Does Happiness Make You Healthy?

Does being happy make you healthy? Hmm...I've heard that question asked more than once over the years. My gut response is yes! It just seems natural to me that if someone is happier they'd be healthier as a result right? However, that doesn't seem to be the case as recently reported by the Wall Street Journal in the health and wellness section of March 17^th's issue, with the heading "Is Happiness Overrated"?

According to this Wall Street article, the happiness research field is "exploding" as they put it. This realm of psychology is called "positive psychology" and the results of a lot of this research suggests that those folks focused more on the long term instead of the euphoric type of fleeting happiness that's more involved in the short term will be more likely to achieve the real type of happiness that lasts.

Shoot for the Long Term

Those focused more on short term euphoric type of happiness will always come up disappointed as it states in the Wall Street article. That's because those that are that intently focused on getting happy, ironically come up less happy. They can't seem to find it no matter where they look. Possibly their trying to hard? Or maybe their approaching happiness from a ineffective standpoint? The article seems to point to the latter as the culprit.

Meaningful Pursuits

The pleasure that comes with a favorite sports team winning the game, or perhaps a good meal are all pleasures that work for the short term. In the Wall Street article this is referred to as "hedonic wellbeing". However, those pursuits don't hold a lot of water when it comes to lasting happiness. That comes from engaging in a meaningful activity that is geared toward making you happy for the long term. Something like parenting or volunteering at a nursing home are good examples. Day to day these activities can be taxing and tedious but over time it provides more permanent happiness.

Eudamonic Happiness

This term Eudamonic as coined by Aristotle refers to happiness, but of the long term kind. Many experts have debated that what Aristotle meant was the long term meaningful type of happiness rather than the short lived types. From the results of recent studies , he may have been on to something significant.

The article states that some evidence has been found with regard to those possessing more eudemonic happiness process emotional information differently than do others. Brain imaging revealed that those with more eudamonic happiness used their pre-frontal cortex more than those that don't have this eudamonic happiness. This portion of the brain is associated with high order thinking.

Thinking over some of the happiest people I've encountered in my lifetime, I'd have to say that most of them displayed this higher order of thinking and didn't buy into the quick fix for happiness school of thought that a lot of our present day society gets caught up with.

Source:

Wall Street Journal Health and Wellness section