In the Thriving Through Inner Conflict Workshop at the 4^th European Conference on Positive Psychology, Dina Nir and Avraham N. Kluger from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Isreal presented on Negotiational Self Theory.

Dina Nir said that whenever we need to make a decision about an Inner Conflict, we negotiate inside ourselves. These negotiations often lead to either a distributive or integrated outcome.

In 1990 Herman published his Dialogic-Self Theory. He writes that many I-positions talk to each other within us, which is good and healthy. The I-positions of our multifaceted and dynamic selves ask questions, criticize, ridicule, and disagree with each other. Many different voices are ok; inconsistency is normal. However, a pathological situation develops when one I-position takes over the entire identity. Alternative versions of reality are no longer able to have a voice.

Negotiational Self Theory believes that most often, in an inner conflict, one I-position dominates the weaker I-positions. Therefore, one side of us wins, while the other side completely looses. There is no compromise. The more submissive voice is completely unfulfilled and unsatisfied. The goal of using the Negotiational Self Theory and Method is to create win-win solutions where all inner voices are heard and no part of the self is marginalized. Negotiotional Self Method transforms the internal negotiation into all win-win outcomes.

Nir presented a four-stage method as outlined below:

Stage 1: Framing the Inner Conflict

• Recall an unresolved inner conflict that you are experiencing.
• Freely describe the nature and background of the conflict.
• Identity the two most polarizing sides in terms of “for” and “against.”

Stage 2: Eliciting and mapping different self-aspects

• Completely elicit and list all the “for” voices within yourself.
• Then, completely elicit and list all the “against” voices within yourself.
• Reconsider if anything has been left out. Add those voices under the appropriate category.

Stage 3: Revealing underlying interests and needs

• Uncover the deep and underlying interests and needs of each voice. Ask such questions as Why this? or What will that achieve?

Stage 4:

• Construct a win-win solution.

On her handout, Nir writes: “Construct a solution that simultaneously satisfies all the different voices, aspects and interests at both ends of the conflict. The criterion for evaluating the integrative level of the decision is objective as opposed to normative or subjective. That is, each voice that has been mapped should be acknowledged, attend to and satisfied in the constructed decision.”

Nir believes that using this method will make inner conflict a positive rather than a negative experience. Moreover, each conflict is an opportunity for change and it works in both serious as well as trivial matters. During the workshop many people raised the question of whether or not it was possible in all situations. Nir truly believes that it is. Others questioned what happened if the person was not healthy as in the case of addictions. She suggested that in the case of pathology, the inner dialogue is not rich and involves only a few voices. An addiction situation involves only false voices. She also encouraged those attending the workshop to try the method with a partner, as that may make the process easier.

Psychology Today has a brief article on one of the most obvious yet least acted upon methods to improve our happiness.  Getting more sunlight.

Patients in recovery rooms full of natural light take less pain medication, and, days after surgery, they report lower stress levels. Their hastened healing may be due to sunlight's ability to stimulate serotonin production, which helps regulate mood, sleep, and sex drive.

The author does a nice job reconciling seemingly diverse findings about happiness trends and identifying the underlying reasons for differing conclusions.

Over the past decade or so there have been many Positive Psychology articles exploring the relationship between money and happiness. Myers (2000), Diener and Oishi (2000), Blanchflower and Oswald (2004), and Layard (2005) amongst others have presented research which suggests that increasing wealth does not buy happiness (this graph illustrates this point for the USA).Happiness is on the up… The good news is that according to a new study by Inglehart, Foa, Peterson and Welzel (2008), happiness is actually increasing: in this longitudinal study between 1981 and 2007, happiness levels went up in 45 out of 52 countries. And contrary to what you might conclude from Myers’ graph (mentioned above) the US is one of those countries which shows an upward trend in happiness (p276). So how do we explain the apparent inconsistency between Myers and Inglehart et al?

In normal circumstances, especially when we are depressed, it is easier for us to see the negative things that happen around us, thus making us feel more down. We forget to see the brighter side of things. When this happens, we are practically allowing ourselves to be robbed off of the chance to be happy.The good news is, there is actually a way around it. And it comes in the form of Positive Psychology. It is a relatively new branch of psychology that focuses on cultivating positive emotion, character traits and institutions. It was founded by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman on the belief that people want more than just a cure to depression, but how to avoid it as well. Positive Psychology aims to help us in cultivating these emotions, character traits, and institutions so that we would know what to do

According to Professor Seligman’s research, it is possible to be happier and more positive regardless of one’s circumstances. He has also demonstrated that through Positive Psychology interventions, the symptoms of depression can be lastingly decreased.

Also known as PosPsych, Positive Psychology is founded on the belief that people want more than an end to suffering. Seligman said that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. He also believes that we have the opportunity to create a science and a profession that not only heals a psychological damage but also builds strengths to enable people to achieve the best things in life.

On the other hand, PosPsych does not deny that life has its distressing and negative aspects, rather, it focuses on the study on the positive side. It concentrates on things such as the ways that people feel joy, show altruism, and create families and institutions, and how can these things address depression.

History

According to Seligman, prior to World War II, psychology has three distinct missions: curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more productive and fulfilling, an identifying and nurturing high talent. But after the war, the latter two missions fell away, and curing mental illness became the primary and almost enitre mission of practicing and academic psychologists. In 1946, two strong economic reasons shifted the focus of psychology into curing mental illnesses. It was when the Veterans Administration was founded and psychologists started to practice by counseling post-war veterans. On the other hand, the National Institute of Mental Health was founded on 1947 and academic psychologists learned that grants were more forthcoming to studies of pathology and mental illness.

When Martin Seligman became the president if the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1998, he launched the idea of studying the positive functioning of people as the central theme of his term. According to Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, there have been many predecessors to the idea of studying positive psychology. They believe that Aristotle and other Greek philosophers have laid out the foundation of thoughts of what Positive Psychology is. Moreover, former APA presidents Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow had focused on what makes people be at their best.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D. is a professor at Claremont Graduate University and is the Seligman’s partner in the Positive Psychology Movement. He explains that therapy rarely helps human functioning since it only brings us back to our normal state, whereas Positive Psychology develops us to be optimistic-even happier.

Who is Martin Seligman?

At present, Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., is a Fox Leadership Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Psychology Department. He is also the network director of the Positive Psychology Network and Scientific Director of the Classification of Strengths and Virtues Project of the Mayerson Foundation.

He is known for studying Positive Psychology, learned helplessness, depression, and on optimism and pessimism. Aside from that, he is also a best-selling author and that his research and writing has been broadly supported by a number of institutions including the National Institute of Aging, the National Science Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. His research on preventing depression received the MERIT Award of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1991.

In 2000, his main mission has been the promotion of the field of Positive Psychology. This field tackles on the study of emotion, positive character traits, and positive institutions. Since then, he has committed himself in training Positive Psychologists to help other people make the world a happier place.

The PosPsych Movement

Positive Psychology’s general goal is to enhance our experiences of love, work, and play. Seligman says that it is a psychologist’s “birthright” to explore optimism, love, perseverance, originality, responsibility, good parenting, altruism, civility, moderation, and tolerance. This small corner of the mental health field is considered a revelation since it opens another opportunity for healing and coping strategies.

Seligman said that our conception of depression is all wrong. He says that depression is much less complex than being rejected or the childhood traumas we had that make us feel bad or say negative things, and that “negative thinking” itself is the disease.

According to Seligman, Positive Psychology is to enhance our experiences of love, work, and play. Though PosPsych is believed to be still in its infancy, Seligman projects that the movement’s research will help the people make the ‘good in life’ even better. It could mean exercise being less tedious, work more rewarding, and relationships more enjoyable.

Sometimes, for us to see what is right, we have to see first what is wrong. Professor Seligman, who is working on a supplement to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, says that the DSM is the “knowology” of what’s wrong with you. The DSM, being the leading authority in mental disorders would feature Seligman’s book “Knowology of Virtues,” a Positive Psychology literature that teaches “learned optimism” and maximizing joy and good, therefore preventing depression.

Goals of the movement include:

• Developing two complementary branches of science and practice: one that alleviates and prevents negative traits and feelings, and another that promotes well-being.
• Changing the nature of psychotherapy by developing ways to identify and nurture patients’ strengths.
• Developing a curriculum for teaching positive psychology, both at universities and in high-school psychology classes.
• Launching a fund-raising campaign to support expanded scientific research.

So why consider a Positive Psychology movement? Over the years, the science of psychology has taken great steps toward classifying and addressing what is wrong with people, families, and institutions. Today, Positive Psychology offers to identify what is right and how we can make it work to better our lives. It encourages us to use our strengths and virtues to minimize the depression we may encounter. Not only it is healthy for our minds, it is also beneficial to our well-being.

Sure, we cannot avoid problems from actually happening. Not even the depression that comes to us once we acknowledge these problems. Positive Psychology is a strategy that helps us lessen the depression and encourage us to be optimistic and think of the positive things instead of the negative. It only proves that prevention is still better than cure. Instead of waiting for depression to occur before thinking of a solution, PosPsych grants us the option to be positive and develop this into a habit of being optimistic.

Sources: www.pos-psych.com, University of Virginia, www.psychologytoday.com, www.ggs.vic.edu.au, www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu

Negative Affect is Stronger than Positive Affect

The following is 6 studies that test whether Negative Affect (NA) is stronger than Positive Affect (PA). These studies examine how we react to negative and positive events in our lives with regards to the intensity of our reactions (study 1), the duration of the reaction (study 2), and our cognitive involvement (experiments 1-4).

Randy Larsen presented these studies in his talk on the Hedonic Treadmill at the 4th European Conference on Positive Psychology.

Study 1 – Reactivity

62 subjects for 56 days were required to keep daily records and ratings of their best and worst events of each day. Therefore, in total 5,971 events were self-rated.

Larsen questioned how good or bad each event was for the average person. He selected the events that were rated as greater than 1 (>1) for standard deviation for his analysis; they were either exceptionally good or bad days.

The following chart shows the results of his analysis:

* These figures are not Larsen’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results of this reactivity study show that there was a significantly stronger reaction for the negative affect self-rating than the positive one.

Study 2 – Duration

In this second study the participants were again required to record how affected they felt by events in their lives. This study lasted 28 days, and required the participants to record 3 times a day their reactions – at noon, 6 pm, and bedtime.

Larsen again selected only the events where the either the PA or the NA had a standard deviation of greater than 1. These events were either particularly negative or positive. Instead of questioning how strongly do people react, he questioned how long does that reaction last?

* These figures are not Larsen’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

These results show that adaptation rates are far slower for negative than positive events. This idea is what Larsen calls the hedonic treadmill.

In his presentation, Larsen next said that we needed more information to understand the positive and negative affects concerning cognitive involvement. He cites 4 experiments performed by Peter Lang’s Lab in Florida.

Experiment 1 – Emotional priming with sound

Lang used the international affective sound set. (He also has an international affective vision set.) The sound set is comprised of several positive sounds, such as clapping, laughing, and the buzz of a lively room from a cocktail party, and several negative sounds, such as a domestic fight, a car crash, and a baby crying.

In the study, the participants would hear a sound for 10 to 17 seconds and then see a word on a screen, which they would have to characterize as positive or negative within a half-second. Lang analyzed all the errors that the participants made. Here is a graph of the results:

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results show that the errors, which people made after hearing a positive sound are fairly balanced between the two types of words. However, after hearing a negative sound people made many more errors concerning positive words, i.e. they identified the positive words as negative, and many less errors concerning the negative words, i.e. the correctly identified the negative words as negative.

Therefore, he concluded that the positive system in us seems ready to accept negative sounds.

Experiment 2 – Affective Simon Task

In this experiment participants viewed a variety of negative and positive words, such as murder and happy. They were instructed to ignore the meaning of the word and just to notice whether the word was in upper or lower case. If the word was in upper case, they were to identify the word as “negative,” whereas if it was in lower case, they were to identify the word as “positive.”

	Correct response		Correct response
MURDER	Negative	HAPPY	Negative
murder	Positive	happy	Positive

He suggested that we cannot help but read and process the meaning of the words. He analyzed the reaction time of the participants. Here is the graph of the results.

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

In this graph, the vertical y-axis is the reaction time of the responses. For negative words when they were to respond in “positive,” people’s reaction time was significantly slower. The reaction time was balanced if the words were positive, showing an asymmetry between the positive and negative affects.

We have a senor is our cognitive system moderating the sensory stream, which always asks: “Is this bad for me?” and does not ask: “Is this good for me?” We have more stimuli for processing negative than positive input.

Experiment 3 – Visual Search Task

In the experiment Lang again studied the reaction time of the participants. He set up the faces you see below in a 3×3 grid. They were all the same, or just one face was different. The subjects needed to decide if there was one unique face or not. Half were all the same (same expression, same length of each line, same size of circles) and half were unique in some varying way.

Angry

Scheming

Happy

Sad

Neutral

Here are the results:

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results again show that the reaction time concerning negative stimuli is significantly quicker than the reaction time for positive stimuli.

Experiment 4 – Digital Flanker Task

The participants of this experiment saw many common words with a number at the beginning and end of them. The participants were asked to identify if the number was the same or different. Lang analyzed their reaction time. His hypothesis was that the negative words should decrease their reaction time.

Here are some examples of the words and numbers:

63rotten63
16mama61
32kitten23
83scum88
45lice47
98spa98
91cozy91
63pus63

The summary of the results is below. The y-axis represents reaction time.

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results show that his hypothesis was correct – reaction time is slower for negative words.

On the morning of the second day of the conference Randy Larsen gave a talk entitled “Overcoming the Hedonic Treadmill: Self Regulation of Emotional Well-Being.” He stated that our overall satisfaction with life is correlated to the effects that our experiences have on us.  In general, he presented the idea that our Subjective Well-Being (SWB) is a ratio of how effected we are by the positive events in our lives to the negative events.

He offered this equation:

SWB = S (PA) / S (NA)

In this equation Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) contribute equally to one’s SWB.

However, negative affect is actually stronger than positive affect; therefore, the equation is incorrect, Larsen revealed. He said that R. Baumeister et al. commented in their 2001 study: “Bad [affect] is stronger than good [affect].” Positive affect is frail, not strong, whereas negative affect is strong to begin with.

To show that negative affect is stronger than positive, Larsen asked the audience to consider the following examples:

• Loosing $50 is much more painful than winning $50 is positive.
• A positive first impression can easily be reversed if one learns something negative about the person. However, a negative first impression is rarely if ever reversed.

There is a negative bias, which is stronger and lasts longer.

In Ed Diener’s study (1991), he questioned why positive affect is stronger than negative affect. (To evaluate your SWB, take Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale in the Quizzes section of MyHappy: http://mirror.myhappy.com/quizes/.) Larsen conducted research in order to study why negative affect is stronger with regard to three aspects: reactivity, duration, and cognitive involvement.

He performed two studies: one on people’s reactions to negative and positive events and one on the duration of their reactions. To test cognitive involvement, he used four experiments conducted by Peter Lang. (Explanations of the 6 studies and their results are available here.) His results were conclusive. Negative affect creates stronger responses and lasts longer than positive affect.

With this new information Larsen wanted to know exactly how much stronger is negative affect to positive affect. He questioned how his initial equation needed to be modified.

He cited four studies that had found varying answers to this question:

Larsen 2002 - For people with average levels of SWB, they usually have three good days to every one bad day. PA to NA is about a 3 to 1 ratio.

Schwartz et al. 2002- For recovered depressed people (those who were once depressed but are now no longer depressed), the ratio was 2.3-4.3 to 1.

Fredrickson and Losada (2005) - For flourishing workgroupsâ, the ratio is 2.9 to 1. Flourishing individuals were 3.2 to 1 in one study and 3.4 to 1 in another study.

Gottman (1994) - In highly satisfied married couples the ratio was a bit larger: 4.7 to 1, which indicates that for every bad event, it takes nearly 5 good events to reverse the effects!

Therefore, Larsen said that his conclusion was only an estimate. It seems that the ratio of PA to NA is about pi or 3.1415. His equation is then changed to SWB = S (PA) / S (NA/ pi).

As a final word, Larsen commented that PA and NA are the emotional core of SWB. Moreover, they help determine the global SWB. The negative bias in us creates an asymmetry. Diener believes that we need to figure out how to encourage positive affect and cope with negative affect. Larsen suggests that efforts to speed adaptation to negative events may be more important to SWB than increasing the duration of positive events is to SWB.

Larsen’s talk ended with that final point. I had a few questions: How could we speed adaptation of negative affect? How could we lessen our intense reactions? What interventions might be possible?

In the never-ending pursuit of happiness, people have discovered, and maybe still discovering more ways to find it. The search has made us change the way we think, live, and interact with other people. Before we know it, we have developed these changes into a lifestyle of gaining happiness. But really, what are these things we do or we are in that makes us happy?

Faith

Faith is something we can consider as a belief in a higher power or of something unseen, something abstract, or something immeasurable. It is also often associated with a practice of a certain religion.

Many surveys have already shown that people with strong religious faith–of any religious or denomination–are happier than those who are irreligious. Through religion, people develop the mindset that the Higher Power they believe in is someone who can help them or rescue them from life’s pitfalls. It is where they go to ease their burdens and find forgiveness. It drives people to becoming better persons that eventually leads to spiritual satisfaction.

When a person gains spiritual satisfaction in practicing his religion, he becomes motivated in finding reasons to live life and be happy. Being spiritually satisfied also has an impact on a person’s health and well-being. According to studies, for the more inwardly focused, deep breathing during meditation and prayer can slow down the body and reduce stress, anxiety, and physical tension to allow better emotions and energy to come forward. Not only that, the happiness we get from practicing our faith also helps us to have a better sense of ourselves. According to David Myers, a social psychologist at Michigan’s Hope College, faith provides social support, a sense of purpose and a reason to focus beyond the self.

The happiness a person gets from being faithful is not necessarily measured by the religious practices he does and how often he does it. In 2004, studies showed that 36 percent if people who prayed everyday said they were very happy, versus 21 percent who never prayed.

Work

In a 2002 survey, more than 1000 Americans were asked, “If you were to get enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life, would you stop working?” and fewer than a third of the respondents said yes. Apparently, most Americans love their work. And for a person to love his job, he really must be happy with it.

Reasons why people are happy with their jobs may vary. For one thing, our jobs provide for us. The money we earn through it helps us pay our bills, settle our financial responsibilities, and buy the things that we want. Having a job that suffices our needs to the extent of giving us comfort is a sure source of happiness.

Another is that our jobs make us useful. Aside from the basics of the work itself, we learn a handful of attitudes such as independence, self-esteem, cooperation, and even leadership. Being happy with our work makes us realize our self-worth. It causes us to be more productive and efficient not just within the workplace but also our homes.

Companies should be conscious about the happiness and satisfaction of their employees. They should pay attention to the performance of each worker. They can do this by having regular evaluation within co-workers and bosses. Employers may give incentives to the employees who have been excellent. If they feel appreciated, they are more likely to engage themselves in their work. On the other hand, employees who have poor performances should be given a chance to improve.

In the long run, happy employees are able to handle workplace relationships, stress, and changers better than unhappy employees. They also feel more secured and they usually have lesser frustrations.

However, not everybody is happy with his job and for most people, a job is not something you can just leave the moment you feel like quitting. If you feel unhappy about your work, you can consider seeking the advice of your boss or of a trusted co-worker. Ask them what they think your strengths and weaknesses are. After this, you can start on developing your strengths and improving on your weaknesses.

Finding happiness in our job is important because how we perform at work has huge effect on our well-being and on how we deal with life. If we want to be happy at work, we should strive hard in getting a job that we really like to do. However, we have to remind ourselves that there’s no such thing as an easy job. We always have to work hard and improve ourselves whenever we can.

Marriage

The belief that marriage tends to hold people, especially women, back from their full potential to be happy has been around since the 1960s. However, a 2004 survey in America says that married people were six times more likely to say that they were very happy than those who are single, divorced, and separated. And generally speaking, married women say they’re happy more often than married men.

We know that marriage is not something people just get into. Since it is a lifetime commitment, people consider many things such as financial, mental, and emotional stability, before tying the knot. This helps the couple to have a secure and happy married life.

According to Claire Kamp Dush, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell University, being married is connected with less distress, higher self-esteem, greater life satisfaction, and grater happiness. On the other hand, married men are more successful in work as well, getting promoted more often and receiving higher performance appraisals.

Studies also show that married people tend to live longer. Having a spouse can decrease your risk for dying from cancer as much as knocking ten years off your life. As for married women, they are 30 percent more likely to rate their health as excellent compared to single women.

What about kids? Children, on their own, don’t appear to raise the happiness level. In fact, they actually tend to slightly lower the happiness of a marriage. However, a 2003 study suggests that children are almost always part of an overall lifestyle of happiness. Taking care of children may take its toll on the parents’ patience and understanding, but the more they develop their parenting skills, the more they can improve their married life and gain further happiness.

These days divorce is getting popular because of couples separating from left and right. We see them in the movies, the television, and yes, even in our neighborhood. But let’s face it, nobody really wants to have his or her marriage be ruined especially if it can be avoided.

Generosity

Giving is one trait that bounces back, often immediately, once you throw it away. Aside from making other people happy, the feeling of being a blessing to them makes you happy, too.

We’ve all heard that money doesn’t buy happiness. The truth is, it does, only that it tends to be short-lived when we do it for ourselves. To make it last longer, we can try buying happiness for other people. One way to do this is by donating to a charity. Studies show that 43 percent of people who give money to charity say that they are very happy than non-givers. On the other hand, 42 percent of volunteers say that they are happy compared to non-volunteers.

According to Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist from the University of British Columbia, regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not.

In practicing charity, it doesn’t really matter where your money would go or how it would be spent. The only assurance that you need is that it will be of good use to the people you gave it to and the happiness giving has brought you.

Being generous however doesn’t always mean giving money away. Sometimes, it could mean giving a part of yourself. This can be done by donating blood, volunteering for a charitable organization, or simply offering to babysit you neighbor’s child. Acts like these are always appreciated and causing both giver and receiver happiness.

Sources: www.time.com, www.usatoday.com, www.gmj.gallup.com, mirror.myhappy.com, www.psychpage.com, www.msnbc.msn.com, www.reuter.com

From July 1^st to July 4^th, the 4^th European Conference on Positive Psychology was held in Opatija, Croatia and ravi and jane will be reporting on their experiences from the conference over the next few weeks. In addition, we will be inviting people from the conference to report on their research first hand, offering cash incentives of $25, $50, and $100, depending on the quality of their reports.An updated list of links to conference related reports is below.

- Movie Presentation: What is your happiness?

- Randy Larsen’s talk on Positive and Negative Affect

- Thriving Through Inner Conflict Workshop

- The Power of the Present Moment

- Happiness with Reality Therapy 

On the first day of the conference, Lisa Kamen presented a movie she made in the course of her study of Spiritual Psychology at Santa Monica University in a session called H-Factor….Where is Your Heart?

The movie, where Lisa interviews people as diverse as Los Angeles county prisoners, New York cabbies, the homeless, children, and happiness researchers like Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and Robert Biswas-Diener, was very well received by the audience and sparked many interesting questions. The strength of the movie is in the fact that all of these people are asked the same question, What is your happiness?

From a psychological point of view, viewing happiness as a unitary construct, rather than as satisfaction, engagement, meaning, etc, may not yield research answers, but the diverse viewpoints captured in first person accounts gives the movie a contextual richness that goes beyond most any of the research presented at the conference.

Lisa lives in Los Angeles and plans to take the movie to film festivals after getting a final cut together. You can actually view the movie at www.whatisyourhappiness.com. Other ideas for the future include creating a charitable foundation and using it in schools to teach happiness. I actually hope to bring her to USC to show her film to our science of happiness class.

The project was done as part of her master’s thesis and the genesis of the project was in a cycling trip in India, where she witnessed joyous people living in poverty. Her natural question was how to teach her daughter, a “child of means”, the true definition of happiness beyond money. As such, the film was written with her daughter in mind (she’s the director of photography) and Lisa mentioned that her 11 year old daughter’s conception of happiness has moved beyond chocolate as a result of her involvement.

Incidentally, Lisa’s happiness is found in “having a voice” to share things she is passionate about, such as her movie.

We know that happiness is good for our health and well-being. In most ways, it is what keeps us motivated. And as life goes on we tend to search and find more reasons to be happy. But where exactly does our share of happiness come from?

Are we born with it?

Is it possible that happiness lies on every cell of your body? Well it is, and you can blame your neurotransmitters for that. Neurotransmitters are brain chemicals that pass information from a neuron to a cell. Simply put, it is your brain telling the rest of your body to be happy under certain circumstances. According to studies, high concentrations of norepinephrine - a type of neurotransmitter - leads to feelings of elation and euphoria. Studies also show that high levels of some neurotransmitters - specifically norepinephrine - can increase happiness while low levels of neropinephrine have been linked to feelings of depression.

The human brain has also been found to have a “reward system” which is a collection of brain structures that attempts to regulate and control behavior by inducing pleasurable effects. The “reward system” is actually a part of the brain’s limbic system which influences how we respond to the world around us. The limbic system is involved in many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those related to survival, such as fear and anger. The limbic system also regulates feelings of pleasure related to our survival, such as those experienced from eating and sex. The feelings of pleasure, which scientists call reward, are very powerful. If something is pleasurable or rewarding, you want to do it again. The feeling of pleasure then increases the levels of neurotransmitter neropinephrine and causes us to feel happy.

The functions of rewards are basically directed into the modification of behavior and positive emotions. Primary rewards include things that are necessary for survival such as food, water, shelter, and even sex. On the other hand, the value of the secondary rewards originates from the primary. These are money, music, pleasant touches, etc. Such rewards are physical and sensory however, their effects on us are entirely psychological. The more we feed our reward systems, the more we feel pleasure and obtain happiness.

Or is it learned?

In every mistake, hardship, or situation we face, there is always a tendency for us to gain something. But do you know that happiness is one of those things you can actually learn? When we have a problem, it is natural for our brains to work on coping with it and eventually, solving it. As a matter of fact, studies have shown that the applications of coping strategies or learned behaviors can improve a person’s mood. Successfully coping with a challenge increases the amount of norepinephrine released in the brain therefore causing happiness.

For instance, aerobic exercise - which is used as a coping strategy by many persons - can actually stimulate the output of norepinephrine by as much as four and one half times normal. Studies have compared athletes’ “runner’s high” to drugs wherein there is a “tolerance” effect and that a person’s body gets used to a certain level of the drug. In this case, norepinephrine serves as the drug and that the more a person tolerates in achieving happiness, his body works on increasing the said neurotransmitter.

Or maybe it’s in our consciousness…

Different situations in our lives can lead us into learning coping strategies and this can actually bring us happiness. Let’s say that we have found a solution that helped us solve a problem. We tend to keep this particular situation in mind so that the next time we face the same problem, we would know what to do. That’s when happiness comes into cognition.

Studies show that when people use coping strategies successfully, it can lead to feelings of pride and self-efficacy. These studies show that when people are experiencing feelings of pride and self-efficacy their bodies are also releasing a number of chemicals. Among the chemicals released is the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which produces feelings of happiness.

In the long run, we tend to keep the coping strategies we learned because we know that they worked for us and actually produced happiness. It eventually becomes part of our consciousness and once you search for the same solution, your brain automatically ticks into these information.

Everyday Life

Sure, we are always in the look-out for reasons and ways to be happy. However, we still stumble on a few rocky situations from time to time, robbing us of our happiness. But life does not stop there. Since we have already experienced and enjoyed being happy, problems should serve as the reason to move on and find happiness again. This is where hope and optimism come in. These two, like happiness, are great motivators for us to be healthier physically, mentally, and emotionally.

When we are deprived of happiness, there’s always this tendency for us to lure into a depressed state which is not bad after all. What’s important is that we try to find sense in the situation we are in and then work on finding solutions. Hope is what drives us to work hard to improve ourselves and produce good results. Optimism, on the other hand, causes us to look on the bright side of things and influences us to do our best so that we can expect good outcome.

Happiness, hope, and optimism are three different things but share a common denominator. They are all great motivators for us to enjoy life, endure our hardships, find solutions, and then enjoy again. In fact, being happy, hopeful, and optimistic does not stop within ourselves. In one way or another, we are able to share them to the people close to us by being with them, giving them advice, or by simply being a friend. If we impart these motivations to other people, then it’s a step to making the world a better place to live in, since we encourage them to find their own share of happiness.

Sources: www.mentalhelp.net, www.bipolar.about.com, www.bettyphillipspsychology.com, www.addictionscience.net, www.cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk, www.foxnews.com