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Yes, you read the title right. Happiness irritates me.

The other day I was in a large bookstore in the Self-Improvement section. I was doing some research for a book I’m writing about resiliency and my task was to scan all of the books in this particular section.

I could feel my happiness-irritation button being pushed as I walked along the shelves with my head tilted sideways to read the titles. It seemed that every other book was related to happiness.

How to be happier, how to be spontaneously happy, the secrets to happiness, why you aren’t happy, why you should be happy, how to make others happy . . .

Happy, happy, happy.

I enter “happiness” into the book search function on Amazon and it spits out 22,524 books that talk about being happy.

Happiness vs. Well-being

Now, I know that a recent post of mine had to do with happiness and included research about the happiness set-point. However, the difference is that Sonija Lyubomirsky set her definition of happiness as equivalent to that of well-being.

And this difference between happiness and well-being is huge and important.

My beef with happiness and the self-help books that promote it is that the marketing slant leads us to believe that we must experience the emotion of happiness at all times. Otherwise, there’s something wrong with us.

Luckily, there are researchers out there who are correcting this misperception. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, says that happiness isn’t about just feeling positive emotions constantly. Instead, it involves what he terms PERMA: Positive emotions, Engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task, aka “flow”), Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

Seligman also talks about this concept as well-being, or the ability to flourish, rather than happiness.

The downside to short-term happiness

A Wall Street Journal article interviewed researchers who refined the term well-being even further. Hedonic well-being is the short-term good feelings we get when we have a good meal or watch a good movie. These emotions are what we usually think of as happiness.

Eudaimonic (from the Greek ‘eudaimonia’) well-being results from engaging in meaningful activity and having a purpose in life.

A San Diego State University study noted that symptoms of depression, paranoia, and psychopathology have steadily increased among students in an analysis of the student population from 1938-2007.

A possible culprit?

Researchers at San Diego State University who conducted the analysis pointed to increasing cultural emphasis in the U.S. on materialism and status, which emphasize hedonic happiness, and decreasing attention to community and meaning in life [eudaimonic well-being], as possible explanations.

Happiness and resiliency

From a resilience perspective, we know that it is important to feel confident in yourself as well as capable and effective in life. The market-brand definition of happiness provides the opposite, leaving you feeling as though there is something wrong with you because you can’t get a firm grasp on this slippery fish called “being happy.”

Resilience is much more about eudaimonic well-being, the idea that we need to plug away at the things that are meaningful and purposeful in life, even if we don’t get that immediate hit of happiness we’re “supposed to” experience.

It’s about taking the long-term approach and actively practicing the components of Seligman’s PERMA idea. This kind of well-being roots us and provides a strong anchor for when the storms of life surge into our personal horizons.

Happiness irritates me.

But I wish well-being for all of us.

Takeaway points: There’s nothing wrong with being happy. But it’s important to realize the we don’t have to feel happy constantly. And that pursuing meaning and purpose in our lives is what gives us the strong anchor of well-being and resiliency.

Am I the only one irritated by happiness?

Model your life on the spiral, not the stick. – Carol Orsborn

I love this little instruction. Orsborn says that in our society, we are encouraged – pressured, perhaps – to achieve success and to achieve it in a straight line of ascent – a stick. We’re not supposed to let anything get in our way; we just need to keep after it, keep moving, keep fighting . . .

The problem with this kind of approach is that we then have no flexibility and our vision becomes too narrowly focused. When the strong winds of life come along, then, we have no ability to bend with them and, because our sight is so limited, we can’t see our way to shelter.

Orsborn suggests that, instead of striving to be a stick, perhaps we should aspire to the spiral. Life is constant change and the spiral teaches us that, even as things change, they come back around again. Not in an endless circle, but in a gentle upward growth.

Being fully alive

In nature, destruction often is the requisite state that precedes new growth, like the bursting open of a pinecone in the heat of a forest fire, releasing its seeds to the soil. When you are fully alive, you are continually asked to let go of what you have in order to make space for new possibilities to come to you.

And sometimes that letting go can feel like you are moving down the spiral for awhile. This is often the time when you are cocooning and allowing the old you to slough away while the new you is growing, soon to spread your wings. Being open to new growth will soon have you moving upward on the spiral again.

Mastering the art of resilience

So, the trick is to allow for the difficult times and to realize that they are as much a welcome part of our lives as the good times, for it is in the hard times that the sapling that can bend in the fierce winds grows strong.

Rather than saying that you will succeed, allowing nothing to get in your way, mastering the art of resilience requires you to do whatever it takes, understanding that many things are going to get in your way.

Takeaway points: The spiral shows us that, although life is ever-changing, it has a steady pattern that helps us to continue upward, even as troubles visit us. Resilience is honoring the destruction with the construction and realizing that both make us strong.

Is your life modeled after a stick or a spiral?

Orsborn, C. (1997). the Art of resilience: 100 paths to wisdom and strength in an uncertain world. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Photo credit: NicoCanali

What makes you happy?

Money? The newest iPhone? The good health of your family? A promotion at work?

Some interesting work by University of California researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky not only suggests where our happiness comes from, but shows how to get more of it.

Pieces of the happiness pie

Dr. Lyubomirsky proposes that there are three components to the happiness pie: a genetically-based “happiness set point,*” life circumstances, and intentional activities and practices. She has broken these three areas into percentages regarding how much they are responsible for your happiness.

You might want to be sitting down for this first one. Ready? A genetically-based happiness set point – something you inherited – is responsible for a whopping 50% of your overall happiness.

Life circumstances – things like the aforementioned iPhone, family health, and work promotion – account for only 10% of your happiness. You thought it would be more, didn’t you?

That leaves intentional activities aimed toward positive emotion providing you with 40% of your happiness quotient.

Now, here are a couple of important things to know:

• Your happiness set point is genetic and therefore impervious to change. You’re stuck with it. The idea is that no matter what happens – good or bad – you tend to eventually settle back into your inherited level of happiness. So, there’s no use trying to make an impact on your happiness set point.
• You could try to improve your life circumstances by getting more stuff, striving for career goals, and finding the perfect partner. But not only do life circumstances only account for a small percentage of your happiness, they are subject to a very human process: hedonic adaptation. In a nutshell, this means that we very quickly adapt to new things in our lives, so our happiness about it is short-lived.

Taking action toward happiness

So that leaves us with intentional activities as the remaining piece of the happiness pie, a piece that creates 40% of our well-being.** Lyubomirsky believes it is this component that we have the most control over and that allows us to take action rather than merely react when it comes to creating happiness.

So what are these activities that promote positive emotions and well-being? Lyubomirsky suggests three well-researched practices:

1. Committing acts of kindness. Doing nice things for others tends to up your happiness quotient. Curiously, Lyubomirsky found that doing several acts of kindness on the same day – rather than spreading them out through the week – generated the greatest jump in well-being.

2. Expressing gratitude and optimism. Keeping a list of things you are grateful for really does help make you happier. An intriguing note on this component is the discovery that making a list one time per week created a greater boost in happiness than making lists three or more times per week.

3. Processing happy and unhappy life experiences. This is where it really gets interesting. It turns out that talking or writing about your life experiences is helpful in only one of these conditions: the negative experiences.

Why? Apparently, talking to a friend or writing about difficult times in your life helps you to create a story and structure around the event, an act which helps you make sense of it and adjust to the experience more easily.

Positive experiences, however, generate more happiness if they are thought about privately. This allows you to savor and re-experience them without having to analyze them. It’s perfectly fine to talk with others about great things that happen to you; this will brighten your friend’s day, too! But be sure to remember and relish those good events in your life in your private time, too.

I asked at the beginning of this post, What makes you happy? I hope that these three strategies will help you arrange the pieces of your happiness pie so they bring you tasty, sweet joy!

Takeaway points: Life circumstances only make up a small portion of our happiness and our genetically-based “happiness set point” can’t be changed, so what can we do? The practices of acts of kindness, gratitude, and processing life experiences can boost our happiness through intentional action.

This post is based on the following paper by Sonja Lyubomirsky:

Lyubomirsky, S. & Della Porta, M.D. (2010). Boosting Happiness, Buttressing Resilience: Results from Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions. In J.W. Reich, A.J. Zautra, & J.S. Hall (Eds.) Handbook of of Adult Resilience (450-464.) New York: The Guilford Press.

*Of course, more research is being conducted about this moderately controversial topic. However, you can see these papers for the basics of the happiness set point:

Lykken, D. (1999). Happiness: What studies on twins show us about nature, nurture, and the happiness set-point. New York: Golden Books.

Lykken, D., & Tellegen, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science, 7, 186-189.

**The terms “happiness” and “well-being” are interchangeable in Lyubomirsky’s research.

Depression is insidious. You feel sad, you lose your concentration, nothing is interesting to you anymore, and – to top it all off – your thoughts become stuck in an endless loop of self-criticism.

There are many ways to address depression. Researchers interested in decreasing depression and increasing resilience have found that using a number of intentional activities* creates positive emotions and helps reduce feelings of depression. These activities will be discussed in a forthcoming post.

The first step, though, is to work toward letting go of the critical rumination going on in your head. Why? Because it is very difficult to even consider pursuing intentional activities with thoughts such as:

“It won’t help.”

“Why even bother?”

“I’ll just screw it up.”

These thoughts make your mood bleaker and keep you on the sofa rather than feeling up for trying a new activity or intervention.

So, what to do? Use mindfulness.

Now, to a depressed person, even the encouragement to be mindful can sound like a daunting challenge. “Oh, great. Something else to learn and mess up.”

But wait. Here’s all you have to do: Just notice something and have no judgment about it. So, when you hear yourself think something like, “Why even bother?” you just notice the thought. You don’t decide it’s good or bad, you just take note and then let it go.

Life coach Rick Carson calls these negative thoughts “gremlins.” In his book, Taming Your Gremlin, Carson refers to the wise words of the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu:

Simply notice the natural order of things.

Work with it rather than against it.

For to try to change what is only sets up resistance.

Carson bases much of his work on this idea: Simply notice.

Don’t judge. Don’t place meaning. Just notice your thoughts and let them go. Same with your moods. Simply notice that you’re depressed. No need to place any particular import or opinion on it. Just notice it.

This practice of simply noticing is very freeing. One of the key ideas in Carson’s book is don’t grapple with your gremlins. As soon as you start wrestling with the critical thought in your head – your gremlin – it wins. The gremlin gets bigger and more powerful the longer you grapple with it.

Just noticing your thought or mood and having no judgment about it takes all the power away from it.

The authors of The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, encourage us to view thoughts as “passing mental events” that come and go and that don’t necessarily equate to true reality. They write:

Thoughts involve interpretations and judgments, which are not in themselves facts; they are merely more thoughts . . . This ever-so-simple, yet challenging, shift in the way we relate to thoughts releases us from their control. For when we have thoughts such as ‘This unhappiness will always be with me’ or ‘I am an unlovable person,’ we don’t have to take them as realities. When we do, we succumb to endlessly struggling with them. (pp. 59-60)

Want to take the important first step in bouncing back from depression? Simply notice your thoughts and moods without judgment. The sense of freedom will be worth it.

Takeaway points: When depressed, our thoughts can easily become self-critical and circular. Simply noticing them rather than attaching a judgment can free us from the prison of rumination that accompanies depression. If you think of your critical thought as a gremlin, remember that it only has power when you pay attention to it, so try not to grapple with your gremlin!

Is it hard for you to simply notice?

*Lyubomirsky, S. & Della Porta, M.D. (2010) Boosting Happiness, Buttressing Resilience. In J.W. Reich, A.J. Zautra, & J.S. Hall (Eds.) Handbook of Adult Resilience (450-464). New York: The Guilford Press.

Need help with depression? I’m available for therapy in Los Altos, Ca. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for an appointment or free 30-minute consultation.

This month’s bounce boosters address resilience for the new year. Some are thoughtful and some are optimistic, but the imp in me couldn’t resist bookending this post with a couple of extra ones by Mark Twain and Ogden Nash. Twain quips about the inanity of resolutions while Nash gives his usual wink-and-nod to society in general. Enjoy!

Mark Twain

New Year’s Day:  Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

1. Ellen Goodman

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.

2. Joey Adams

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.

3. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

4.  T.S. Eliot

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.

5. Edith Lovejoy Pierce

We will open the book.  Its pages are blank.  We are going to put words on them ourselves.  The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.

Ogden Nash

Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?

What’s your favorite quote?

I’m proud to announce that PsychCentral.com asked me to write my own blog for their site! Please take a look at Bounce Back:Develop Your Resiliency. I already have a couple of posts up about the theme of the blog as well as one showing how early resiliency research helps us today.

Please check out my new blog and the other terrific resources available at PsychCentral!

If you have a habit of setting resolutions for the new year, it’s time to re-think the process. The biggest problem with resolutions? They set you up for failure. Here are the two main ways they do this:

• They inevitably create the thought, “I must do this. If I don’t follow through, it means I’m ____________ (a loser, a jerk, fill in the blank with your own judgmental label.)”
• They tend to be something that is too big of a step or too much out of your daily norm to be achievable. For example, you resolve to go to the gym five days per week and work out for two hours per visit when you haven’t exercised in the last three years.

Now, I’m certainly all for taking responsibility for yourself and making changes where needed. But I think it’s really important to go about change in a way that is realistic and doesn’t have you feeling like a schmuck if you fail occasionally.

Break it down

Those of you who have read my blog for awhile know I am a fan of etymology – word origins. Let’s look at the original meaning of “resolution”:

Early 15c., “a breaking into parts,” from L. resolutionem (nom. resolutio) “process of reducing things into simpler forms”.

So, resolution actually means to break things down to make them simpler. The definition of resolution meaning “to hold firmly” didn’t appear until more than a hundred years later.

If it works best for you to have a goal to work toward, be sure to break things down and make it simpler for yourself. So, using our exercise example, perhaps you want to start by going for a walk every day to prepare your body for more vigorous exercise rather than immediately jumping into a gym schedule that is impossible for your body to tolerate.

Set an intention

My friend and colleague, Annis Cassells, wrote a nice piece about this on her blog the other day and I encourage you to check it out. An intention is a way of seeing yourself making the change as though it is happening right now. The language differs like this:

Resolution: I will go to the gym five days per week and work out for at least two hours each session.

Intention: I am healthy and fit.

Notice how the resolution boxes you into an all-or-nothing mindset and is set in the future – I will. The intention helps you see yourself as meeting your goal right now – I am. The more you tune in to this intention, the more you will make choices that help you come in line with it.

 

Takeaway points: Resolutions box you in and inevitably lead to failure and negative feelings about yourself. Making things simpler and setting intentions for yourself can generate the same results you were after with the resolutions, but go about it in a much gentler, more realistic and effective way.

 Do resolutions work for you?

 

 Photo credit: Gigi Ibrahim

 

Need help setting your intentions or breaking things down to make them simpler? I’m available for a therapy appointment! Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for an appointment or a free 30-minute phone consultation.

 

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. ~Lewis Smedes

 

Holding onto anger and hurt interferes with the ability to bounce back from painful events. Please read my guest post on ThinkSimpleNow.com for a story about forgiveness and unexpected healing.