“Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.” -Mahatma Gandhi
Are you happy? This is definitely a question for the ages. When I Googled the word happiness I got some pretty interesting hits on the first page of results. My current favorite is thehappyguy.com…and my favorite happy song is Goldfrapp’s Happiness (I also still like Shiny Happy People by REM). Here is the Goldfrapp video…object>
My 3 year old nephew came up & sat next to me when he heard the Goldfrapp song…he asked me to play it again :-). Then he started tapping his foot & smiling.
Happiness & Science:
Scientists say they know how to measure happiness and they have been researching life satisfaction for years. You can read about the science of happiness in this BBC article. Science suggests happiness leads to long life, health and good performance, so raising happiness levels across the board is definitely a good idea for world leaders. Making people laugh & feel happy should interest marketers (and companies) as well.
BUT “Richer” Does Not Equal “Happier”:
Although there has been a huge rise in wealth over the last 50 years, happiness levels have not increased. “Standard of living has increased dramatically and happiness has increased not at all, and in some cases has diminished slightly,” notes Daniel Kahneman of the University of Princeton.
Sure, richer countries are happier, but clearly the “more wealth is better” mantra that Gen X’ers & Millennials grew up hearing from the culture does not lead to happier lives.
Stop Watching TV…Engage the Spirit Instead
An interesting article entitled Down the Tube: the Sad Stats On Happiness, Money and TV in the Wall Street Journal noted that “engaging leisure and spiritual activities, things like visiting friends, exercising, attending church, listening to music, fishing, reading a book, sitting in a cafe or going to a party” were all exercises that typically make people happy. Strangely, Americans have had the chance to devote more time to “engaging leisure and spiritual activities.” But, time spent on these activities has actually declined over the past four decades.
Instead, there’s been a significant increase in time devoted to “neutral downtime,” which is mostly watching good ole’ TV. Women now spend 15% of their waking hours staring at the tube, while men devote 17%.
Watching TV may help folks “wind-down”, but TV does not engage people in meaningful activity.
A Smart Agency Brings it Together:
Here are 4 things to keep in mind about happiness. I took this from Saatchi & Saatchi S, a new agency that I posted about previously here:
1) Be of service to something larger than yourself. Kevin Roberts in his post The Happiness Challenge quotes Daniel Dennett: “The secret of happiness is to find something bigger than yourself and then to devote your life to it.”
2) To experience “flow,” or full engagement, on a regular basis. I think people experience flow when they have a great set of personal goals and actionable deliverables to work against. Once you set up a weekly, 90 day or year plan that revolves around what you want to achieve, then you can easily get into the flow and engage.
3) To show your gratitude to the people in your life. Being continuously thankful for what we have and thankful for the people in our lives is clearly very important.
4) To have at least three people who are emotionally close enough to share your life with. Efficiency is nice, but we all must be focused on people…
Ryan Jones is interested in marketing and good causes. He currently works in Global Brand Management at Procter & Gamble and resides in Geneva, Switzerland.