good food for thought as usual from sacha

"When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000."

Numerous studies have found that people who are natural extroverts tend to be happier than shyer types, but introverts can get a hedonic boost simply by faking it, it appears. And there doesn’t seem to be a downside.

After determining participants’ dispositions through questionnaires, psychologists assigned 117 people to three-person teams and gave them two make-work tasks (ranking the usefulness of tools after a wintertime plane crash, and planning a group day trip). Some participants were assigned to act boldly and assertively; others to be reserved and passive; still others (the control group) received no advice about how to act. Queried later, group members confirmed that people did, in fact, act as they were told to.

Whatever their innate tendencies, the people who acted like extroverts enjoyed the task the most, according self-reports, and they also seemed to be enjoying themselves, according to participants. The researchers had thought that acting against type would cause mental strain, but a subsequent test of concentration and cognition found no cost to introverts pretending to be gregarious knee slappers.

"More people commit suicide in locales that self-identify as “happy.” Like Utah, which is full of happy jerks being athletic and having great diets and a fulfilling spiritual life."

A great article reminding us we are the authors of our own happiness

*sounds about right

I was addicted to junk food and fast food, and overweight and unhealthy. I bought too many things on impulse, owned too much clutter, and was deeply in debt and struggling to make it to the next payday. I was unhappy with who I was, wanted desperately to change, tried a thousand different programs and books. I was always worried I was missing out on exciting things, and wanted so much to be out doing the fun things everyone else was doing. I was always changing the way I did things, because it seemed everyone else had a better system or tools. I strove to meet goals, because they would get me to a better life.

Most people these days are stressed out by the fast pace of life, economy, and worries about the future. In a recent survey, conducted in the UK, a whopping 86 percent agreed that "people would be much happier and healthier if they knew how to slow down and live in the moment" (Mental Health Foundation, 2010). It is no wonder that mindfulness has rapidly gained attention in the popular press and is one of the few complementary medicine techniques to be offered in hospitals and clinics worldwide. But what exactly is mindfulness?

This started as an assignment to find out about the science of ‘buying happiness’ (using money to become happier) — hence the emphasis on money-and-happiness. I learned a great deal more than how to buy happiness, however, and the project became somewhat more generalized. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but perhaps it makes for a useful supplement to Luke’s How to be Happy. This post consists mostly of quoted material.

tumblelog zu Sagmeisters Projekt

Kurzer TED-Talk Sagmeisters, direkt mit seinem Tagebuch und "Things I have learned in my life so far" verbunden

Das Video über das Sabbatical in Bali zeigt vielleicht am besten, wie Stefan Sagmeister arbeitet und was das Besondere seiner Methode ist

Neuerer Vortrag von Stefan Sagmeister, nach seinem letzten Aufenthalt in Bali, konzentriert auf seine eigene Arbeit

TED-Talk über Glück und Design, am Ende geht es um die "Things I have learned in my life so far"