My research paper for the last term when I was in the art fundies. Enjoy!
Is it possible to become happier in 30 days?
Eva Jaworowski
Abstract
The main question of this research paper is if some people are doomed by their life circumstances to live unhappy life and what contributes really to the feeling of happiness, and how can we influence it. Work of various psychologists and researchers was examined in an attempt to answer this question. Our findings show that happiness can be achieved no matter what our circumstances are. It starts with a simple way of changing our thinking patterns. Hope, gratitude and forgiveness play an essential role in achieving happiness. They have the power to motivate to action needed to change circumstances and attain goals that are important and vital to the genuine feeling of happiness and life satisfaction. Although, positive thinking is very important it is only the starting point. Goals and dreams need to be achieved by the individual, to create the feeling of fulfillment. As humans beings we need 30 days to create new habits. Although this research doesn’t focus on creating new habits, we assume that it is then possible to change our lives forever in 30 days by changing our thoughts. Our environment has a big impact on our thinking, but it is the way we interpret the events happening in our life that decides on how we feel. At the end, no matter what are the circumstances are, everyone can feel happy. The battle for happiness starts in the mind.
In the Disney movie “Wreck it Ralph” (Moore, 2012) the main character lives inside a retro game in which he has a role of a bad guy. He lives in a dump, and literally he does live on a pile of garbage, where he returns every day after the end of the game. Meanwhile other characters in the game live happily ever after in a luxurious condo just meters away from Ralph’s poor and unhappy conditions. Ralph is very unhappy with his life. He joins a focus group for bad characters during which he is being told that “ we can’t change who we are and the sooner you accept that the better off your game and your life will be.” (Moore, 2012) Without enthusiasm he repeats after others: ”I’m bad, and that’s good. I will never be good, and that’s not bad. There’s no one I’d rather be than me.” (Moore, 2012) He is not convinced though. He doesn’t want to be a bad guy anymore. After all, good guys get everything. During that meeting he decides to change his life and do anything to join others in the condo. He decides to go “Turbo” which means to leave the game. The move has been named after one character called Turbo who did that exact same thing and by his act caused his game to be disconnected. On his quest to earn friendship of his game buddies, Ralph encounters new adventures, makes accidental friends and… changes his life. The change is not the one you would expect. Ralph comes back to the game where finally nobody is scared of him and is happy to see him, but he still plays the role of a bad guy. On the surface, nothing in Ralph’s life has changed, only the way he started to see things around him. And now, being a bad guy who is tossed from the top of the building is his favorite moment in the game. Although his circumstances hadn’t changed much, Ralph’s life became satisfying and happy.
In life, it seems, some people face more adversities then others. Are they because of that doomed to live desperate lives? They might lack family, fathers, mothers, they might have been abused, bullied, affected by poverty, they maybe lost their child, brother or sister, they’re in poor health or even disabled. These people have many reasons to be unhappy. On the other side there are those who seem to have it all. They possess fame, money, beauty, careers and they are not happy. It is not enough. So what is enough? Why some can be happy having nothing, and some simply cannot?
To be able to answer this question, Happiness needs to be defined. What is this elusive, magical thing that some seem to possess and have a key into, and some are trying to desperately catch it throughout their lives and still it slips out of their hands? According to Bo Jacobsen, there are two types of happiness: ordinary happiness or bliss, and real or genuine happiness (Jacobsen, 2007).
By ordinary happiness, Jacobsen means “a brief state of mind during which the individual feels that all essential needs have been fulfilled and that all essential goals have been reached. The individual feels fulfilled and in some cases even merged with the surroundings or nature”. (Jacobson, p.39) Genuine happiness, according to Jacobson definition is “a durable state of balance between the individual’s wishes, goals, and needs on the one hand, and the surroundings or the world on the other. This state is associated with well-being, serenity and relaxation.”(Pg.39)
In his article (Jacobsen, 20017) he wonders if psychological research could be used by world’s leaders to implement a better life satisfaction – to sort of program happiness – into minds of people, ideology supported by many mental health professionals. Could countries leaders make policies that would affect in a positive way mental health? He proceeds then to explaining what make individuals happy and satisfied with their own lives. Jacobsen explores the role of therapist in client’s quest for happiness but argues that it is not the therapist’s responsibility to make the client happy.
The Jacobsen’s article is though a very thorough exploration of happiness. It gives a good light on all aspects of happiness: spiritual, materialistic, personal and how individual interpretation of events affects happiness. He talks about how happiness is perceived in psychology and sociology and the types of researches that have been done to measure happiness. Jacobsen’s angle in which he approaches happiness is that of a counselor towards client, so his exploration of happiness is deep. He looks at happiness from all possible views, not neglecting anything. He argues that the role of counselor is to help client find happiness, provide him all the tools needed, because, he believes they do exist. In a way, he thinks, you can implant happiness into the mind of a human.
The one thing that Jacobsen fails to explore is which is more important: positive mindset or positive events. Jacobsen doesn’t put much focus into that and doesn’t intend to provide answer to this question.
Based on that, it’s clear though that happiness requires some physical manifestation. One’s goals and wishes need to be fulfilled in order for the feeling of happiness and satisfaction to be created. Certain actions must be taken to obtain goals. One has to move out of the couch and start doing something to be happy. Everyone have different set of goals and dreams, and we all know too well what we want in life. And when we are unhappy, we know sometimes too well why. Still many people are unable to turn things around and pursue happiness effectively. They lack motivation.
So what then makes people to go and achieve their goals?
According to Pinches, “hope moves us to action” (2017). Wilson and Somhlaba, who defined hope “as goal-directed thinking in which a person expresses intent to achieve certain goals, accompanied by the necessary motivation and possible pathways for goal attainment” (2016), noted connection between hope and life satisfaction. They analyzed the relation between hope and resilience in the face of adversity. Hope is the opposite of despair. One needs to see and believe in a good future ahead to be able to live and overcome adversities. Wilson and Somhlaba found the importance of hope and how it plays out in individual’s life in challenging conditions. Through their research, they found that supportive family and friends play an important role in the experience of life satisfaction. People need to be motivated and encouraged. They need someone to say something good about them. They need positive environment to grow hope, to start believing that they are able to achieve what they want. Often times a therapist can motivate his patient to action by installing hope. Bo Jacobson talks about it in his paper but he notices as well that it is not a therapist’s responsibility to make his patient happy (2007).
The other thing that influences happiness is hopelessness. It is simply absence of hope. It is very dangerous and damaging state of mind. It is hard to truly see the importance of hope if the effects of hopelessness are not clear. One might think that being in despair is linked to being simply unhappy, to bad events in our lives, or some other circumstances, but according to Pinches who states that “hope is a good habit by which we move forward toward a future good that is both possible and difficult to attain” (Pinches, 2017) we can draw a conclusion that hopelessness is a habit too: a bad one. Habitual way of thinking that nothing ever will improve. According to Thomas Aquinas, as cited by Pinches, despair is the biggest sin, because it “consists in a man ceasing to hope for a share of God’s goodness” (2017). And though Aquinas was a religious man, his words have universal truth to it. There’s something dead in a person in despair. Pinches tells the story of the chief of the Crow Nation who before his death simply said to his biographer: “ When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” (2017) How terrible these words sound! There is a loss of hope, a complete hopelessness, but as well there’s no will to fight. And that lack of will to fight is most terrifying. It’s like someone sat there, and waited for their death. And there’s a beautiful world around them, so many opportunities in it, different maybe from what they envisioned, but still present, waiting to be achieved. Despair is the silent killer of mind and body. It’s like an aggressive deadly virus.
It seems like some people are more prone to this destructive way of thinking then others. Satici and Uysal call it a psychological vulnerability (2017). Individuals with this type of vulnerability are more affected by unfortunate life. They somehow take it in harder. They experience more problems, bigger stress and lot of negative emotions. The worst thing is that over time, psychological vulnerability reduces resiliency and capacity to handle stressful life events (2017). Satici and Uysal through their research found that “psychological vulnerability was negatively linked with forgiveness and gratitude” and positively linked with hopelessness (2017). They as well, as Pinches, confirmed that hope was a good predictor of person’s happiness.
We can say that hopelessness is a pattern of negative thinking habits where individual expects the worst outcome possible, or doesn’t expect that what he wishes for will happen.
Interesting is correlation of hopelessness with lack of gratitude and forgiveness. Why would lack of forgiveness cause us to loose hope? Is it because it destroys relationships, causes mistrust and breaks our faith in goodness? After all, we can experience a power of forgiveness when we do actually decide to show mercy. To do that, we have to rise above the situation, be a grown up, be a person that sees a bigger picture. If we fail to do that, we set ourselves on a path of a small minded, bitter person, expecting only the worst in others. And what kind of feeling is that, being surrounded by enemies? And then, there’s blame. We can probably go on and on this train of negative thoughts and emotions and we will find many of them. Separately they are innocent and meaningless, but together they can create a powerful and deadly monster. Psychologists today encourage people to practice forgiveness. (Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/forgiveness). It is well known fact now that bitterness and contempt is very unhealthy for body and soul and people are encouraged to move on past these negative emotions.
Wreck-It Ralph in the movie had to do few things to change his life. And the first step he took was in his head, by acknowledging that he, in fact, is not happy. He then pursed his happiness. He had to forgive his friends in the game for treating him badly by isolating him and being unfriendly. He changed his perspective. Positive thinking is not enough to acquire happiness, though it is a good start. Unhappiness is like a turning wheel that spins faster and faster.
Saricam in his article about meta cognition and happiness cites Seligman’s authentic happiness theory according to which “happiness is the sum of a set range, circumstances, and factors under voluntary control.” (Saricam, 2015) Range we can understand as something that cannot be changed, circumstances would be things such as education, family, getting married or any other event, and third would be an interaction with different activities performed with effort. The last one is especially interesting, as Aquinas, cited by Pinches, believed that laziness causes hopelessness. (Pinches, 2015)
Positivity has an enormous impact on life. It is associated with self-esteem; satisfaction with life one is living and optimism. Caprara and his colleagues (Caprara, , Eisneberg, & Alessandri, 2017) study suggests that positive outlook on life and positive interpretation of life events has chronic positive affectivity across time. Positive thinking causes a chain reaction of pleasurable interactions with the environment that has been identified as a key indicator of life satisfaction and happiness. They introduce the label POS to refer to way people see their life, kind of looking at world through pink eyeglasses. These people will see mostly everything with positive emotions. Caprara and his colleagues use a word “color” the events. They further investigate how this positive coloring affects people in the long run. According to their research it becomes a habit. The idea in which people can have better life only if they will change their thinking is not new, but they try to find how some of us acquire it. They look into early development and follow through adulthood, influence of external factor like family and such.
Their findings are as they point to the idea that individual happiness is not so much dependent on circumstances but rather on how things and events are being interpreted by individual. Caprara and his colleagues through their study found that positive affectivity has no effect on positive thinking – even with little adversity in life someone could be severely depressed.
Summarizing we can say that we do have control over our life, the way we feel and how much happiness we feel. It takes away reasoning some might have: if only I had better parents, if only I was rich, if only I could have this and that. Caprara and his colleagues research points to something very important: positive events in life are very nice and important. They are not to be omitted or treated with disrespect; however, it is not what happens to us dictates our happiness level. It really begins in our minds and minds operates by habitual patterns which can be change, as some say in only 30 days.
To be happy, a person needs to change negative-thinking patterns to positive and work on growing hopeful and thankful attitude to life. Right after certain actions needs to be taken toward completing simple but meaningful goals in individual’s life. This will grow hope in individual’s mind and encourage him/her to more effective engagement with activities that would improve overall life satisfaction. If we can believe that humans can change any habit in 30 days, then it is possible to change the bad habit of hopelessness into good one of practicing hope and forgiveness.
Refrences
Caprara, G., Eisenberg, N., & Alessandri, G. (2017). Positivity: The Dispositional Basis of Happiness. Journal Of Happiness Studies, 18(2), 353-371. doi:10.1007/s10902-016-9728-y
Gorka, A. X., LaBar, K. S., & Hariri, A. R. (2016). Variability in emotional responsiveness and coping style during active avoidance as a window onto psychological vulnerability to stress. Physiology & Behavior, 15890-99. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2016.02.036
Jacobsen, B. (2007). What is Happiness?. Existential Analysis: Journal Of The Society For Existential Analysis, 18(1), 39-50.
http://login.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=24478440&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Moore, R (2012) Wreck-It Ralph https://itun.es/ca/leRBI
Pinches, C. R. (2017). How to live in hope. Christian Century, 134(15), 22-25. http://login.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.library.sheridanc.on.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=124033761&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/forgiveness
Satici, S. A. , & Uysal, R. (2017). Psychological Vulnerability and Subjective
Happiness: The Mediating Role of Hopelessness. Stress & Health: Journal Of The International Society For The Investigation Of Stress, 33(2), 111-118. doi: 10.1002/smi.2685
Wilson, A., & Somhlaba, N. Z. (2016). Psychological Well-Being in a Context of
Adversity: Ghanaian Adolescents’ Experiences of Hope and Life Satisfaction. Africa Today, 63(1), 85-103.
doi:10.2979/africatoday.63.1.04