Change your Life without Changing your Life Heather K. Hubeny, LMSW, CEAP Employee Assistance Program Coordinator

Starting Where You Are So how do we define happiness? What words come to mind when you think of happiness? The Free Merriam Webster Dictionary defines happiness as a state of well-being and contentment; joy ; b. a pleasurable or satisfying experience. According to Wikipedia, happiness is a “fuzzy” concept. Though many people cannot agree on a specific definition most can agree on what it means to be happy – kind of like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, you know it when you see it. Important note - The opposite of happiness is unhappiness not depression. Depression is a serious mental health issue that should be assessed by a professional.

Starting Where You Are Set point theory – a person’s basic happiness level doesn’t fluctuate much In 1978, a team of psychologists from Northwestern University and the University of Massachusetts published a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  (Vol. 35, No. 8, pages 917-927) that found lottery winners were not significantly happier than control-group participants and that patients with spinal-cord injuries "did not appear nearly as unhappy as might be expected." In fact, we're prone to what the researchers called a contrast effect. Events in our lives don't have set values; they're evaluated based on a comparison to other events. Winning the lottery is such a big deal it actually makes other good things in the winner's life less enjoyable. We're also subject to something called habituation. Simply put, this means we can get used to nearly anything, no matter how good or bad it is. So, after time a wheelchair doesn't seem so bad -- and a million dollars doesn't seem as good. Many in the psychology and social science circles take for granted that people return to a relatively stable "happiness set point," even after seemingly life-changing events.

Starting Where You Are “Events that we anticipate will give us joy make us less happy than we think; things that fill us with dread will make us less unhappy, for less long, than we anticipate.” Dan Gilbert, PhD , Stumbling On Happiness Dan Gilbert, Harvard Psychology Professor and pioneer in the fields of happiness research and positive psychology also finds happiness to be subjective. In his book, Stumbling On Happiness, Gilbert says, “Events that we anticipate will give us joy make us less happy than we think; things that fill us with dread will make us less unhappy, for less long, than we anticipate.” As evidence, Gilbert cites studies showing that a large majority of people who endure major trauma (wars, car accidents, rapes) in their lives will return successfully to their pre-trauma emotional state — and that many of them will report that they ended up happier than they were before the trauma. It's as though we're equipped with a happiness thermostat that is constantly resetting us back to our emotional baseline.

Starting Where You Are Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky did some research to determine the components of happiness. She took the Happiness Formula posited by Jonathan Haight in his book The Happiness Hypothesis and tried to scientifically determine how much each of the components contributes to someone’s overall happiness level. Check out this 20/20 clip of Dr. Lyubomirsky discussing her research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6xYmh4Y-w (start at 1:10 – End at 3:07 to see Dr. Lyubomirsky only)

Good News! We have some control over our own happiness levels Starting Where You Are Good News! We have some control over our own happiness levels So there is good news! According to these social scientists, people may be predisposed to a set happiness range however, we can still boost ourselves to the top of that range or push ourselves down to the bottom of that range based on our own behaviors, thoughts and actions.

Starting Where You Are More good news: 84% of Americans ranked themselves “very happy” or “pretty happy” in 2006 study International Survey: Average person rates themselves a 7 on a 1-10 happiness scale And there’s more good news…In a 2006 study, 84% of Americans ranked themselves as “very happy” or “pretty happy” and in a survey of 45 countries, on average people rank themselves a 7 on a 1-10 happiness rating scale and a 75 on a 1-100 scale.