“Happiness comes from within. If you cannot find happiness within yourself, it will hinder you from finding happiness within others.”
• Overcome negative emotions
• Identify and cultivate your strengths and use them to achieve everyday happiness
• Develop positive emotions
• Correct the emotional imbalance and restore happiness
THE BENEFITS OF BEING HAPPY
1. Better Mental Health:
The Harvard Mental Health Letter reports that these are the chief characteristics of people who learn to be happy in life:
• a high sense of self-esteem
• a feeling of being in control of their lives
• the trait of being outgoing
• an optimistic outlook on life
2. Improved Physical Health:
• Dartmouth Medical School research demonstrated that optimists are much healthier and heal much faster when they do get sick than do pessimists.
• CA Department of Health completed a 29 year study and found that unhappy people were:
– 50% more likely to have a stroke and
– 50% more likely to die from that stroke.
3. Greater Financial Prosperity:
• Drs. Stanley and Danko study of The Millionaires Next Door found that among people of the same income level:
a) PAW’s (Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth) had learned to be more optimistic than UAW’s (Under-accumulators of Wealth)
b) UAW’s had four times as many concerns about the future than PAW’s
c) UAW’s used over-spending as a means to alleviate their anxieties
d) PAW’s learned how to create a goal and follow a proactive plan to achieve financial security.
• WORTH magazine’s net worth survey of the top 1% of the US population (median = $2.34 million) revealed that the most important factor in accumulating wealth was “tremendous persistence” towards that outcome.
4. Higher Career Success:
• Dr. Michael Mercer’s study of high achievers found that the single best predictor of success is optimism.
