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Facts on How to be Happy: Sonja Lyubomirsky

 Beliefs, Happier, Happiness, Personal Development  5 Responses »
Feb 262013
 

In How To Be Happy: Understanding the Myths of Happiness, I reviewed Sonja Lyubomirsky’s latest book, The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, But Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, But Does.  Parts of that article were also drawn from an interview I attended (long distance) between Lyubomirsky and Ben Dean (MentorCoach.com).

How to be Happy

Flikr user greggoconnell cc attr lic

Today’s article picks up some of the interview points I didn’t include in the article as well as some excellent summary points Dean provided in his pre-interview material.

First, for those unfamiliar with Lyubomirsky, she’s probably the leading expert on happiness, what it is and how to get more of it into our lives. Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD., is Professor of Psychology at the University of California-Riverside. Sonja currently teaches courses in social psychology and positive psychology and serves as the Department of Psychology’s graduate advisor. Her teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards.

Sonja’s research has been awarded several research prizes and has been written up in hundreds of magazines and newspapers, while she has appeared on multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries around the world.

Validated How to be Happy Tips

The importance of all of the above is that she isn’t simply putting together advice and recommendations based on a few personal experiences and anecdotal observations. Her research is well documented, peer reviewed, and subjected to the stringent publication rules of scientific journals. She draws from her own research and the research of others in her field to provide information that is validated and useful.

Now, what are her messages? As her book title indicates, she’s attempting to put to rest the myths we have about happiness—that some positive events will make us happy forever, and other negative events will ruin our lives forever. Neither is true. Humans are amazingly resilient. We adapt to new situations quickly, assimilating the new and rather quickly accepting the changed circumstances as our lives.

So the great promotion you’ve dreamed of and worked for over several years becomes old-hat after a few months. Ditto the hoped for positive of a new love or the dreaded negative of a disease diagnosis.

For more of this very useful book’s content, see How to Be Happy: Understanding the Myths of Happiness.  You may also enjoy my own book on happiness, The Happiness Workbook: Take Control of Your Happiness – Dozens of Proven Ways to Be Happier.

Now for some interesting tidbits from Lyubomirsky’s interview on January 25, 2013.

Lyubomirsky on Happiness and How to be Happy

Following are bits of wisdom from I gleaned from her interview, in no particular order or priority, just as they came up in the discussion.

  • Lyubomirsky indicated her definition of happiness aligns well with colleague Ed Diener’s, indicating that happiness is a state of experiencing frequent positive emotion, more frequent positive than negative emotion. Also, the overall feeling that life is good.
  • Asked the point of this latest book, she responded that there are misconceptions about happiness that can lead to poor life choices and decisions. An example of this might be someone believing that she must be married or in a romantic relationship to be happy, causing her to form a relationship or even marry someone whom she doesn’t really love. As you’ll see below, the happiness aspect of marriage is part myth.
  • She described the myths of happiness as feelings of “I’ll be happy when…” When I find my true love, When I get rich, When I have a child, When (fill in the blank). She explains that many of these feelings that “I’ll be happy when…” or on the flip side, “My life will be ruined if…” are myths that fail to take into account a phenomena termed hedonic adaptation.
  • Hedonic adaptation is a scientific term for the human ability to adjust quite rapidly to new circumstances, causing bursts of happiness to fade more quickly than we think they will and blankets of despair to also fade quickly after the onset of bad news/circumstances.
  • To aid people in making good choices regarding happiness, she arranged the book around the common major turning points of life. Positive turning points include marriage, children, professional satisfaction, and wealth, while negative turning points include remaining single, divorce, financial ruin, and illness. For each turning point she covers the myths, exploding them with examples, as well as interventions anyone can do to smooth the transition to a new life situation.
  • She observed that nothing can permanently keep a surge of happiness going, but appreciation, gratitude, and variety can slow the adaptation.
  • People have a base-line or set-point of happiness, part of which is genetic, but the set-point can be changed, allowing one to become, on average, happier than before.
  • Happier people are more successful, more generous, more productive, and more helpful to others.
  • Happier people are more likely to get married.
  • Married people are happier than divorced, separated, or widowed people, but not happier than lifelong single people.
  • Relationships are THE most critical determinant of happiness. Or as psychologist Chris Peterson said, “Other people matter.”
  • When asked her favorite book on relationships, she responded with John Gottman’s, Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.
  • She recommended Gottman’s book to anyone who is or wants to be in a romantic relationship.
  • In discussing the role of money in happiness she indicated if you’re poor, money makes a huge difference in your happiness, but once you have enough money above being poor, the more you have can make you happier, but it’s not as big a contributor to happiness as we might expect it to be. For example, two-thirds of the happiness benefits of a raise in income is erased after just one year.
  • Interestingly, she described ways to spend money that can lead to greater happiness. These three ways are :
  1. Anything leading to personal growth,
  2. Anything contributing to your community and the world, helping others,
  3. Anything that contributes to your relationships and connections to others
  • Lyubomirsky suggested that we can extend the happiness benefits of positive events by re-experiencing the memories as we re-visit them. On the negative events side, she suggested refraining from ruminating on negative memories, instead reflecting on what you learned from them.
  • Regarding unfulfilled dreams, confront the dream and re-frame who you are with respect to the unfulfilled dream. Don’t ruminate, but think of your life long term back and forward and place the current situation in perspective to your total life.

How to Find Happiness in Life

Finding happiness is behind nearly everything we do, so a book such as The Myths of Happiness, which is loaded with practical and validated tips for how to be happy is priceless. This book is well written, easily understood, and tailor-made for helping you deal with specific happiness-damaging life events such as divorce or layoff, as well as equipping you to set practical expectations for the happiness you’ll experience with the new job, the promotion, or finding the love of your life.

Books from Personal Growth Resources

What is Life all About? How do I Find my Purpose? is the latest in the Personal Growth Resources series of personal growth books. Other books in the series include:

Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by email.

Jerry Lopper – Personal Growth Resources

Build your life on a foundation of purpose

How To Be Happy: Understanding the Myths of Happiness

 Happier, Happiness, Personal Development  No Responses »
Feb 202013
 

If you’re searching for greater happiness in life, wondering how to be happy with all the negative stuff occurring in your life, this will give you some insight and hope for your future.

What is Happiness?

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Image: Flikr user Joe Shlabotnik CC Attr Lic.

Happiness is one of those things that we know when we see, but it can be tough to describe it. A dictionary definition will say happiness is a state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. People who study happiness for a living—positive psychology researchers such as Ed Diener and Sonja Lyubomirsky—call happiness a state of experiencing frequent positive emotions, more positive than negative; the feeling that life (overall) is good.

Note the word “frequent” above, and also the words “more positive than negative.” These are important. We tend to think of happiness as a constant state of being—as in a really happy person is always happy. That’s not true. Happiness is measured more over time, an averaged feeling that takes into account that everyone will have negative feelings at times.

The happy person feels happy more often than not; very subjective. Yet the myth persists that one can be permanently happy when…When I get that promotion, When I find true love, When I finally get healthy, when, when, when. These “I’ll be happy when…” are some of the myths of happiness.

Myths of Happiness

When we understand the myths of happiness, we have a better chance of really being happy because we can stop chasing something that isn’t possible and appreciate what is possible. This is where Sonja Lyubomirsky’s latest book, The Myths of Happiness (Penguin Press, 2013) comes in handy. Lyubomirsky is an internationally renowned expert on happiness.

Her previous book, The How of Happiness (Penguin Books, 2007) is justifiably on my personal list of best self-help books. Her newest book goes further and is more directly usable by those searching for a way to deal with the common personal crises of life—such as losing a job, losing a lover, dealing with illness, etc.

After effectively demonstrating why permanent, continuous happiness is impossible, and along the way dealing with most of the “I’ll be happy when” myths, she divides the remainder of her book into specific, common personal turning points of life. She covers both positive (marriage, children, professional satisfaction, wealth) and negative turning points (single-hood, divorce, financial ruin, illness) to reveal that our misconceptions about the impact of such events is perhaps the greatest threat to our long-term well-being.

If you’ve been counting on winning the lottery to finally be happy, I’ve got bad news for you; you’ll be rich, but after the initial ecstasy of winning wears off you won’t be any happier. Ditto for getting that promotion, getting married, and having kids. The joy wears off. The scientific name for it is hedonic adaptation. In plain language, we adapt very quickly to new situations and circumstances. All the things you thought would make you happy, will make you happy, but only for a short time. Humans adapt to new situations.

The good news of this is that all the bad things you fear—loss of job, losing out on that promotion, failing to find a perfect mate, severe illness, living hand-to-mouth due to low earnings, etc., all these things that we fear might happen are also circumstances for which we have amazing resilience, as we redefine our lives and return to previous levels of happiness.

Really Good News – How to Be Happy

Lest you believe there’s nothing you can do to affect your state of happiness, Lyubomirsky provides many, many interventions that work wonders in elevating your feelings of positive well-being—happiness. No matter what your circumstances, what you’re facing, and what you fear, you can be happier. This book and her previous one should be named the Happiness Manuals, Book I and II.

Surprising Facts of Happiness

Lyubomirsky’s book is filled with information that will arm you to pursue greater happiness more effectively than you’ve been able to in the past. Unlike many self-help books, this one is based on validated, peer-reviewed, scientific studies. There are even some real surprises revealed:

  • Married people are happier than divorced, separated, or widowed people, but not happier than lifelong single people.
  • Homeowners are less happy than renters.
  • Marital satisfaction decreases after the first baby is born and soars after the last child leaves home.
  • Two-thirds of the benefits of a raise in income is erased after just one year.

Who is Sonja Lyubomirsky and Why Should You Listen to Her?

Why is Lyubomirsky’s advice better than the other experts you might read about in a popular magazine or see on TV?

Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD., is Professor of Psychology at the University of California-Riverside. Sonja currently teaches courses in social psychology and positive psychology and serves as the Department of Psychology’s graduate advisor. Her teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards.

Sonja’s research has been awarded a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, a Science of Generosity grant, a John Templeton Foundation grant, and a million-dollar grant (with Ken Sheldon) from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness.

Her research has been written up in hundreds of magazines and newspapers and she has appeared on multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America, South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Her earlier book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want is now translated and published in 19 countries.

Books from Personal Growth Resources

What is Life all About? How do I Find my Purpose? is the latest in the Personal Growth Resources series of personal growth books. Other books in the series include:

Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by email.

Jerry Lopper – Personal Growth Resources

Build your life on a foundation of purpose

Find the Purpose of your Life

 Beliefs, Life Purpose, Personal Development, Success  No Responses »
Dec 212011
 

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Do you wonder what life is all about, wondering if this is all there is to life?
    There is more to life than a job,a family, and lots of stuff to do, there’s a purpose to your life.

For those regularly following my articles, you’ve seen that I regularly return to the topic of life purpose. It’s really that important to personal growth. That’s why my main domain name is PurposefulGrowth.com—growth on purpose, intentional growth using life purpose as a foundation.

The Beautiful Benefits of Knowing Life Purpose

Do you go, go, go all day every day, but have the lingering feeling that something is very wrong, something is missing that should be there?
    You’re right, the something that’s missing in your life is purpose, the real purpose of your life.

Image of Purpose

Flickr.com user Mia Coffee Snow, CC Attribution License

Knowing my life purpose has brought me fulfillment, satisfaction, joy, and a guiding vision for my life. It didn’t come easily or quickly, but when it came it arrived with a burst of clarity and joy that I can still feel.

I was no different than most people, going about my life’s routines all the while trying to answer those two haunting questions: Who am I? and Why am I here?

These are universal questions that all humans ask themselves at some time in their lives. We’re born with the drive to make sense of our lives. Without having an underlying purpose to our lives we feel incomplete, like something is missing. The material goods we accumulate and the goals we achieve aren’t enough.

Even the loving relationships in our lives aren’t enough to offset the feelings that something is missing…until we find the answers. That day when it all became clear to me was the culmination of working along several paths of inquiry and exploration. There’s no one best way for a person to discover his or her life purpose. For each of us, it’s an inner journey of reflection, retrospection, inquiry and exploration.

Stream of Consciousness for Discovering Life Purpose

Have you convinced yourself that your current work or an important role in your life is your purpose?
It isn’t, though it may be related to your purpose.

On that wonderful day for me, I was using a stream of consciousness approach recommended by Steve Pavlina. It’s a simple process: Start with a blank sheet of paper or text document. At the top write

My Life Purpose Is

Then start writing. Write whatever comes into your consciousness, without editing or thinking. Write until you have a strong emotional response. When the right words spilled out on the screen I cried. Tears of joy were accompanied by a tremendous feeling of love, relief, and knowing. I knew my life purpose.

Finding your life purpose is an inside job, a job of self-reflection, of understanding self, and of piecing together the insights that come from serious pursuit of purpose. Stream of consciousness writing is but one way to tap into your inner wisdom for the insights necessary to find the life that is meaningful and fulfilling.

My Life Purpose Example

For those struggling with defining a sufficiently meaningful life, the example of my life purpose may be helpful.

My life purpose is to love unconditionally, to be peaceful, to be courageous and unafraid of failure and rejection, to grow continuously, and to use my insights and other strengths in the service of others while allowing my life to unfold as it will.

That’s it. Notice the lack of “doing” things. Most peoples’ quest for life purpose gets sidetracked because they’re looking for the things they should be doing in life. But that’s the wrong approach. We’re human beings, not human doings. I know you’ve heard that before, but it’s critical to realize that your life purpose is defined by qualities and characteristics. These are states of being. They describe who you are.

The doing part of being human results from the being part. As I love unconditionally I express that quality by the things I do. First comes unconditional love, then comes the resulting behavior.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s no one best way to find your life purpose. Any process that aids in your journey of self-reflection and insight will guide you toward finding your life purpose. I’m sure I haven’t tried them all, but I have used many, many processes and will soon be writing more about various processes for finding your life purpose.

Brad Swift’s Video Coaching Series

One that I’ve just completed is Brad Swift’s Life on Purpose Video Coaching series. Swift’s book, Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life is one that I include in my list of best books. So I was pleased to get the opportunity to review his video coaching series.

The series includes fifteen coaching videos by Swift with an accompanying  comprehensive downloadable workbook. I went through the entire process, just as you might, watching each video, taking extensive notes, and filling out the exercises (calls-to-action) in the workbook. It took me about 30 days, allowing some time between sessions for reflection on the material.

Conclusion? This is a very good tool for those serious about finding life purpose. Swift covers the basic foundation concept of being vs. doing very well. It’s an abstract concept which is difficult for many. His explanation will be helpful to many people. The exercises help you to uncover and explore the beliefs you hold subconsciously that are guiding your life, preventing you from seeing your true purpose. Swift calls these beliefs your inherited life purpose to distinguish from true life purpose.

Find Your Life Purpose

The videos covering creating your true life purpose are a bit lengthy and slow moving, but effective. A series of 15 or so tools to help you keep your daily life aligned with purpose are very effective and will help you keep from “slipping back” into your previous life habits. The videos are of good quality, with a homespun appearance.  No flash and dash, just Brad Swift leading you through the process.

The series is very good and I heartily recommend The Life on Purpose Video Coaching Series to you. Though I often recommend personal growth books, I’ve never recommended a non-book product or service. I’m so impressed with Swift’s product that I’ve accepted an invitation to become an affiliate. Though I’ll still write about finding life purpose and will likely put out a brief ebook on the topic, Swift has developed an excellent and reasonably priced product that I’ve decided to promote as an affiliate rather than any attempt at duplicating/improving his product.

Finding Your Life Purpose is Fundamental to Personal Development

If you’re serious about personal growth and development, you absolutely must spend the effort to find the life components that make your life meaningful and fulfilling. Whether you believe in a divinely inspired life purpose is not important. What is important to your happiness is that you find meaning and purpose in your daily life. You’re at your best when your life has meaning, so if success with inner happiness is important to you, build your life on a foundation of purpose.

Two Good Options for Finding Your Purpose

My recently released book, What is Life all About? How do I Find my Purpose?, is a great place to start. What is Life all About? provides you with twelve paths to finding your unique life purpose. One or more of these is sure to work for you! This book has garnered excellent early reviews.

A second good option path to your purpose in life is the Life on Purpose Video Coaching Series.

Books from Personal Growth Resources

What is Life all About? How do I Find my Purpose? is the latest in the Personal Growth Resources series of personal growth books. Other books in the series include:

Watch for future articles on this site. Better yet, Subscribe to Your Purposeful Growth Update by email.

Jerry Lopper – Personal Growth Resources

Build your life on a foundation of purpose

Flourish: The Ultimate Goal of a Personal Growth Plan

 Personal Development, Plans, Success, Tools  No Responses »
Aug 242011
 

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Flourish Image

Angela Cockayne, Flikr CC

I appreciate someone who is willing to admit an error. This is especially impressive to me when the someone is a notable person with a public reputation to protect and live up to.

Recently, a top scientist, Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of the positive psychology movement, former president of the American Psychological Association, and author of many groundbreaking books, admitted in his latest book, Flourish (Free Press, 2001), that his earlier theories on human well-being were useful beginnings, but incomplete.

In Authentic Happiness (Free Press, 2002), a book that I still recommend, Seligman set the course for positive psychology researchers to identify the causes of happiness, believing as Aristotle did hundreds of years ago, that “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

With Seligman’s leadership and emphasis on understanding the fundamentals of happiness, much very useful information became available to all of us, helping us understand the degree to which we could influence and achieve happier lives. The How of Happiness (Penguin Books, 2007, Lyubomirsky) is probably the best example of a comprehensive, yet easily understandable tome on how to be happier. The How of Happiness is summarized on my Best Books page.

My own The Happiness Workbook: Take Control of Your Happiness provides you with a brief self-assessment and proven exercises to help you take control and improve your state of happiness. Five-star rated, The Happiness Workbook is available in all popular e Reader formats.

Is Well-being more than Happiness?

As research into happiness ensued, some researchers questioned Seligman’s hypothesis, questioning whether happiness sufficiently included the ingredients necessary for greatest human well-being. Seligman accepted the questions raised by other scientists and, through further research studies, has now expanded his theory and challenge to positive psychology researchers to include a broader definition of human well-being, based on the concept of flourishing.

Flourish means to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment (Dictionary.com). Seligman challenged positive psychology researchers to understand the components of the particularly congenial environment that would allow each of us to flourish in our own lives.

Flourish with these Five Ingredients

Seligman describes five components or ingredients of a person’s environment that support flourishing. One does not need all five to flourish, although I suppose that would be ideal.

The five components of human well-being making up the acronym PERMA, are:

  • Positive Emotion: This is what most of us think of as happiness, feeling good.
  • Engagement: This is being totally absorbed in an activity, what some call Flow. When fully engaged a person loses track of time, is completely focused on the tasks at hand, and is often unaware of external events. When fully engaged (flow or in the zone), a person is highly energized, and may forget to eat and sleep, so absorbed in an activity that hunger and fatigue are subdued.
  • Relationships: There is clear evidence that strong relationships contribute to well-being. People with strong relationships are happier, healthier, and more resilient to life’s normal difficult events.
  • Meaning and Purpose: People have an inherent drive to believe in and contribute to something bigger than themselves. Living with purpose has been correlated with longevity in the so-called blue zone studies.
  • Accomplishment: Achieving one’s goals is satisfying. Whether checking off the tasks of today’s to-do list, or completing a goal requiring months or years of effort, achieving contributes to a sense of well-being.

Though one might take the position that PERMA is just a more detailed definition of happiness, it’s clear to me that Seligman’s concept of focusing on flourishing through the components of PERMA, can become a good guideline for personal growth.

In the coming weeks I’ll be re-visiting my popular Sample Personal Development Plan, updating it to include PERMA concepts.

Read an Ebook This Week

 Happier, Personal Development, Plans, Success, Tools  1 Response »
Mar 072011
 

This week—beginning March 6th—is national Read an Ebook Week. If you’re  a new owner of a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or other ebook reader, this is a great time to read some new books on your e-reader. A huge publisher of ebooks, Smashwords.com, is offering large discounts on thousands of ebooks in support of this week.

My own Happiness Workbook and Sample Personal Development Plan and Workbook are included in this promotion., both with 25% discount coupons available for this week only (March 6 through March 13).

The top two books in the table below are included in this special Read an Ebook Week promotion. Each book is available in all popular e-reader formats, Kindle, Nook, Sony, iPad, and more, so your reader is sure to be compatible. A 25% discount coupon code is provided for each ebook when you click the link below.  Each book can be sampled before purchasing.

My two paperbacks, Jump for Joy and Personal Development 40 Best Articles are not a part of this promotion, but I included them as this may be the perfect time for the topics these books address.

Jerry’s Books for Growth

Sample Personal Development Plan and Workbook

Follow this structured personal development plan and improve yourself in 16 ways with dozens of personal growth suggestions, exercises, and aids for personal improvement.

Find your life purpose, discover your unique personal strengths, learn to overcome fears limiting your success, improve your relationships, reap the benefits of optimism and positive approaches to life, and much, much more.

Available

 

All Popular Ebook Formats

The Happiness Workbook: Take Control of Your Happiness

A three part book, including a Questionnaire to identify areas of your life preventing you from being as happy as you want to be, a Workbook to help you apply scientifically proven interventions for becoming happier, and a Resources section identifying books, articles, and web sites providing more information on being happy.

Are you as happy as you’d like to be with your body, self-esteem, friendships, and relationships? Is your life meaningful and fulfilling? Do you have purpose? The proven happiness-increasing interventions, tips, and exercises will help you become a happier person.

Available


All Popular Ebook Formats

Jump for Joy: Clearing the hurdles to an easy life

For many of us, life seems a constant struggle: overwhelming demands leaving us with too little time, money, love, fun, and fulfillment. Jump for Joy is your personal guide to an easier life, with helpful examples and exercises helping you apply each idea to your own unique life situation.

Learn the ten common hurdles in your path to an easier life and the ways you can clear these hurdles like an Olympic hurdler at a high school track meet!

Discover the joy of looking at life differently, and finding that it isn’t such a struggle after all.

Available

 

 

Paperback

Personal Development: 40 Best Articles on Cheering Up, Positive Attitude, Goal Setting, and much, much more

This book is about conscious change. Change is a given, we’re changing all the time even when we resist mightily. If we’re going to change anyway, why not approach change consciously and use the process to become the best we can be.

Included are forty of my most popular articles on intentional change: Learn the best goal setting practices; Tips for cheering up when you’re blue; How to reap the benefits of a positive attitude; Keeping your mind strong as you age, and much, much more.

Available

 

 

Paperback

If you’re new to ebooks, I think you’ll find reading on one of the popular e-readers is very pleasant and natural feeling. I hope you can take advantage of this special ebook promotion. If you do, please review the book you purchase and leave your comments here as well.

Enjoy Your Journey,

Jerry

How to be Happier Questionnaire and Workbook

 Happier, Personal Development  2 Responses »
Jan 312011
 

Did you ever intend to create something and after a while of working on it found you were creating something entirely different? That’s what happened to me recently.


smiley face

image by Darren Hester


My latest workbook addition to Personal Growth Resources started out as a Sample Personal/Professional Growth Plan. I had this planned for some time and began in earnest a couple of  weeks ago. Beginning the plan I reasoned—as I often do—that any plan should begin with a clear understanding of the current situation.

Normally, I think, a plan for growth might begin with an assessment of skills, interests, achievements, and credentials. But for some reason  I decided that personal and professional growth planning should begin with an assessment of a person’s current degree of happiness.  Happiness, after all, is the reason we do what we do and the foundation for doing something new. So I started what I expected to be a brief self-assessment of happiness, to be followed by suggested areas for growth, with exercises, goals, and resources.

Though it might seem logical to assess happiness with a person’s roles in life—spouse, partner, parent, employee, business owner—instead I found myself developing a happiness questionnaire based on  Charles Haanel’s Master Key System. Haanel indicated a person’s happiness was the result of satisfying seven levels of life: physical health, emotional health, self-efficacy, relationships, harmonious environment, survival resources, and thriving.

The Happiness Questionnaire and Workbook is Born

After 10 pages or so, I looked back at what I had created and realized it deserved to stand alone as a workbook on happiness. I decided to stick with the happiness theme and expanded it with a workbook section including the latest improvement interventions and exercises. The resulting Happiness Questionnaire and Workbook is my most ambitious and comprehensive free workbook yet. I hope you’ll utilize it, even if you’re currently pretty happy. I think you’ll enjoy exploring your life along these seven levels.

This 21 page workbook begins with a Questionnaire to help you identify and quantify your happiness along Haanel’s seven areas of life. Armed with this information, you move on to the Workbook section where you examine proven ways to become happier, and select those that apply to your situation. Finally, a comprehensive Resources section provides books, websites, and articles for those interested in probing the latest findings on becoming happier.

Download the Happiness Questionnaire and Workbook

To download the Happiness Questionnaire and Workbook subscribe to Personal Growth Updates by entering your valid email address in the form in the right sidebar.  I hope you’ll recommend these Personal Growth Resources to your friends, family, and co-workers. You can do that by clicking the Share button just below this blog posting.

More Resources on Happiness

Though originally published in 1912, Haanel’s The Master Key System“ is still available. I have not read Haanel’s original work, but base my understanding on Tapping the Source: Using the Master Key System for Abundance and Happiness,  a new book expanding and modernizing Haanel’s work. For more on happiness and how to be happier, the definitive book based on current psychological research is  The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, by Sonja Lyubomirsky.

Recent articles I’ve written relevant to this topic include:

Finding Happiness – A Little Known Benefit of Meditation

A Great Tip for Learning Meditation Benefits

Positive Psychology Exercises for Life Happiness

Thanks for your continuing support.

Enjoy Your Journey

Jerry

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