How to be happier though hassled

 

Amongst the most highly prized goals in life is happiness.  Most of us believe its achievement is largely accidental - that it depends so much on our income, physical health, job satisfaction and status, satisfying family relationships and other factors outside ourselves that most of us have little realistic chance of dramatically changing.

 

Fortunately though there do appear to be some things that improve happiness and our stress-coping style despite the economic or social situation in which we find ourselves. These are things anyone, in any situation, can do to increase satisfaction with life.

 

Psychologists have found specific behaviours and attitudes to be common in the personalities and lifestyles of happy people. It has been shown in one major experiment* that if you actively practice even some of the items below, chances are that your level of stress should decrease noticeably. Remarkably, the same experiment showed that just giving people this information on personal happiness, even when not applied rigorously, had positive effects for about 40% of people. This may have been because it re-affirmed and encouraged some of their existing abilities.

 

According to this study, if you wish to cope better with stress and be happier you need to:

 

1.  Spend more time socialising.  Especially you should increase quality time with family and friends. This is special time together away from everyday pressures and responsibilities.

 

2.  Develop an outgoing, social personality. Extraverted behaviour is a major coping asset.

 

3.  Live a more active life.

 

4.  Lower expectations and aspirations.

 

5.  Develop a positive, optimistic thinking pattern.  This depends largely on your ability to minimise worry.


6.  Get better organised and plan things out.

 

7.  Eliminate negative influences. Again learning to control worry is important.

 

8.  Become more present-moment oriented.

 

9.  Value happiness.

 

Other studies ** report overlapping and some additional factors in happy copers. They include:

 
  • Ability to organise time. They see time as filled and planned, they are punctual and efficient and do not postpone things.

 
  • Possess reasonable social skills. For example: warm, friendly, candid and assertive; good conversational skills: high in 'rewardingness' to others i.e. rarely play destructive 'games' designed to put others down but instead support and compliment more.                                                                                                                        

 
  • Look for solutions to problems and have social supports to help solve them.

 
  • Involvement in goal-directed projects (with most goals not too distant) that feel worthwhile, will benefit others or achieve something. Goals may relate to work, leisure, family or friendships.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 
  • Tend not to blame themselves for failure when depressing and other stressful events occur. They see bad times as short-term. They are high on 'internal control' - they believe they have a lot of choice in how they respond to bad events and that these are largely under their control, rather than due to other people, fate or bad luck.

 
  • Capable of taking things as they come; are flexible realistic thinkers largely free of distorted beliefs; who accept themselves and have resolved inner conflicts; and who do not demand (vs. want, wish or prefer) that truly unchangeable personal and external reality be different.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 
  • Work and/or leisure have more meaning and intrinsic satisfaction for them – they get some sense of achievement or success in completing tasks.  

 

  * (Fordyce, 1977)

** (Argyle, 1987)