown. For example only 7 per cent of Bulgarians were volunteers.

Of course, these findings don't prove beyond doubt that altruism makes you happy. But they are certainly worth thinking about.

Here are some of the other components of happiness which experts agree upon.

Having an enquiring mind

Research shows that individuals who are keen to exercise their brains by learning a foreign language or getting to grips with new technology – stay younger in spirit and are much more positive and cheery than people who don't.

Physical exercise

Getting active is crucial if you want to feel well and happy and keep your mind sharp.

Exercise gets oxygen pumping round our bodies and brains – making us feel alert and lively – and prompts the release of 'happy chemicals', called endorphins, into our bloodstream.

Resilience

This is a great commodity to have. Basically, it helps to prevent us feeling hopeless and miserable when life throws tough problems at us.

We can all become more resilient by identifying the strengths we've developed through the years and then working out how we can harness them to assist us in solving current or future problems.

Looking back into the past, we can all remember difficult times that we survived. So when we feel overwhelmed by one of life's challenges, it can help if we remind ourselves that we've already got experience in dealing with problems and remember what the skills were that we used before.

When we do that, we feel more confident about the present problem. And when we're confident, we feel happier.

Having a strong social network

Many research projects have shown that we're happier people when we have regular contact with friends.

Ideally, to get full benefit we should meet up with them face-to-face, but even emailing and phoning a mate can lift our spirits.

Furthermore, friendships appear to have various beneficial health effects.

A long-term Scandinavian study found that people with a strong social network were less likely to get dementia.

And in 2009, researchers reporting at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference stated that loneliness was as bad as being a smoker.

So, there's no doubt that friends are good for us – and personally this makes me very happy!

Transcendence

This rather unfamiliar term means 'an exalted state'.

In other words, it's a feeling that transports us away from the humdrum and gives us greater perspective. You might get this from organised religion.

But more and more of us are finding it in other ways – including meditation, walking by the sea, meandering round historic buildings, listening to music, wandering in the countryside or looking at great paintings.

It doesn't matter what you choose – so long as you ensure that there's something in your life that 'feeds your soul'.

When you have that, you're likely to feel more balanced and happy.

Building a happiness habit

So, what emerged from the World Happiness Forum was that your happiness can grow if you focus on physical and mental good health. This includes activities and thoughts that challenge you and which also give you balance and perspective.

I would like to add a simple strategy to that list. It's something I've used with my own psychotherapy clients for years – which is to notice when you're happy.

It's common for people who fall on hard times, or become ill, or lose a partner to say, 'If only I'd appreciated my life when it was going well' or, 'I was happy then, I just didn't realise it until tragedy struck'.

I always find this sad. And I'm convinced we can all maximise our happiness levels by being more aware of those moments that make us laugh or which bring us joy.

So, what I do with my own patients is to ask them to notice five happy things per day. This isn't a big task. But it can have a large impact in that it encourages people to focus on the happy bits and gives less attention to the various things that go wrong in any one day.

I know this works – because I have increased my own happiness levels that way and helped others to do the same. But my own private theory has received a scientific boost by developments in neuroscience.

Neuroscience and scanning

In the past 10 years or so, there have been advances in what we know about the brain and how it works. And many of those advances have happened because of the development in scanning techniques.

When scanning someone's brain, it's now possible to ask that person to think of something really wonderful and see what happens.

The result is that there's a sudden burst of activity in the front left side of the brain. And this is the part of the brain that registers happiness, wellbeing and contentment.

Physicist and philosopher Stefan Klein highlights that – because of modern technology – it's now possible to demonstrate that the more a person focuses on positive things, the more he or she will generate activity in the 'happy' area of the brain.

Finding that there's brain activity for emotion, and that individuals can boost this activity for themselves, has encouraged scientists to believe that we can become happier by regularly 'exercising' this part of the brain.

Thinking happy thoughts can become a habit. It doesn't cost anything and it's not time consuming.

There's a strong possibility that if we focus on thinking positively, we will elevate our mood and become more optimistic and contented individuals.

Thanks to:
Christine Webber, psychotherapist, author and broadcaster

NetDoctor.co.uk

Posted By: Creator Public Relations