happiness...
I was copying some files in my office today and picked up this book that has been sitting on my desk called, "The How of Happiness". It presents research into happiness - into what qualities are actually associated with happy people and which are not. As you might expect, "external" things like wealth and beauty are not associated with happiness, but things like feeling grateful for everything you have and feeling beautiful are associated with happiness. According to studies, 40% of a person's happiness is completely in their control, while a large portion of happiness is determined by a person's happiness set point that they are born with, and a very small portion of a person's happiness is due to the circumstances of their life. So the book focuses on the 40% that a person can control. In particular, the book highlights a handful of activities to practice to become happier. One of the activities kind of surprised me: Happiness Activity No. 3: Avoiding Overthinking and Social Comparisons, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'll just quote the book:
"Many of us believe that when we feel down, we should try to focus inwardly and evaluate our feelings and our situation in order to attain self-insight and find solutions that might ultimately resolve our problems and relieve unhappiness. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, I, and others have compiled a great deal of evidence challenging this assumption. Numerous studies over the past two decades have shown that to the contrary, overthinking ushers in a host of adverse consequences: It sustains or worsens sadness, fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person's ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative. Moreover, although people have a strong sense that they are gaining insight into themselves and their problems during their ruminations, this is rarely the case. What they do gain is a distorted pessimistic perspective on their lives."
"Many of us believe that when we feel down, we should try to focus inwardly and evaluate our feelings and our situation in order to attain self-insight and find solutions that might ultimately resolve our problems and relieve unhappiness. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, I, and others have compiled a great deal of evidence challenging this assumption. Numerous studies over the past two decades have shown that to the contrary, overthinking ushers in a host of adverse consequences: It sustains or worsens sadness, fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person's ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative. Moreover, although people have a strong sense that they are gaining insight into themselves and their problems during their ruminations, this is rarely the case. What they do gain is a distorted pessimistic perspective on their lives."