Will we ever be happy enough?

I've had a very lovely life, I've been very lucky. I've been happier more often I've been unhappy and I've experienced greater joy than misery. But will this bank of happiness see me through? Will I ever get to a point when I have experienced sufficient joy that no matter what happens, my overall life satisfaction will be unaltered?

Personally, I look forward. I think always of the future and I like to plan my future joy, but expect it to come spontaneously when it finally arrives. Much of my happiness is based on my expectation of the future. So, although I can remind myself of plenty of happy times and do not carry around with me a bundle of worries built high by past events, I suspect that I will never be satisfied. It seems that it's not what I've had, but what I might experience in the future that keeps me smiling (or scares me).

Perhaps when I am very old and believe myself to have reached the final stage of the race, a point at which there is no further piece of the puzzle to fit together, maybe then I will turn my mind backwards and all the happy days that I've enjoyed to date will start to stand to me.

For now, I simply try to remember to be grateful and to recognise that I've had an easy ride, which is rare in this fragmented age.

I have been lucky enough to discover some of the things that do make me happy. If you never experience joy, how do you know what fills you with that bubbly, smiling feeling?

Now, if only I could create some co-herant plan to ensure future happiness, I wouldn't have to worry about what's coming and could enjoy the days that's here right now. How fickle we are, even the people who acknowledge that they've been lucky (me), fear that their luck will run out.

Puppy power

Tomorrow is my boyfriend's birthday. He's hoping for a puppy. He is hoping for a puppy in the way that a six year old hopes and yearns and pleads for a puppy. He believes that owning and caring for this pet will complete him.

Research suggests that few events actually change our level of happiness. A systematic study of 22 people who had won the lottery, found that they returned to their baseline levels of happiness over time and wound up experiencing the same level of happiness as 22 ordinary Joes who had never had their numbers called up.

So, money does not buy happiness? It would seem that neither do unfortunate events necessarily lead to unhappiness. A study quoted in the same book as that which discussed our unmoved millionaires, found that within a few years, paraplegics are only just a little less happy than their able-bodies peers.

Will a puppy make my boyfriend any happier? Despite the findings of the studies cited above, I suspect that it might.

In May of this year Coca-Cola announced the results of their global happiness barometer. In this age of Facebook and Twitter, text messages and blogging, Coca-Cola found that the one thing that could be definitively linked to greater happiness was human contact. Let's face it, we're meant for each other. We're suckers for a good hug.

I agree that human contact and animal contact are not quite the same, but the spirit is similar. I suspect that my boyfriend would take joy from the relationship that one man has with his dog. He wants to walk along the strand with his dog, silent but together as they enjoy the fresh air and exercise. He wants to play and jump around with his dog. Most of all, he wants to come home from work to see in the face of his furry friend, the pure, animal excitement that his arrival has induced.

Personal relationships, even when with animals, make us feel valued and valuable. It's great to be valued but it's even better to be valuable.

Several years ago, a British study attempted to increase the happiness quotient of one English town. A key recommendations made by the leaders of the study was that we should all keep plants. Apparently, feeling necessary is one of the key elements in the maintainence of a positive outlook. The logic is that if someone or something needs you (even if this something is a small and dropping fern), your life will be invested with the special shred of meaning that is necessary to warm the heart.

So, if I gave my boyfriend a puppy he might develop a bond with the animal and also, feel that that animal needs him, his care and his love. This would probably make him feel even more satisfied with his lot in life than he currently does.

Sadly, we live in a one-bedroom apartment and I suspect that the puppy's happiness would dive very quickly after realising that the entire area around which he could roam would fit into most people's front hall. Until we have space and time to look after this little creature, I would not feel right risking its wellbeing by keeping it in our cramped home. Next year looks more likely for pet ownership, but tomorrow I'm going to have to deal with a very disappointed man-child.

Thankfully, research suggests that he will quickly get over this and his happiness will soon return to normal levels.

Where does happiness come from?

Happiness is a complicated beast. The range of this emotion stretches from satisfaction, through pleasure and joy to the outer reaches of maddest euphoria.

The complicated nature of the emotion that makes us smile means that it is difficult to measure and to explain. Despite having enjoyed a lifetime during which I have been happier more often than not, I have more questions than answers about the nature of or source of happiness.

For a start, where does it come from and then, how does our brain distinguish between positive and negative situations - how do we know when to feel happy?

According to the people who know about this kind of thing, serotonin is the chemical that helps to maintain a happy feeling. This chemical helps us to sleep, it calms anxiety and it relieves depression. However, dopamine makes us seem happy because its presence in our brain makes us talkative and excitable.

Have you ever noticed that everyone seems to be in better form during summer time? We feel better during summer months because sun and bright light trigger a response in the brain to a hormone known as melatonin. Research suggests that two hours of morning light is an effective treatment for depression, so get out there and enjoy the early hours.

There is no denying the fact that some people are happier than others. The researcher, David T Lykken, studied the wellbeing of twins and found that happiness depends in a large part, upon one's genes. Only 10-15% of our happiness is determined by life circumstances variables such as socioeconomic status, marital status, health and sex. Researchers believe that the remaining 40% is influenced by a combination of factors and results of actions that a person takes in order to become happier.

This is fantastic news and means that we can determine our own happiness. Knowing how to go about doing this is not an easy task...

Consistently, human relationships comes out as the top factor in human happiness. A 2009 study that was published in the British Medical Journal reported that happiness can actually spread through social networks from person to person. Generally, happiness spreads fastest and best through friends, siblings, spouses and next-door neighbours and it spreads more effectively than unhappiness, which means that if enough of us spread our happiness, we could effect some sort of emotional revolution...

One to do done

I can finally cross one 'to do' off my 'to do list'. My balcony is awash with colour. My wonderful mother took a trip to the garden centre and came back with pot loads of summer flowers, which she gave to me and that I have planted in window boxes and ceramic posts. As I look outside, through the summer rain, I am made infinitely happy by the sight of my begonias, butterfly lavender and daisies bouncing in the breeze.

Some people don't 'do' gardening and don't see the point. The arrangement of plants together in pretty groups doesn't 'do' anything particular that should make our lives any better, and yet, in my case, I find that it does make my life a happier one. It is not what the plants do, so much as what they are that makes me happy. My plants don't provide me with any sustenance, they won't make me any wealthier and I have sufficient fresh air that their ability to exchange gases is of little concern to me, yet by being pretty and by conjuring images of summer meadows, lazy afternoons and sunshine, they make my life that little brighter. Plus, they need me and it is always satisfying to be required.

In my experience, happiness is not always logical, but illogical joy is often perfectly sensible and a good indication of sanity.

I like to think that what separates us from the animals is our ability to appreciate beauty, but this is probably a romantic notion with little basis in truth. Who am I to say that a gorilla does not appreciate the sight of the morning mist rising from the foothills of a Rwandan mountain?

Whether it is a human characteristic or not, it seems that it is in our nature to take satisfaction from beautiful paintings, well designed buildings and sweeping views across long valleys, amongst other eye-pleasers.

Functionality is all very well, calculated reasoning is vital, but a splash of colour from a bursting window box can warm the heart, and life with a cold heart offers little to live for. It is immensely satisfying to work out a difficult problem and to perform a job that I feel means something, but sometimes all I want to do is sit on a chair on my balcony, surrounded by purple flowers, swatting the bees away with my Sunday paper.

Measuring happiness

What really makes us happy? The results of the annual Harris Poll Happiness Index, released last week, indicate that 80% of (American) respondents are satisfied with their lot. This despite the fact that 72% of them feel that their views were not heard at the seat of power and that 66% report that they frequently worry about their financial situation.

Interesting data from the Poll includes the findings that women are generally more happy than men (and married women are happier than their singleton friends), people seem to become increasingly happy as they age and the lucky individuals who earn over $75,000 are significantly happier than those who earn under $35,000. Maybe money can buy a certain amount of happiness - or peace of mind - after all.

Comparison of this year's Poll Index with that of the past two years indicates that White Americans are less happy than they were three years ago, while Hispanics and African-Americans have become happier, and the happiness levels of both of these ethnic groups have surged to surpass the contentment levels of White Americans.

In what might seem to some to be a surprising result, disabled people polled as being marginally more happy than those who do not have a disability.

One finding that I find particularly interesting is that, serious talkers, who talk frequently about topics such as politics, education and the economy are much happier than those who talk about 'light topics' frequently. Generally, talking seems either to indicate happiness, or to keep us smiling; the silent types clocked up far less happiness than their chatty counterparts and the index of their happiness came in far lower down the scale than that of the average adult.

So, if you truly want to experience happiness your best bet is to be a well-paid, married, black female in the autumn of your life, who enjoys a regular debate about health care reform, or the state of the nation.

And what about the rest of us?

You can't do much about your age, gender or ethnicity. You can't necessarily alter how much money you make. You can become more engaged in your society and you can get involved in serious discussion about the larger issues.

So, get out there, get informed and get talking!

Happiness at the click of a mouse

Access to technology can be linked with positive emotions, according to a recent study by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. We might like to reminisce about just how happy we felt when we first cradled in our hands our new iPhone, or how devastated we were when our computer crashed while we were performing an important operation, but overall, do we feel happier or more stressed by the gadgets, gizmos and metatags that have become a part of our daily lives? Not one to make idle speculation, before coming to its own conclusions regarding technology and satisfaction, BCS took into account the views of 35,000 people around the world.

It found that women in developing nations and people of both sexes who had low levels of education or low incomes were particularly influenced by their access to technology.

Certainly, technology helps up to connect with friends and family who have spread themselves across great distances and this may be the reason why women, the cogs at the centre of most families, particularly value access to technology.

However, many researchers disagree that technology makes us any happier, including Yair Amichai-Hamburger, director for Internet Psychology at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications in Israel, who argued in an article in New Scientist (December 2009) that technology often acts as a barrier to real-world friendships and blurs the important distinctions between work and leisure time.

Like many things in life, balance appears to be the key to enjoying technology. A little is fantastic, but overindulgence (often manifest in addiction to the Internet) can mean that other areas of our lives suffer.

So is the iPad the answer to eternal happiness? I can't help but think that there is no one universal recipe for happiness, but perhaps a recipe for 'happiness in our times', that many of us could use as a base, upon which to build our own happiness soup.

It seems that as humans, we need to feel connected to one another. We require friendships, personal contact and love to grow in a positive manner. In recent times, western society has become fragmented and technology has stepped into the space created to fill the void with Facebook friends, text messages and blogs. These interactions are better than none at all and the nature of friendships that are supported by technology is such that those friendships can form and grow across great distances and time zones. This means that your Facebook friend might not be able to reach out and give you a hug, but you and they may share interests and ideas, that no one in your local area shares with you.

The argument as to whether technology is friend or foe to our collective happiness must take into account our human desire to be included in our society. Western society is a society that relies upon and revels in its technology and should one not have access to it, exclusion would certainly feel like a loss, if not a social disability. I can't comment on the situation in other cultures, but I would imagine that as technology becomes more pervasive, exclusion from its use becomes a greater issue.

The BCS study suggests that one of the reasons why technology makes people happy is the status that it affords them. Since Adam and Eve first enjoyed a wickedly delicious taste of indulgence, people have derived a certain degree of pride and contentment from displaying status symbols . Whether that status comes from owning the largest herd of cattle; driving the streets in a brand new sports car; or whipping out our brand new gadget to show salivating friends, our enjoyment comes from proving to friends that we are somebody, that we're in the know and that our personal capital is valuable.

All of this said, I don't believe that having access to technology alone will make a life meaningful. Technology is an instrument that allows us to perform certain tasks. What we do with technology and how we do it must be the source of any real meaning.

Learn to be happy and you'll be healthy

I've been dancing around it for a long time but today I'm going to come out and say it: most of us, when we search for the meaning of life, are really searching for the secret to happiness. I've tried not to fall into this trap and, although I think that an unhappy life is not necessarily a life that is devoid of meaning, my inclination when I research philosophy, history, contemporary news stories and when I make observations about my own life, is to presume that happiness is indicative of successful living.

I'm sure that many immoral and cruel individuals experience a certain degree of happiness and I would hate to suggest that their brand of living is a successful model that the rest of us should follow. This said, in the case of most not-totally-insane individuals, personal happiness is usually a sign of a life well lived and a rosey outlook.

Happiness seems to be the secret to successful living, not only for its own ends, but due to the health benefits that accrue when one feels happy. Quite simple, happiness helps us to thrive, both mentally and physically.

Positive psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses upon the origin and impact of positive emotions. Some positive psychologists argue that happiness is an emotion that leads to better learning and it has been linked, in numerous studies, with reduced incidence of stress and heart disease. Researcher Barbara Fredrickson, in an article called 'The undoing effect of positive emotions' hypothesises that positive emotions help a person to return to their normal physiological levels after a period of intense stress.

In the general sense, positive emotions seem to have numerous benefits for human health. People who believe that they can positively influence situations experience lower stress levels, improved immune systems, reduced pain and are in a better position to overcome addiction and dependency than are those who believe that their suffering is outside of their control.

Based on their research, positive psychologists have developed techniques to improve the life experiences of those with perfect mental health, as well as people suffering with depression and other mental illnesses. Such is the evidence to support positive psychology and optimism that these techniques are used by life coaches, HR professionals, psychologists, therapists and counsellors to help people to thrive.

The eminent psychologist, Martin Seligman teaches what he calls 'learned optimism' and finds that those who have been taught to deal with situations in such a way as to reduce negative emotions, experience less stress and are generally more successful in study and work situations.

Seligman's method of teaching optimism is simple. He asks 'students' to understand how and why they react in certain ways to adversity, to analyse the basis for their assumption and then to dispute it in their own minds. In this manner people learn to react differently when faced with challenges and research has shown that after having learnt optimism, individuals experience less anxiety and less stress.

Given the evidence to support happiness, I've chosen this lovely subject as the focus of the next few of my blogs. I can't think of a single reason why happiness might not be the meaning of life and I challenge anyone to suggest why learning to be happy and tending one's mental health and attitudes might not be as vital as is looking after one's general health.