Happy

The 2011 Documentary that explores human happiness through interviews with people from all walks of life in 14 different countries, weaving in the newest findings of Positive Psychology

Have any of you seen this documentary? I just happened to notice it was newly added to Netflix and gave it a shot. I was a science major in school, Neuroscience actually, and despite all of the many available elective Neuroscience courses I was able to choose from, there wasn't a single course that taught about human happiness. The science of Happiness seems to be a newer science that is becoming more and more the rage these days, which makes sense, as it seems a lot of people are struggling with happiness.

Priorities

In our society there is a lot of push, push, push to make more money, be more successful, drive better cars, be more thin, etc. and I think that keeps us from enjoying the things that we have accomplished and instead, leads us to feel the pressure and stress to keep pushing to the next level or the next goal. That is not happiness.

I am not saying I am not guilty of this, because trust me I am. I did get my degree in Neuroscience and after school I got my first job, which paid about the same as I would have been making had I not gone to school, had I not put four years of work into getting a degree, but in this instance I now had to kick a lot of the money that I was making back to the Government to pay off a small fraction of my student loan debt. This was in no way sufficient.

After three years, I switched to my second job and fortunately with that switch came a bump in my salary...honestly at a time where I really needed it. And now I feel I make a pretty fair salary, fair would be a bit more, but I REALLY just want more. I am not comfortable and I want to feel comfortable for the point I am at in life, and by comfortable I mean that I can pay all of my bills and still have some money to put into savings and hell, enough to go on a vacation. 

Photo via Google images

Next stop is going back to school, getting my first job in my "career" which would come with a pay bump, but also higher student loan payments, likely a house, maybe kids? I do have a goal of what my definition of being "financially comfortable" is and it is probably lower than you would think but even then, will I still want more or will I stop to smell the proverbial roses?

Hedonic Treadmill Theory

According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness. So once you make more money, you adapt to that level of lifestyle and then once again, want more money. Can you see this happening in yourself? Affecting your relationships or can you see money and the stress of making more money affecting relationships around you? I bet you can. I can.

Photo via Google images

This documentary counters that other things actually affect your level of happiness:
1. Personal Growth

2. Relationships

3. Giving back

This makes total sense to me.  I used to work as a Nursing Assistant at a Nursing Home and it is the most fulfilling job I have ever had.  Why? People always said things like, "Disgusting, I could never do that," but despite the cons, which I never really thought of or noticed, because they never really bothered me, what I was doing was making a difference.  I was helping people who sometimes were all alone in the world, who had dementia and truly could not take care of themselves, or people who were going through the process of dying and the stages that go along with accepting that they were going to dye.  Now, these people maybe didn't always notice or appreciate me, in fact a lot of the residents hated the staff quite a bit, and there was no other recognition really for caring for these people or for going the extra mile, but it really felt so amazing to me.

Photo via Google images

And of course, personal growth and relationships, those are easy to see how they could so strongly affect your happiness.  I think this documentary is missing another huge factor that affects happiness, or maybe this is part of personal growth, but gratitude. Gratitude reminds you of all of the positive things in your life and can help you change your whole mindset and can turn the things you think are bad parts of your life into good parts of your life. Hate your job? Be grateful that you have a job, some people don't.  Feeling positive about having a job is a heck of a lot better than carrying around the anger of hating your job, right?

Now, I can't say that this information is new to me, because it's not.  Even though there weren't any Neuro courses that involved happiness and the pursuit of happiness available to me in school, there were some excellent Psychology courses that did.  Despite knowing this information, I haven't really applied any of it to my life, even now when my goal this year was to work on my happiness.  So I am grateful that I happened to be pursuing the newly added section on Netflix today and came across Happy.  Check it out and let me know what you think, or let me know what affects your happiness.

XO Arie