Choosing To Be Happy
Strategies for Happiness: 7 Steps to Becoming a Happier Person
(continued)
Happiness Strategy #6: Foster Friendship
There are few better antidotes to unhappiness
than close friendships with people who care about you, says
David G.
Myers, author of The Pursuit of Happiness. One Australian study found that people over 70 who had the strongest network of friends lived much longer.
"Sadly, our increasingly individualistic society
suffers from impoverished social connections, which some psychologists
believe is a cause of today's epidemic levels of depression," Myers writes. "The social ties that bind also provide support in difficult times."
Happiness Strategy #7: Engage in Meaningful Activities
People are seldom happier, says psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, than when they're in the "flow." This is a state in
which your mind becomes thoroughly absorbed in a meaningful task that
challenges your abilities. Yet, he has found that the most common
leisure time activity -- watching TV -- produces some of the lowest
levels of happiness.
To get more out of life, we need to put more into
it, says Csikszentmihalyi. "Active leisure that helps a person grow does
not come easily," he writes in Finding Flow. "Each of the flow-producing activities requires an initial investment of attention before it begins to be enjoyable."
So it turns out that happiness can be a matter of
choice -- not just luck. Some people are lucky enough to possess genes
that foster happiness. However, certain thought patterns and
interpersonal skills definitely help people become an "epicure of
experience," says David Lykken, whose name, in Norwegian, means "the
happiness."
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