The reason: One of best researchers of the science of happiness
The science of happiness might sound like fraud because it sounds like the problem philosophies have to answer or the problem people can never answer. But, thanks to Big data, many of great people in 20th century, philosophy, and science. People finally go into this subject by using scientific method. So, scientist will firstly ask who are feeling happiness. I will summarize here what was made clear.
The 10 percent of long term happiness can be predicted by external fact. The 90 percent of long term happiness comes from the way of our brain processing the world.
The only 25 percent job success is predicted by IQ, the rest of 75 percent is predicted by our optimism level, social support, and the ability to see the stress as a challenge instead of a threat.
The writing “3 Gratitudes” for 21 days in row change your brain pattern from negative to positive. “Jounarling”, “Excerise”, “Maditation” and “Random Ascot of kindness” have positive correlation with happiness.
These are facts from experiments. That is easy to start. But we have to firstly be careful about this.
As psychology graduate students are taught to repeat ad nauseam: “Correlation is not causation.” Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 574-575). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The biggest problem of Big data should be this. This is another story. But be careful, if we saw some correlation between two things, when we see some correlation but if we didn’t find out the causation, the problem is there from the scientific points of view. For example, we don’t know why plane can fly. We could make models and do tests, and get parameters. So we can know correlation the shape of plane and its ability to fly. But, we don’t know why. So, we can’t make plane from scratch.
The most enjoyable part of an activity is the anticipation. If you can’t take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar— even if it’s a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it. Anticipating future rewards can actually light up the pleasure centers in your brain much as the actual reward will. Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 742-746). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
We are not enjoying the vacation itself. We are not enjoying status we have now. People feel happy nevertheless they are poor, in hard condition, or even being failure when the future is promising. So we have to find way to have promising future. And also the leader should give people good perspective for future instead of pointing out the problem we have now. The leaders have to lead people by running ahead of people with taking risk and challenging for the future by him, have to come up with the solution of problem.
Knowledge is only part of the battle. Without action, knowledge is often meaningless. As Aristotle put it, to be excellent we cannot simply think or feel excellent, we must act excellently. Yet the action required to follow through on what we know is often the hardest part. That’s why even though doctors know better than anyone the importance of exercise and diet, 44 percent of them are overweight. Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 2187-2190). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The later part is like joke though, I totally agree with this. But I also know this is hard part. So that the question is how can I keep using knowledge instead of just consuming? That is my question, only thing I could come up with is taking actions. Take action to think. Basically, thanks to many 20th century giants we have accumulated knowledge, in 21th century, humanity have to apply to make them work.
My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result— social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge— most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3. The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are. Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 2648-2652). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Social support is the greatest predictor of happiness. To invest to really important people who you care and you are cared.