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Last
night, I had dinner with a friend who has everything I want: a beautiful
brownstone house filled with expensive furniture, a smart and funny
husband, an adorable baby girl and a published novel. She just told me
that she's miserable. "I know it's terrible," she said. "I
have nothing to complain about. But I've always been miserable. I get it
from my mother — she was a real grump." I was surprised; I had
always thought she was happy. Not that I ever asked her. Of course she's
happy, I figured, she has all the toys.
This deduction is a common mistake, says David Niven, Ph.D., author of
"The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People." "One thing that
continually shocks people is that the events of a person's life have
little to do with how happy he or she is," says Dr. Niven. Rather, as
my friend suspected, genetics is about 50 percent responsible for our
level of happiness, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D., author of the
groundbreaking book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience." Fortunately, we have a significant amount of control
over the other half. Here, some ways to tend to your mental health and
happiness today:
Appreciate the moment. Many of us view happiness as a future state:
something we'll achieve when we get that great job, beautiful home or
handsome husband. And while we do often feel quite elated when we attain
these goals, the bliss is usually short-lived — and quickly followed by
a desire for something else, whether it's more money, a renovated kitchen
or flowers on Valentine's Day. "That's why winning the lottery or
getting a promotion doesn't work. You're always looking toward the next
step," explains Dr. Csikszentmihalyi.
To break that looking-ahead cycle, you need to cultivate an appreciation
of your life as it is now — dissatisfying job and all. Csikszentmihalyi
says people have a natural tendency to think about what's not working in
their lives and ignore the good stuff. So make a list of everything that
you love about your life — Thursday-night Chardonnays with the girls,
the nature trail nearby, the way your two-year-old looks in her Halloween
costume — and then remind yourself to really savor them.
Give yourself a higher calling. Csikszentmihalyi says that people
are happy when they feel that they are contributing to something greater
than themselves, whether through their job, family or community.
"Happy people don't ruminate about themselves and their problems.
They say, Life is short. I'd better do something useful."
But you don't have to have a large family or a job vaccinating orphans in
order to lead a fulfilling life. Take the real-estate agent I know. Truly
invested in helping people find the right home, he will often steer
prospective tenants away from listings he considers subpar, depending upon
their needs and desires. If he was strictly out for his commission, he
wouldn't get nearly the same job satisfaction (and, in the long run, he
probably wouldn't make as much money, either). So think about the ways you
can transform your perspective of your daily tasks. In addition, you can
always build small acts of kindness into your day, such as giving up your
seat on the bus, putting a quarter in a stranger's ready-to-expire parking
meter or clicking on The Breast Cancer Site (www.thebreastcancersite.com),
where you can help fund mammograms for poor women. These things do make a
difference in others' lives.
You flow, girl. We've all had those moments when things feel
completely right in our world. Perhaps you were cross-country skiing
through a beautiful ice-coated forest or creating a scrapbook of snapshots
and ticket stubs from your trip to Los Angeles. You spent the day
completely immersed in the activity, and when you finally looked at your
watch, you were startled to realize how much time had passed.
Csikszentmihalyi says these moments of complete absorption are when people
are happiest, a state he calls "flow." "These are the
moments people treasure in their lives, and the more of them you get, the
better off you are," he says. To find your flow, first get a hobby
— an activity you do for pure enjoyment. Think about the stuff you loved
to do as a kid — ballet lessons, pottery, pickup basketball — and then
just go with it.
Examine your options. One crucial difference between happy people
and unhappy people is that the former believe they have choices. Two
workers could be toiling away at the same understimulating job with the
same impossible-to-please boss but have completely different experiences:
one feeling that the situation is hopeless, the other seeing a way out,
either through moving up in the company or dusting off her resume. So even
if the happy person stays on the job, she still feels she is doing so by
choice.
That's why it's important to cultivate friends and activities that will
increase your sense of options, anything from taking night classes to
joining an Internet dating service to sitting down with a good friend and
brainstorming about your dreams for the future. Actually, you're already
doing one of those things. Studies show that people who use computers tend
to be happier than people who don't. "People feel a sense of
possibilities when they use their computer," says Niven. "It
gives you access to information and to connections. If you have an
interest in an obscure hobby, there may not be anyone in your town who
shares it, but you can probably find at least 100 people online who
do."
Nurture your relationships. Having a strong connection to others
— be they family or friends — is a crucial part of mental health; but
unfortunately, many of us simply focus on what our relationships are or
aren't giving us rather than asking ourselves what we can do to bolster
the people in our lives. But Csikszentmihalyi says the key to having
fulfilling relationships is to invest in others without expecting anything
back. "It can't be quid pro quo," he says. Paradoxically, those
who expect the least from loved ones, usually get the most. "That's
the interesting thing," says Csikszentmihalyi. "The less you
try, the more you succeed."
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