The Newsy Neighbour Magazine
February Issue 112
Article Provided By: Darlis-Kelly Ireland of Women Talk Strathmore
“Happiness: a state of well-being and
contentment” ~Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Ahhh… February. The month of love. People express their love
for others on Valentine’s Day in many ways, and in the United States alone,
almost $2 billion is spent on candy, 198 million roses are produced for the
occasion and 180 million cards are exchanged. George Sand said, “There is only
one happiness in life, to love and be loved.” However, the Happiness Experiment
says otherwise.
Before we get to the experiment, let’s look a bit closer at
what ‘happiness’ is.
Happiness is NOT feeling good all the time and living in a
blissful state, it is NOT a destination (I’ll be happy when…) nor is it about
having everything you want. According to Sonja Lyubonirsky, author of The How
of Happiness, it is “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive
well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and
worthwhile.”
As human beings, we have a desire to be happy but how can we
find and keep happiness in our lives? There are several ways and one of the
most powerful is to have at least one close relationship in which we feel safe
to share our personal feelings, in addition to having a social network of
people to spend time with. Discovering a greater meaning in our lives can bring
happiness, as can extending acts of kindness by caring for others. Another road
to happiness is to have an interest, activity or even a goal that challenges us
but that we are internally motivated to pursue and we feel ‘in the flow’ when
engaged in it. Exercise, healthy eating, meditating, getting adequate sleep,
being outdoors, smiling, using our personal strengths and living our values also
bring us feelings of happiness.
At the end of 2016, a friend and I decided to practice another
simple strategy for happiness: the practice of gratitude. Every evening, we
share one thing from our day that we are grateful for and some days it is a
challenge and it is not always something pleasant. We have shared a hard lesson
learned, a loss that reminded us to not take things for granted, or a kindness
of a stranger during a time of need.
Studies show that regularly finding things to be grateful
for makes people happier, less stressed and they have a stronger sense of
belonging. This brings me to The Happiness Experiment in which people were
given a quiz to determine their current level of happiness and then asked to
write a letter to the person they were most grateful for in their lives. They
were then surprised with the instruction to call that person and to read them
the letter. These calls were emotional and heart-felt. Afterwards, they were
given the same set of questions with a variation in wording, to once again
measure their happiness factor. For people who made that call and expressed
their gratitude, their Happiness Factor increased 4%-19% and the unhappiest person
at the start of the experiment had the largest increase.
So is love the only source of happiness? I don’t believe it
is. Opportunities for happiness are all around us and one of those places is
Women Talk in Strathmore where grateful women grow their social network, extend
acts of kindness and honour the personal feelings of others. It’s a place where
friendships are formed and strengthened amidst much frivolity, laughter and
lively conversation.
This month is the one-year anniversary of Women Talk in
Strathmore and thus far, 24 wonderful and courageous women have shared their
story during the evening’s program. Many, many more stories have been shared
informally in the conversations between old friends and new. Each month,
gratitude is clearly expressed for what each women’s life experience has
brought to them: forgiveness, humour, compassion, insight, determination, and
stronger relationships with their faith, family and friends.
Hmmm… Women Talk offers a lot of what the experts say bring
happiness. No wonder there is so much laughter in the room! Come join us in our
Happiness Experiment… come increase your Happiness Factor.
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