Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

If it makes you happy

I'm just finally getting around to reading last week's Time. (At some point I surpassed a day late and a dollar short, and now I'm more than a week behind...)

Anyway, it was a particularly good cover story on the "Science of Happiness." One article in particular, The Biology of Joy, does a really good job of what I talked about a few days ago: presenting scientific information in a way that's very interesting and accessible to the lay reader without dumbing it down.

One of the interesting studies reported in the article:

In a series of studies begun in 1998, psychologist Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis has found further evidence that happy people are better at health maintenance. Emmons randomly assigned 1,000 adults to one of three groups. The first group kept daily journals of their moods and rated them on a scale of 1 to 6. The second group did that and listed the things that annoyed or hassled them throughout their day. The third group kept a journal but added an activity that has repeatedly been shown to improve one's sense of satisfaction with life: they were asked to write down every day all the things for which they were grateful.

Despite being assigned randomly, the last group not only had the predicted jump in their overall feelings of happiness, says Emmons, but were also found to spend more time exercising, be more likely to have regular medical checkups and routinely take preventive health actions like wearing sunscreen. Overall, the "gratitude" group were promoting better health. "They rate themselves as more energetic, more enthusiastic, more alert," Emmons reports. In short, keeping the diaries contributed to their physical and emotional well-being.

I've been making a concerted (if very uneven) effort to be more positive over the last few years. I'm not sure if it's because I'm fighting my natural inclinations, or because I live in a culture where stress, pressure, and cynicism are honored, but it isn't easy. So I'm thinking that the "write down things for which you are grateful" idea might be a good exercise.

My first thought after that thought was "Cool, an excuse to go to the office supply store for a new notebook!" (I love office supplies. I used to be ashamed to admit this fetish, but I've found so many others who share it.) Then I realized...I'm already blogging pretty much daily. I could add it to my blog. It might offset some of the bitching and whining, for that matter.

So I figured I might as well start now, with things I'm grateful for today:

Arriving home to find my neighbor shoveling my sidewalk.

A perfectly ripe avocado.

People driving sanely and safely in the snow.

Computers. This one sounds goofy...but I'm starting to shop for a new PC, because the 20 gig hard drive on this one is full, and the processor is a bit sluggish, and I can't upgrade the memory any further. And I was thinking...wow, when I bought my first PC, it had a 20 MB hard drive that I was sure I'd never fill. And really...the technology is just magic to me, and it's there, better all the time, just waiting for me to call an 800 number. That's really pretty damn cool. And it allows me to start my gratitude list without going to the office supply store...oh, wait.

Posted by Nic at January 19, 2005 08:09 PM