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Psychotherapists Say This Is The Key To Happiness
e story you tell yourself about your life. When your vision of your life story is inadequate, depression can result. Psychotherapists actually help "rewrite" that story and this process is as, if not more, effective than medication. Via The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human: According to the psychologist Michele Crossley, depression frequently stems from an “incoherent story,” an “inadequate narrative account of oneself,” or “a life story gone awry.” Psychotherapy helps unhappy people set their life stories straight;…
4 minutes
What’s the connection between sex and happiness?
llow @bakadesuyo This paper studies the empirical patterns in money, sex and happiness. Using 1990s data from the General Social Surveys of the United States, the paper shows that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. We calculate that the median American has sexual intercourse 2-3 times a month. In our data, close to half of American women over the age of 40 report that they did not have sex in the previous year; the figure for men is…
5 minutes
How Your iPhone Can Increase Your Happiness
ted happiness researcher and author of The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky, has created an iPhone app to help you widen that smile. It leverages iPhone features to assist users in engaging a number of happiness-boosting principles I've posted about in the past. I'll describe the app's five functions and link to more information on the techniques employed: "Thank": This encourages users to keep a gratitude journal and to email others to express gratitude. "Optimism": Here users have a place…
1 min read
When do we stop being interested in new things? What can this teach us about happiness?
a Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy: In an attempt to understand why he was musically stuck in the seventies, Sapolsky set out to study “the windows in which we form our cultural tastes, and [in which we] are amenable to new experiences.” Was there, he wondered, an age at which these “windows of openness slammed shut?” Indeed, Sapolsky concluded, there was. He and his research assistants called radio stations that specialize radio…
3 minutes
What brings more happiness: money or power?
bsp; Money doesn't increase happiness much, but power does: Dozens of studies in different nations have revealed that socioeconomic status only weakly predicts an individual’s subjective well-being (SWB). These results imply that although the pursuit of social status is a fundamental human motivation, achieving high status has little impact on one’s SWB. However, we propose that sociometric status—the respect and admiration one has in face-to-face groups (e.g., among friends or coworkers)—has a stronger effect on SWB than does socioeconomic status.…
1 min read
For what type of people can money truly buy happiness?
e emotionally unstable. Via The Calgary Herald: Reporting in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers find compelling evidence that money predicts life satisfaction far more strongly for the highly neurotic — those prone to mood swings, anxiety or negativity — than for people who are more emotionally stable. And: "At high levels of income, pretty much everyone is happy; at low levels of income, stable people are still perfectly satisfied with their lives, but the neurotic people are…
1 min read
The Simple Secret To Happiness Most People Get Wrong, Backed By Research
cus on increasing the amount of good stuff in your life vs. reducing the amount of bad stuff. Studies show that it really is the little things in life that make us happy. Researchers often tout the happiness-increasing powers of both religion and exercise. One of the lesser known reasons why they're so effective is because both provide regular, frequent boosts. You may be focused on a big goal, something that you're sure will make you super-happy for a long…
2 minutes
If money is very important to you is it harder to achieve happiness?
bsp; Unless you're making ~250K or more per year, yes. Via Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth: "...it is harder for materialists on average to be happy at the same level of income as nonmaterialists because they very often feel as though they need more money, no matter how much they have." Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: 8 ways that money can buy happiness What are your relationships worth, in dollars? At what…
1 min read
