Happiness is infectious
Washington: Happiness is contagious - like the flu.
It can spread among friends, neighbours, siblings, and spouses, according to a large study that for the first time shows how emotions can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know one another. The study of more than 4,700 people followed over 20 years found people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy.
The power of happiness can span another degree of separation, elevating the mood of that person's husband, wife, sibling, friend or neighbour.
"You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experiences," said Professor Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University, who helped conduct the study published online yesterday by BMJ, a British medical journal. " But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected. Happiness is contagious."
The one exception was co-workers, perhaps because something in the work environment prevented their happiness from spreading, the study found.
Previous studies have documented the experience that one person's emotions can influence another's - laughter can trigger guffaws in others; seeing someone smile can lift one's spirits.
But this study is the first to find that happiness can spread across groups for an extended period.
When one person in the network becomes happy, the chances that a friend, sibling, spouse or next-door neighbour would become happy increased by between 8 per cent and 34 per cent, the researchers found.
The effect continued through three degrees of separation, although it dropped progressively from about 15 per cent to 10 per cent to 6 per cent before disappearing.
The research follows previous work by Prof Christakis and co-author James Fowler that found that obesity appears to spread from person to person. The researchers have been using records collected by the Framingham Heart Study, a project that has explored health issues, to construct and analyse maps of social networks. In the latest analysis, the researchers focused on 4,739 adults who answered questions about their happiness between 1983 and 2003.
The findings, Prof Christakis and others said, provide new evidence of the power of social networks, which could have implications for public policy. Happy people tend to be better off in myraid ways, being more creative, productive and healthy.
"For a long time, we measured the health of a country by looking at its gross domestic product," said Associate Professor Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
"But our work shows that whether a friend's friend is happy has more influence than a US$5,000 (S$7,600) raise.
Other experts praised the study as a landmark in the body of evidence documenting the influence of personal connections and positive emotions. "It's a path-finding article," said Mr Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist.
Being happy brings other benefits. "Happiness has a protective effect on your immune system and you produce fewer stress hormones," said Professor Andrew Steptoe at University College London.
Others questioned the findings, noting that it is difficult to account for every variable that might affect the outcomes of such studies.
But Dr Ed Diener, a University of Illinois psychologist, said: "This is an extremely exciting study - interesting, provocative and important."
Said Prof Fowler: " The fact that happiness spreads from person to person to person suggests that these waves of happiness we radiate could eventually wash up on our own shores."
So smile, and the world may just smile with you.
--- taken off the article on Saturday's Straits Times.
so.. there's 2 ways of being happy, either by your own choices, actions and experiences, or you can just hang out more with happy people :o
Oh ya.. I passed by the interchange just now and i saw this notice up which was telling us that new ez link cards will be issued.. don't know from when :p but they can be used by January 2009. We can exchange our current ones for them free of charge. Anyway, the new cards will not have any deposit in them, so, we would be required to have at least enough money for the transport that we're taking. But for trains, there must be at least $3 before we're allowed to board the train. While for buses, they are recommending us to have at least $3 to make sure that we'll have enough for any distances we're travelling.
For a period of time, i used to cut out newspaper articles that i found meaningful. As i was cleaning up part of my room yesterday, i came upon some, so i want to share one of them today.
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A toast to friendship
In my more listless moments, i find myself aimlessly trawling through blogs and online diaries.
Perhaps what i'm looking for is some affirmation that there is drama in our otherwise humdrum Singaporean lives. Or at the very least, that we can ask dramatic questions where there is none to be found.
So it was with great relish that i lapped up a recent entry in the online diary of a friend of mine called Richard.
Entitled "Superficial Friends", it was in most parts a lengthy rant about the various ways his friends had failed him.
When Richard lost his job recently, his group of close friends consoled him. But when he asked one of them to approach his company's human resource department to ask for openings, that friend who works for a multinational giant - refused to help.
Richard then asked a second friend in the group what he thought of this surprising show of indifference. He was disappointed again when this friend chose to be diplomatic and refused to take sides.
"That's what the state of friendship has become in Singapore - too Westernised!" he bitterly concluded.
"Maybe some ancient Confucianism is worth instilling in Singaporeans if it begets you real friends who really go the whole distance to help you."
I didn't think much of this at first. In the no-nonsense, super-efficient society that we live in, there doesn't seem to be much point ruminating over life's fluffier questions.
Perhaps Richard simply wasn't as close to his friends as he had thought. Maybe they had good reasons of their own for not helping or supporting him.
Yet his slightly xenophobic proclamation struck a chord with me. And i kept turning the question over in my mind as i drove through the city streets, rushing from one place to another.
Is the nature of friendship really changing for the worse in Singapore?
I'm not sure if "Westernisation" is the right word to describe what is happening, but i can think of at least three reasons why we could be valuing our friends less this days.
The first is that Singaporeans have grown more self-centred. This has been a question of necessity than anything else, since Singapore has always championed meritocracy in a system that prizes self-reliance.
Whether it is making through a highly competitive education system, getting that plum job or making enough money to buy a new house or car, it is "every man for himself". The price of falling behind in life is high and there is virtually no safety net for failure.
This is not to say, of course, that we will not stop to help a friend if he is in need. But we count the cost very carefully, i suppose, and think about how such a favour might deduct from our lives.
A second reason is that a faster pace of life is increasing the premium that we place on our free time.
With only a precious few hours left to ourselves a week, we start to take an increasingly utilitarian approach to friendships, as if to try and get a bigger bang for our buck.
Who entertains us more with funny stories, we ask. And who will willingly lend a listening ear when i'm down, or have the connections to help me in times of trouble?
Finally, the more successful and affluent we become as a people, the more we seem to value our privacy. Yet the strongest friendships are between people who make themselves vulnerable to each other by hiding no secrets.
So like the rich suburbanites who inhabit the hit television series Desperate Housewives, we are fine with talking and laughing about everything under the sun at dinner or drinks, but the relationship lacks intimacy and we turn uncomfortable the moment a personal problem crops up.
Most of the time, we don't want to get involved.
On the odd occasion that we do, we wonder if we're being too nosy. I'm currently helping two friends, a couple, deal with the entry of a third party into their relationship. As i send off SMS messages so long they have to be split into four parts, i catch myself and wonder if anyone other than Starhub thinks i'm doing the right thing.
What's the point of all of this?
Only to say that we are so concerned about the weakening of family ties that we run ads on television to remind ourselves, but no one really ever pays attentions to the spectre of fading friendships.
When you consider the increased stress that modern society puts on working adults these days, friends are underrated as a resource and families overrated.
We choose our friends, but with the exception of our spouse, we never really get to choose our family. And much of our interaction with family members is, in any case, guided by societal roles we are obliged to play - what is the right thing to do as a good husband, sister, father or daughter.
With our best friends, however, we can truly be ourselves. We tell them everything - the good, the bad and the downright unsavoury. We heatedly trade views on subjects like love, sex and money, allowing our thinking to be fashioned by their opinions.
In short, our families may have made sure we grew up well-adjusted but it is often our friends who make sure that we stay that way.
I can't count the number of times i wouldn't have got through a crisis or made an important life-changing decision, had it not been for my friends.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that family ties aren't important. Sometimes, as an added bonus, our family members are our friends as well.
But in place like Singapore, where a strong, family-centred conservatism clashes often with fast-changing cultural and moral norms, this is often not the case.
So here's to my shopaholic, gym-obsessed, mahjong- and karaoke-crazy friends. And yours too, whoever or whatever they may be.
For "life leads the thoughtful man on a path of many windings. Now the course is checked, now it runs straight again," starts a poem found in the I-Ching that has been sttributed to Confucius.
"But when two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or of bronze. And when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids." "
------ from the article by Ignatius Low, taken off an old issue of The Straits Times.
I just found this "diary" that i wrote while i was in the midst of dating someone during last year... I was so silly.. haha...
- don't assume..
- derash..
- miss everything...
- happy for simple and small acts of appreciation..
- reminding myself to give up after it ended..
- 人心险恶
- 对事，不对人
- have to get used to disappointments
This are just small parts taken out of the diary, but they're all in chronological order.
I find it difficult to define what is too much, and what is too little..
- dare to talk about your affection
- those who are loved widely are usually those who throw caution to the winds and declare their love freely
- when a relationship is genuine, they empathetically share a common field of emotions. This leads to the fact that, in everyday life, we normally tend to fall in love with those who love us.
- There are pitfalls to avoid in the declaration of love. The following people misuse the privilege. The Gusher; don't express everything you don't feel, but do express every good feeling you have about others. The Pressurizer; Here is the person who says "I love you" in order to hear it back.. Instead of a lever of applying pressure, let your compliment be the free expression of what is going on inside you. The Ramrod; First: reach out, second: notice the reaction, third: move forward, stop or back up.
- when we think of love, we tend to think of spectacular emotions and heroic acts. But little of life is passed in such moments of intensity, important as they are. The best friendships are built up, like a fine lacquer finish, with the accumulated layers of many acts of kindness.
- The experts at love realize that emotions ebb and flow, and they look for gestures of love even when their emotions are on the wane. What's more, they are never contented with telling the beloved they care - they show it in small expressions of affections.
- The minuscule act of kindness has great power because it demonstrates that you have not taken your beloved for granted.
- There is an art to one of the oldest gestures of love - the giving of gifts. The most lavish gift does not necessarily bespeak the most love. Most important is the thoughtfulness the gift represents.
- Someone has said that the test of great men and women is the way they treat little people, and of one can develop the habit of looking for gestures that build goodwill, kindliness can become second nature.
- Those who have successful connections allow their loved ones room. Rather than possessing their friends, they try to help them expand and grow and become free.
- Create space in your relationships.
- Unhappily, the tendency to jockey for control and to manipulate our loved ones is being encouraged by some of the current pop psychologies. Be more aggressive and intimidating, so you can become top dog, they tell us. But such a view of interpersonal relationships as battleground is tragic, for it produces loneliness.
- The Take-Charge Manipulator: This is the person who must be smarter and stronger than you to be happy with you.
- The Poor-Me Manipulator: This person is the direct opposite of the take-charge type, manipulating by appearing weak.
- The Need -To-Be-Needed Manipulator: If you are not the clutching type, do not congratulate yourself too quickly on your independence until you have enquired: Am i on the other end of such friendships and encourage dependence in others?
- Be cautious with criticism; if it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue.
- a large part of our success at love will depend on our ability to accept human nature as it is.
- Judge not, that ye be not judged.
- Beethoven said, "We all make mistakes, but everyone makes different mistakes,"
- Do not think for a moment that i am urging here that you become a non-assertive blob who agrees with everyone and never expresses an opinion. No, be opinionated. Express your individuality as strongly as you'd like. But be sure to give our friend the same privilege. Assertiveness is okay as long as it is nonpossessive, noninterfering, nondemanding.
- Employ the language of acceptance
- If we can learn to acknowledge the integrity of the personality before us, our relationships will be greatly enhanced. That does not mean that we approve of everything in the other. Acceptance is an entirely different matter.
- Encourage your friends to be unique
- for loosening up of friendships, has to do with the peculiarities of your friends, their eccentricities, their unique dreams. Rather than urging your loved ones to conform, encourage their uniqueness. Everyone has dreams, dreams that no one else has, and you can make yourself loved by encouraging those aspirations.
- Like all virtues carried too far, it is possible for freedom to become a vice. The philosophy,"You do your thing and i'll do mine," if allowed to become the keystone of a relationship, means that you no longer have a relationship. Commitment is also essential. Different people require different amounts of interdependence, and the mix may need to be renegotiated from time to time
- A non possessive friendship will maintain a profound respect for each person's need for privacy. There is such a thing as too much closeness.
- If you get nervous when your best friend spend time with other friends or when a couple you and your mate enjoy excludes you from some of their social activities, you need to be wary of the corroding effects of jealousy. You never have exclusive rights to anyone, and you hobble people if you expect to be the only person who matters to them.
- Clutching behavior comes from overworking and overloading one's relationship. The antidote for jealousy is to expand your own interests and to make friends in several groupings. Your life must encompass multiple interests, passions in many areas, and several relationships if you are to avoid crowding any of your loved ones.
- Be ready for shifts in your friendships.
- the people around us are constantly changing, so healthy relationships must maintain an elasticity in order to accomodate to these shifts.
--- "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis
- don't do things on impulse
- don't 斤斤计较
- i'm just a normal guy
- brainstorming; constructive feedback
Without constant revision or practice, skills which you've learnt or picked up, will get rusty or may be forgotten. Anyway i was passing by Times bookshop a few days ago and i saw a few interesting books about people to people skills. I glanced through them and i tried to search for them at the national library but they weren't available ( i think it's because the books were published quite recently). So, i borrowed a few other books and just started on this book called "The Friendship Factor". The first 2 points of the chapters that i just went through, was to, assign top priority to your relationships and cultivate transparency.
This was the sky on the afternoon my exams ended, when i wanted to go Sentosa, and when i wanted to get a sun tan... :/ We were halfway into the island when there was a slight drizzle for a short while. jr and mj wanted to turn back, but i was quite stubborn and wanted to go to the beach first since we were there. When we reached Tanjong Beach, the slight drizzle appeared again and we could see more dark clouds gathering overhead. And so, we turned back... :/
Just a thought over here... I think most of us can't handle what we really want..
