Ebony's Pearls

Daily Strawberries
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http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE4B400H20081205

Happiness is contagious: "If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent," Fowler said. "A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent," he added.
A happy third-degree friend -- the friend or a friend of a friend -- increases a person's chances of being happy by 6 percent.
"But every extra unhappy friend increases the likelihood that you'll be unhappy by 7 percent," Fowler said.
“"People are asked how often during the past week, one, I enjoyed life, two, I was happy, three, I felt hopeful about the future, and four, I felt that I was just as good as other people," Fowler said.”
So the moral of this article is: it’s OK to be unhappy because there are many valid reasons to be unhappy, but happiness trumps it and can help you get past the unhappy times.

“The study also fits in with other data that suggested -- in 1984 -- that having $5,000 extra increased a person's chances of becoming happier by about 2 percent.”, so you really can put a price on friendship - a happy friend is worth $32,500. I’m willing to believe a happy spouse or significant other is worth much more. You should cherish the friends you have that are happy and that help make you happy. They are worth much more than the dollar value this Fowler gave to them.

I think probably the biggest factor in being happy is resiliency. When something happens, you aren’t fixated on it going a certain way. You accept that it may be different and you incorporate that into your plans. Maybe it’s better than you expected, maybe it’s simply different. And if it’s worse, you start making plans for improving it. You never settle; you adapt.

I drive an old car, for example. It gets me from point A to point B with a minimum of fuss, handles all the stuff I do with efficiency, and I rarely have to think about it outside of routine maintenance. I haven’t settled for it. I simply don’t need a bigger, newer, flashier car when this one works perfectly well. I’m happy with it. Buying a bigger, newer, flashier car isn’t going to make me happier when this one works as I need it to just fine. In the future, when it becomes a chore to maintain it, when it costs more in upkeep than new car payments would, then is the time to consider a new car. A good car should last, on average, about 25 years. When I wear this one out, I’ll look for another one to do what I will need it to do. Flash and fashion aren’t high on my “makes me happy” list.

And that, I think, is what we need to consider. Happiness is about the quality of your life, not the quantity of stuff filling it. Do you really need a bigger TV? OK, that’s a bad example, what with the broadcasting changes that are coming up. My TV is so old even the adaptor you can get won’t work on it so I will have to break down and buy a new TV next year – but for now, it works perfectly well. The image is clear and sharp and the colors true for both VHS and DVD, and reception is decent for broadcasts. There’s no reason yet to get a new TV. But think about it – will more stuff really make you happier, or will it only make you euphoric for a while? When the shiny wears off, will you still be happy with it, or will you be off looking for a new shiny so you can experience that euphoria again? Are you addicted to the kick you get from “shiny” and “new”?

Look at your goals and then explore all the ways to get there. Say you want to be more literate. You probably think that means reading more books, so you dutifully put “read more books” on your list of things to do to accomplish your goals. Then, because you are busy, stressed, and need new glasses to read comfortably, you delay reading and start feeling guilty because that’s on your list of “getting happy”. Yet – you know a lot about the popular books because you’re forever discussing them with friends, on the phone, in your blog, in emails, in chats (on the computer, in the office, over coffee, while watching a TV program with a friend…). You are far more literate than you think you are because you’re getting your literature information in ways other than reading the book. So maybe it’s not the goal that’s making you feel guilty, but the way you’re trying to achieve that goal. Maybe you’d be happier if you joined a book discussion club, or listened to the book on tape when you’re doing other things so you pick up the nuances so you can discuss it more fully with your friends, or even watched a good movie adaptation of the book. A lot of the older classics have been made into movies that capture the spirit of the book without having to try to read the language of the times in which the book was written. Your goal wasn’t “read more books”, it was “be more literate”, so look at all the options to reach your real goal – resiliency makes a big difference.

And if you have really big goals, try breaking the big ones down into smaller goals. Say you want to get a better paying job. In our economic climate, all full of doom and gloom you’re probably thinking this is an impossible goal, but really, if you look at it, getting a better job is a series of steps. First, you consider what job it is you really want to go for. Then you look at the skills you currently have. Use your current skills to make a list of the skills you need for your dream job. Now, each of those new skills is a goal for you. Accomplish the smaller goals of acquiring those skills. When you have them, check to make sure your dream job is still your dream job, then work on the next step – sending out resumes to the people who could hire you for your dream job, listing you newly acquired skills and how you can wield them to the benefit of the company for whom you plan to work. If things change – maybe in acquiring the new skills you discover a previously unknown love or talent for doing something else – be ready and willing to change how you achieve your goal – which is to get a better paying job. You’re still working towards getting a better paying job; it just isn’t the job you started out envisioning.

And that’s the key to happiness – aiming for the big goals, but being resilient in the methods on achieving them. If you’re a list maker (sometimes, I am; mostly I’m not), then be prepared to wad up your list or delete it and start all over. Your lists aren’t contracts (well, usually they aren’t, but I can just see one of the naysayers popping up to say “but what if your list is a contract?”) witnessed and notarized and unchangeable. Lists can change, adapt, grow, or shrink according to what we learn about ourselves as we live our lives.

Me, mostly, I prefer to discover the meanings in my life as I live it. I like going with the flow of things and tweaking them, to see where they lead next. For me, life is an on-going experiment and each apparent conclusion is only the first step in the next exploration. My life is full of what-ifs – either in person or on paper. One of the reasons I write stories is so I can imagine where the things I can’t do in person might go. And of course, I’m one of those people who will do things on a whim – whether it’s adding cardamom to chili or licking a banana slug or adding food coloring to the boiling water of a fog machine or playing pirate with a GPS. Life is an adventure for me and even the downturns can be exciting fun. When I was homeless with small children, we camped out, visited zoos and museums and libraries, and the children got to sit in on the seminars I was doing to earn money to end our homeless situation. Even when I didn’t know where we’d be that night, we had fun and it was interesting times. My goal then was to get a place to live where the kids could go to a good school. I was very flexible about how we got to that point. Being 12 years out of touch in my degree field meant completely changing our lives until I saved up the money to refresh my degree or do something totally different. I ended up doing something totally different.

I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t find a way to be happy, whether it was being homeless (as mentioned above) or being told I had terminal cancer and 3 days to live (haven’t gotten to those days yet) or being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain (I got out) or being lost in a European country where I didn’t know the language (I learned it, though – and got some great recipes along the way), or getting a duck stuck in my thigh (we both had great stories to tell afterwards, his side of it quacked me up), or living with a constipated house for years (finally saved up the money to flush it all out).

I guess you could say my ultimate goal in life is to live forever or die trying. I’m better than 60 years into the experiment and so far, it’s going very well. I’ve done a few things that embarrassed my kids when they were younger, but they got over it. They developed resiliency and got over it to grow up into some pretty remarkable adults.

There are only a few lists I keep –all the people I have known and the awesome things they’ve done, all the snapshot moments I catch of other people doing amazing and wonderful things for or with others, and all the things I’d like to do someday. That last list? Changes all the time. And if I don’t get to do everything on that list, I know I will have lived a life filled with amazing people and events. No regrets, no shame. It’s all good.

So, look at your life. Think about what makes you happy. If you’re that kind of person, set big goals, with lots of flex room for accomplishing them, and then work on lots of smaller goals to get to your big one. Be resilient. Be flexible. Be adaptable. And all those other synonyms. Your real goal is to be happy. What makes you really happy might surprise you, so be prepared to make the changes your discovery will bring your way. I can’t tell you what you need to do to be happy, but I can point you in directions you can follow to see if those will help you find your own happiness.

If you believe the article I started this whole post with, surrounding yourself with people who are happy already can help you achieve your own happiness.