Combing the popular literature, two psychologists (Dunigan Folk & Elizabeth Dunn) identified five strategies often recommended for increasing your happiness:
- Expressing gratitude
- Enhancing sociability
- Exercising
- Practicing mindfulness/meditation
- Increasing nature exposure
The gated article is here; summary thread on Twitter here.
Folk and Dunn reviewed all the studies they could find evaluating the effectiveness of these methods, 57 in all. Their main finding was that there isn't much evidence that any of these works, because there aren't very many good studies. However, based on the evidence they did find,
- Expressing gratitude, for example by making lists, has a positive impact;
- Talking to strangers and generally being more extraverted has a positive impact;
- Meditation has some impact when done in a group, but that might just be from getting together with other people to do something together;
- There is pretty much no evidence that exercise promotes happiness, except that exercising is better than doing something totally boring like sitting still;
- There is evidence that nature exposure can improve your mood, but these authors think all those studies are bad and they are not convinced.
Very interesting, but I wonder if all these studies might all be confounded by differences between people, and also by the difficulty distinguishing short-term vs. long-term effects.
After 50 years of fighting my melancholy nature, I have found that these things work for me:
- Seeing my friends;
- Talking to my friends on the phone;
- Emailing with my friends;
- Learning something new and interesting (see the previous post);
- Counting my blessings ("Expressing gratitude")
- Taking on new challenges, but only if I finish them;
- Doing work I find interesting and doing it well;
- Going to beautfiul places or places with interesting history;
- Getting out of the house and doing something every day;
- Talking to other people, even casually;
- Sex;
- Seeing my friends.
I'm an introvert and happy being one. I can spend hours alone with my thoughts and be quite content doing it. I find it one of the great wonders in life that we can entertain ourselves. The brain is a wonderful gift.
ReplyDeleteBut I do do things. I always try to learn new things, and I do puzzles too. Puzzles include math problems. There is satisfaction to be had in solving difficult problems. (And that is true for things other than math too.) Exercise improves my mood -- it's kind of like a mild high -- but this might be because I'm an introvert. For others the people they workout with might fill this role. Or maybe they just think it's theiir friends making them happy when its the exercising do all the heavy lifting. Or maybe it's both.
Expressing gratitude is really a requirement of being civil and thankful -- you really should express your thanks to someone who deserves it -- but I don't see it as increasing my happiness. Then again, that I am an introvert may be why it doesn't make me happier. Then again, my default nature is to be happy. So should these things make me happier? Why? I would think any good study would have to take this into account. Aren't you going to get very different reactions from people who are naturally happy than from people who aren't?
Mindfulness/meditation makes me feel peaceful. Is that the same thing as making me feel happier? I don't think so. Walking through the woods or along a country road alone makes me feel peaceful and maybe happier. -- not sure. But isn't that just more of me being alone with my thoughts? I also like riding a bike on paths through the woods. Too many people try to get the most exercise out of bike riding. Why not slow down and enjoy the scernery?