Dont Worry Be Happy

Happiness is the thing we want most in life. However some people misunderstood on trying to live a happy life. In fact, we experience a wide range of feelings on a daily basis. To be happy is neither denying negative emotions nor pretending to feel joyful all the time.

As emotional beings, to feel anger, sadness and frustration is very natural. Negative emotions – such as fear and anger – help us to get away from danger or defend ourselves. Otherwise positive emotions – such as enjoyment and hope – help us to connect with others and build our capacity to cope when things go wrong.

Happiness therefore is about being able to make the most of the good times – but also to cope effectively with the inevitable bad times, in order to experience the best possible life overall.

Happiness is not only produce good feelings, it actually leads to a wide range of benefits for our performance, health, relationships and so much more.

For example, economists at Warwick University showed different groups of people either a positive film clip or a neutral film clip and then asked them to carry out standard workplace tasks under paid conditions. The people who were primed to feel happy were 12% more productive than their peers, even after controlling for age, IQ and other factors.

In education, schools that focus on children’s social and emotional wellbeing experience significant gains in academic attainment as well as improvements in pupil behaviour. Happiness has also been linked to better decision-making and improved creativity. So, let’s take a look on our public school programs, are they make our children happy? Mr Newbie Minister of Education, are you sure to deliver the “full day school program?” Just make sure our children really feel happy, although some research says that more school hours don’t guarantee better test scores. 

So, rather than success being the key to happiness, research shows that happiness could in fact be the key to success.

There is even evidence that happiness is contagious, so that happier people help others around them to become happier too.  In other words, how happy we are has a measurable impact on the mood of our friend’s friend’s friend.