Archive for: Our Happiness Blog

When you bump into your friend at the grocery store, how do you treat them? You’re probably smiling just because you’re happy to see them. Maybe you ask them how they are and have a question about some important detail of their life. You probably maintain pretty good eye contact while you’re talking and your voice has genuine enthusiasm. All signs that you are glad to be with them in that moment. Now – how do you treat your significant other when you reunite at the end of the day? Do you have that same genuine curiosity, enthusiasm, and desire to engage? Do you make that consistent eye contact, smile as broadly, and focus on one of their important details? So often we get into small habits with our partner that maintain ease and convenience but not self-esteem or happiness. Try it tonight. Engage with your partner as you might someone else you’re not quite as intimate and comfortable with.

Before Kodak came out with the Brownie – the first inexpensive, portable camera – in 1900, people didn’t tend to smile for pictures because getting your picture taken was a lengthy process. Plus it wasn’t considered dignified and respected, which was important to people who could afford photographs. Kodak brought quick photography to the masses by making it affordable and then marketing it as a way to capture happy moments. Kodak’s slogans (“Vacation days are Kodak days” and “Save your happy moments with a Kodak”) helped turn the idea of photography into something that could be – and should be – enjoyed by everyone. Everyone except Mark Twain: “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.”

Sounds like Mark Twain would’ve been a fan of the smize.

Sorry Tyra. Long before you coined the term “smize,” French physician Guillaume Duchenne taught us about smiling with our eyes. In the 1800’s he determined that during a real smile (or Duchenne smile), certain tiny eye muscles move in particular ways. Studies show we’re not actually that good at distinguishing between Duchenne and fake smiles, and now that everyone knows about smizing how will we ever figure out who genuinely likes us? No worries! Here’s a Quick Reference Guide to Smiling:

Duchenne Smile: mouth pulls to the sides and up, crow’s feet appear, eyebrows are slightly pulled down

Fake Smile: only the mouth moves

The Smize: mouth doesn’t move, eyes get a bit squinty and really intense. Fierce!

If you still want to nail The Smize and just can’t get it, don’t worry. Tyra came out with an app that Smizes your photos for you.

People often come to therapy because they feel like they’re messing up somehow – in relationships, at their job, at life in general. That awareness is important but we also need to know what we’re doing right. In fact, it might be even more important to know our strengths so that we can make the most of them. Do you know yours? The VIA Institute on Character offers a free strengths profile because research shows that using your strengths leads to greater happiness and life satisfaction. They share a lot of research about how using your strengths leads to greater self-esteem, immediate and long-term improvement in mood, positive work attitude, cognitive well-being, more hope, an increase in academic engagement, a higher rate of employment, and a decrease in depression and stress. So start paying attention to what you do well – after all, you can’t use your strengths intentionally if you don’t know what they are!

Hope. We think of it as a critical component to warding off depression, as a thing happy people have easy access to. And to a great extent that is true. But there’s a limit to how much hope is helpful. This study shows how unrealistic hope can be harmful and prevent us from reaching true happiness. People who believed that a permanent medical condition was temporary reported less happiness in the aftermath of the procedure than people who believed it was permanent and had to accept it. It demonstrates the importance of acceptance in the face of things we can’t change. When you think something bad will go away you tend to spend time focusing on how happy you’ll be when it’s better. When you accept that this thing is here to stay you figure out how to be happy now.

It snowed last night, which is unusual for this area. For many of us, at this point in our lives a “snow day” means frustration and inconvenience: canceling important work meetings, trying to keep children (and yourself) from going stir-crazy , canceling flights, making do with what you have in the fridge because you didn’t think the roads would be that bad, trying to get to a hotel because your electricity went out, seeing your smashed magnolia. Although I know all this, I felt a real excitement last night when I saw the snow start to fall. And based on Facebook, it’s true for others, too. There’s a residual sense of magic for me after knowing for all my childhood years that snow = snow day = awesome! It doesn’t make sense anymore, but it doesn’t have to. This particular example might not fit you, but I bet you have some leftover childhood magic somewhere. Look around inside and when you find it hold on as tight as you can. It’s a real gift, feeling happy despite the facts.

For a day that is all about love, Valentine’s Day sure elicits a lot of negative feelings. Poll after poll suggests that if people celebrate it they do so out of a sense of obligation rather than any Valentine’s Day spirit. I get it. No one likes the implication that if they don’t buy just the right cheesy card or expensive chocolates then they’re not a loving partner. Or if you’re single, the day might just serve as a reminder of that. But love doesn’t have to be about candy or well-rhymed sentiments to one special person. In positive psychology, Love is identified as a character strength in which one “values close relationships with reciprocal caring and sharing.” It falls under the virtue of Humanity which is defined as “interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others.” So what if you made the holiday about caring and sharing and tending and befriending everyone you care about? At least this rhyme is supported by positive psychology instead of Hallmark. Hugs are free and unlimited. Hand them out generously this Valentine’s Day.

GO TO BED, AMERICA. As a country we’ve racked up a pretty impressive sleep debt. I won’t bother with statistics here (but Gallup did here) because there are different ways to count sleep hours and different age groups need different amounts of sleep and every individual is different anyway so it’s actually pretty hard to make a statistic meaningful to the individual in this case. What’s meaningful is – do YOU feel like you’re getting enough sleep? Do you sometimes want to take a little midday nap? Science would support you even if your boss wouldn’t. This study shows that people who take an afternoon nap are less sensitive to negative emotions and more sensitive to positive ones, and the people who muscled through their day napless had the opposite experience. And then of course the napless group tended to have a lower mood towards the end of their day whereas the nappers had a decrease in negative mood, which any parent of a napping-age child could have predicted. So, go to the search box at the top right of this page and search “sleep” to read a few cardinal rules about how to get it, and then GO TO BED. GOOD NIGHT!

Have you ever wondered what happens when the alpha male gorilla kicks it? Me neither, because it’s obvious – another male gorilla steps up and becomes leader. But did you know that within a few days that gorilla’s body chemistry has changed? Leaders across the board (of species and professions) typically have high testosterone and low cortisol. In other words, a high level of dominance hormone and a low level of stress hormone. Confident and cool-headed – great leader characteristics. Whether you’re a gorilla or a human, changing roles can change your body chemistry (which means you’ll feel different physically and emotionally). And here’s a neat behavioral bit for those of us who like a quick fix (who doesn’t?): your posture can also change your body chemistry. Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist at the Harvard Business School, ran an experiment on physical poses that demonstrated their influence on our chemistry, behavior, and emotions. People who assumed high-power poses for two minutes experienced an increase in testosterone and a decrease in cortisol and displayed greater confidence and risk-taking behavior than people who adopted low-power poses for two minutes. So as you wait for your job interview to start you might choose to sneak into a bathroom stall and stand like Wonder Woman for a couple of minutes. Then wait for the job offers to roll in!