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, www.myhappy.com, www.psychpage.com, www.msnbc.msn.com, www.reuter.com

What’s keeping workers in their jobs? High salary? Working environment? The prestige of the company? Knowing the wants of the workers is important as it will be evident in their performance.Apparently, a new survey from the City and Guilds provides a very different perspective on what does the workers really want.

In their survey, 57% of workers said they are keeping their job because they are really interested in it, 56% responded that it is their officemates who gives them the reason to come to office everyday and just 46% said that a high salary keeps them from resigning.

The survey also found out that workers are looking for a flexible working arrangement with their company. For instance, allowing them to work from home. Lacking this makes the worker unhappy at work.

Bob Coates, managing director of City and Guilds who conducted the survey said, “Companies can no longer rely on those established reward and recognition policies that fail to commensurate with employees and do little to combat stress levels in the workplace.

Source: www.smartcompany.com.au

The results of Sept. 2007 survey of Pulse Asia sheds light to the young people of India that when it comes to satisfaction in life, they are considered as the world’s happiest because of their incomparable patience in developing their career.

According to Kairo Future, a researcher from Sweden, Indians show endurance and entrepreneurship in their work which led them to be trusted by foreign companies which in turn gives them jobs. He also added that Indians are also highly optimistic in both their future and the society.

But this is not always the case. Even though they are regarded highly in their jobs, they are showing very little interest in raising their own family which contradicts directly to the Indian’s tradition of making the family as a focal point in their society. For instance, when someone asks them their priorities in life, many will say different things and the family is not included.

Source: www.au.biz.yahoo.com

Does your job requires you to smile all the time? Or are you the type of person who are friendly in every way? Although smiling – or the act of being friendly – causes positive interpersonal communication in a subliminal way, too much of it causes damaging effects on ourselves.According to a new study conducted by psychologists from a university in Frankfurt, smiling too much can seriously impact our health negatively.

Research Leader Professor Dieter Zapf stated that a false smile leads to an increased chance of depression, stress, high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems and a damaged immune system.

“Every time a person is forced to repress his true feelings, there are negative consequences for his health,” he said.

The study examined 4,000 people who volunteered to work for two years in a fake call center. They were split into two; the half were required to fake a smile as to please the customers and the other half were allowed to talk back to the customer. The researchers found out that those who were friendly to their harsh customers had a prolonged period of rapid heartbeat – a sign of anxiousness – which extended until the end of the working day. Meanwhile, those who were a bit ‘unfriendly’ and stood up to the harsh customers had a shorter period of rapid heartbeats and thus suffered less.

Prof. Zapf is concerned about the welfare of these workers: “We have to get away from the ‘customer is king’ attitude and show more respect to those working in the service industries,” he said.

He also recommend that professionals required to force a smile, like flight attendants and sales persons, need to take regular breaks to recover from the efforts of smiling.

Sources: www.e4s.co.uk and www.libertyforum.org

Are you unhappy at work? Well, you shouldn’t. Happiness at work can extremely benefit your company as employees like you. It can give you success, triumphs, and professional and personal growth. It can let you contribute to something important. It can be a source of positive, meaningful relationships with both managers and co-workers. It can, in fact, be a lot of fun! Here’s how:

1: Happy people work better with others
Happy people are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into:

• Better teamwork with your colleagues
• Better employee relations if you’re a manager
• More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job
• Improved sales if you’re a sales person

2: Happy people are more creative
If your productivity depends on being able to come up with new ideas, you need to be happy at work. Check out the research of Teresa Amibile for proof. She says:

If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day.

There seems to be a cognitive process that gets set up when people are feeling good that leads to more flexible, fluent, and original thinking, and there’s actually a carryover, an incubation effect, to the next day.

3: Happy people fix problems instead of complaining about them
When you don’t like your job, every molehill looks like a mountain. It becomes difficult to fix any problem without agonizing over it or complaining about it first. When you’re happy at work and you run into a snafu – you just fix it.

4: Happy people have more energy
Happy people have more energy and are therefore more efficient at everything they do.

5: Happy people are more optimistic
Happy people have a more positive, optimistic outlook, and as research shows (particularly Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology), optimists are way more successful and productive. It’s the old saying “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right” all over again.

6: Happy people are way more motivated
Low motivation means low productivity, and the only sustainable, reliable way to be motivated at work is to be happy and like what you do. I wrote about this in a previous post called Why “motivation by pizza” doesn’t work.

7: Happy people get sick less often
Getting sick is a productivity killer and if you don’t like your job you’re more prone to contract a long list of diseases including ulcers, cancer and diabetes. You’re also more prone to workplace stress and burnout.

One study assessed the impact of job strain on the health of 21,290 female nurses in the US and found that the women most at risk of ill health were those who didn’t like their jobs. The impact on their health was a great as that associated with smoking and sedentary lifestyles (source).

8: Happy people learn faster
When you’re happy and relaxed, you’re much more open to learning new things at work and thereby increasing your productivity.

9: Happy people worry less about making mistakes – and consequently make fewer mistakes
When you’re happy at work the occasional mistake doesn’t bother you much. You pick yourself up, learn from it and move on. You also don’t mind admitting to others that you screwed up – you simply take responsibility, apologize and fix it. This relaxed attitude means that less mistakes are made, and that you’re more likely to learn from them.

10: Happy people make better decisions
Unhappy people operate in permanent crisis mode. Their focus narrows, they lose sight of the big picture, their survival instincts kick in and they’re more likely to make short-term, here-and-now choices. Conversely, happy people make better, more informed decisions and are better able to prioritize their work.

(Source: Positive Sharing)

Are you skipping breakfast to be on time at work? Instead, bring a banana or sandwich on your way to work as breakfast proved to be beneficial to one’s happiness.

In a survey by market research firm Leisure Trends Group, people who eat breakfast are happier at work than those who do not. A breakfast eater also had better health, happier family relationships, fuller leisure times and manages finances better.

“…employers [should] provide breakfast as a morale builder and a way to encourage happier, more productive workers.” Leisure Trends suggested.

Though Leisure Trends only surveyed working people, the same effect goes to the kids.

“When they missed breakfast, the children were adversely affected in their performance.” said Donald Simeon from the University of the West Indies who conducted a study in Jamaican children aged nine to 10.

(Read more Washington Post, image courtesy of toobig4pond.)