The bird in our name and logo are not there arbitrarily. We chose the bluebird because it has come to symbolize happiness and the arrival of good news. In Russian fairy tales, bluebirds symbolize hope. In some Native American cultures, they represent the promise of spring after winter. Bluebirds make appearances in well-known joy-inspiring songs like Disney's "Zip-a-dee-do-dah," "The Bluebird of Happiness," and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Because delivering good news is integral to who we are, we decided to investigate this topic of happiness. Here is what we found:
Happiness can be cultivated. Is happiness a choice? Maybe, but that might be an oversimplification in the complicated realm of human emotions. Happiness, instead, is something that can be nurtured. Practicing happiness, just like practicing piano or soccer, makes you better at it. In her book "How Emotions are Made," Lisa Feldman Barrett says neuroscientists have changed their views regarding how emotions arise. She suggests that your emotions are not biologically triggered by stimulus. Rather, you create your emotions based on your past experiences. Because of this, you can control your emotional responses by reframing your perceptions, and by doing so frequently and with intention, "your brain grows new connections that make it easier for you to automatically cultivate these emotions in the future." This means that you can create happiness in yourself, even when faced with situations that had previously caused frustration, sadness or duress.
How else can we generate our own happiness? Many researchers have demonstrated that recognizing and appreciating the things we have will bring about feelings of joy. Additionally, there is evidence that experiencing nature causes a sense of well-being and connectedness, and that those who eat right, and exercise regularly are happier. But there are many other, less obvious ways to cultivate happiness. According to Kira Newman, managing editor for Berkley's Greater Good magazine, doing these five "science-backed strategies" every day for a week can generate happiness within you:
Journal about the things that bring you joy. This is a tangible way to practice gratitude, which increases happiness.
Give up something you appreciate. "Subtract" something that you value. Doing so will help you appreciate the things you may be taking for granted.
Meditate on the things that give you purpose. Take pictures of the people and the things around you that bring meaning and purpose to your life. Review the pictures every day.
Identify one of your strengths and find a new way to apply it every day. This can be anything, but some ideas include humility, compassion, humor, and creativity.
Connect with others. Newman says that one of the best ways to foster relationships with others, which has proven to increase happiness, is to practice kindness. Acts of generosity result in greater happiness for the person giving kindness and the one receiving it.
Happiness can be actively called upon and then deliberately used as a tool to navigate the challenges we face in business, and in life, every day. What's more, being happy has benefits beyond just "feeling content."
Happiness can make us healthier. Healthline's article How Being Happy Makes You Healthier explains that happy people:
are 47% more likely to eat fruits and vegetables.
are 33% more active.
have a significantly stronger immune system response.
have 32% lower cortisol (stress hormone) levels.
have lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke
“We know that up to 80% of visits to primary care doctors are due to conditions that are caused or exacerbated by unmanaged stress,” according to psychiatrist Dr. Francoise Adan, director of the Connor Integrative Health Network of University Hospitals. “Being happy doesn’t just make us feel better, it improves our health. It helps us eat healthier, be more active and sleep better.” In fact, the relationship between happiness and health is positively correlated. The greater you have of one, the more you'll have of the other.
Happiness can make us wealthier. Conventional wisdom says that being wealthy makes us happier; studies have shown that people who make more than $75,000 per year generally are. But Sonya Lyumbursky, author of "The How of Happiness," theorizes that 50% of our happiness is genetically pre-determined, and 40% is controlled by us internally. Only 10% is influenced by wealth and other external factors. So although wealth influences happiness, it isn't necessarily a primary driver of it. The movie Happy investigates the poor populations of Calcutta, and finds that these impoverished people have higher levels of joy than most working-class Americans. It also shines a light on Japanese Karoshi, a very real phenomenon of young people in that country literally working themselves to death in the pursuit of success. So the relationship between joy and wealth is not always as one might assume.
On the other hand, scientific evidence strongly supports that the happier we are, the wealthier we will be. Nick Bennett writes in The Secret of Success - Is It Happiness?, "Neuroscience has proven happiness precedes success...with two decades of research backing this up." Bennett explains how feelings of happiness release hormones that increase mental focus and improve problem solving skills. What's more, joy boosts activity in the areas of the brain associated with memory and learning. People work better and experience more success when they are functioning at their highest level.
Lyubomirsky and her research partners Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and Laura King of the University of Missouri published The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success in 2005 in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin Journal. They write, "Happiness causes many of the successful outcomes with which it correlates... It appears that happiness, rooted in personality and in past successes, leads to approach behaviors that often lead to further success." The authors conclude that in addition to being more connected to their communities and having greater altruistic tendencies, happy individuals are also more likely to have high incomes and do better at their jobs.
Happiness is contagious. In another happiness study, this one from 2008,Nicholas Christakis, professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, in collaboration with James Fowler of the University of California, finds that a happy person spreads happiness exponentially. “If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent,” Fowler said. “A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent,” he added. An, the study shows that happiness is more contagious than unhappiness.
Lea Waters, professor at the University of Melbourne, explains how we can channel the power of social media to take full advantage of this phenomenon. She cites research carried out at Tübingen University, where scientists tracked the emotional responses of Facebook users in Germany and the United States. The researchers found that positive posts triggered happiness in 64% of people who read them. Waters writes, "Think of it this way: Your good news positively influences your friends, who in their turn positively influence their friends. With one positive post you can brighten up the day of someone you have never met."
"The pursuit of happiness." Finding a purpose in life also leads to greater joy. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist who was interred in Nazi concentration camps in the 1940s, and his father, mother and wife all perished in these camps. Yet in his final book, "Man's Search for Meaning," Frankl wrote, "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." Frankl believed that we can all identify our life's purpose regardless of what is happening around us, and that it is in the pursuit and fulfillment of our life's purpose that we find contentment. His ability to embrace this philosophy when faced with extreme personal trauma should offer inspiration for all of us to search for the joy regardless of, even because of, our own circumstances.
According to Aristotle, "Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” We are liberated when we free ourselves from the notion that we cannot control our emotional responses to the situations we face in life. We are empowered when we realize that we can cultivate joy in our lives every day. We thrive in a place of fundamental happiness when we choose to embrace and actively chase our unique purpose in life. To put it another way, pursuing happiness IS happiness, and both of these things are the greatest measure of human success.
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