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Revealed:
Nine ways to find your
inner happiness
Ben McConville in New York
THE pursuit of happiness has become a major
preoccupation of modern life and now scientists have come up with a
nine-point plan to find inner peace.
The Journal of Happiness Studies, a quarterly academic publication
dedicated to finding out what makes the good life and empirically to
investigate well-being, came up with the plan based on the latest
findings.
The first was to stop comparing your looks with others, as you can cash in
on beauty’s emotional high even if you are no oil painting. The secret is
to believe you look great.
The next step is to curb those aspirational desires. Alex Michalos, a
political scientist at the University of Northern British Columbia, in
Prince George, found the people whose aspirations soared furthest beyond
what they already had tended to be less happy than those who perceived a
smaller gap.
Scientists have also found that money can buy happiness, but it doesn’t
buy you very much. Once you can afford to feed, clothe and house yourself,
each extra pound [or dollar] makes less and less difference, said Professor Robert
Frank, an economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
The survey also said not to worry if you are not a genius. Prof. Frank
said, though few surveys have examined whether smart people are happier,
they have usually found that intelligence has no effect.
Happiness is also genetic. Personality, which has a strong genetic
component, and happiness seem to be linked.
 Married people are also consistently happier than singles.
In a 15-year study of more than 30,000 Germans, Prof. Ed Diener, a
psychologist at the University of Illinois, found that happy people are
more likely to get married and stay married.
Harold Koenig, at Duke University Medical Centre in Durham, North
Carolina, said believing in God or an afterlife can give people meaning
and purpose, and reduce the feeling of being alone in the world. He said:
"You see the effect in times of stress. Belief can be a powerful way of
coping with adversity."
Several studies have found a link between happiness and altruistic
behaviour. In a study of 3,617 people, Peggy Thoits and Lyndi Hewitt, of
Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, found that happy people were more
likely to sign up for volunteer work.
The last point is to grow old gracefully. In one study by Stanford
University, in California, old people reported positive emotions as often
as young people but negative emotions much less frequently.
From News.scotsman.com - the Scottish News
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The
Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler
Amazon.co.uk Review
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sit down with the Dalai Lama and
really press him about life's persistent questions? Why are so many people
unhappy? How can I abjure loneliness? How can we reduce conflict? Is romantic
love true love? Why do we suffer? How should we deal with unfairness and anger?
How do you handle the death of a loved one? These are the conundrums that
psychiatrist Howard Cutler poses to the Dalai Lama during an extended period of
interviews in The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. At first, the
Dalai Lama's answers seem simplistic, like a surface reading of Robert Fulghum:
ask yourself if you really need something; our enemies can be our teachers;
compassion brings peace of mind. Cutler pushes: but some people do seem happy
with lots of possessions; but "suffering is life" is so pessimistic; but going
to extremes provides the zest in life; but what if I don't believe in karma? As
the Dalai Lama's responses become more involved, a coherent philosophy takes
shape. Cutler then develops the Dalai Lama's answers in the context of
scientific studies and cases from his own practice, substantiating and
elaborating on what he finds to be a revolutionary psychology. Like any art, the
art of happiness requires study and practice--and the talent for it, the Dalai
Lama assures us, is in our nature. --Brian Bruya
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Excerpts from
The Spirit of Change Magazine website
http://www.spiritofchange.org/fa050602a.shtml
A Call To
Action: Creating a Department of Peace
By Dennis Kucinich
A New Clear Vision
We need to create a new, clear vision
of a world as one. A new, clear vision of people working out their
differences peacefully. A new, clear vision with the teaching of
nonviolence, nonviolent intervention, and mediation. A new, clear
vision where people can live in harmony within their families, their
communities and within themselves. A new clear vision of peaceful
coexistence in a world of tolerance.
We must move away from fear’s
paralysis. This is a call to action: to replace expanded war with
expanded peace. This is a call for action to place the very survival
of this planet on the agenda of all people, everywhere. As citizens of
a common planet, we have an obligation to ourselves and our posterity.
We must demand that our nation and all nations put down the nuclear
sword.
This is the time to organize for peace.
This is the time for new thinking. This is the time to conceive of
peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active
presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness.
This is the time to conceive of peace as respect, trust, and
integrity. This is the time to tap the infinite capabilities of
humanity to transform consciousness which instills violence at a
personal, group, national or international levels. This is the time to
develop a new compassion for others and ourselves.
HR 2459:
Creating a Department of Peace
It is practical to work for peace. I
speak of peace and diplomacy not for the sake of peace itself, but,
for practical reasons, we must work for peace as a means of achieving
permanent security. It is similarly practical to work for total
nuclear disarmament, particularly when nuclear arms do not even come
close to addressing the real security problems which confront our
nation: witness the events of September 11, 2001.
We can make war archaic.
Skeptics may dismiss the possibility that a nation which spends $400
billion a year for military purposes can somehow convert swords into
plowshares. Yet the very founding and the history of this country
demonstrates the creative possibilities of America. We are a nation
which is known for realizing impossible dreams. Ours is a nation which
in its second century abolished slavery, which many at the time
considered impossible. Ours is a nation where women won the right to
vote, which many at the time considered impossible. Ours is a nation
which institutionalized the civil rights movement, which many at the
time considered impossible. If we have the courage to claim peace with
the passion, the emotion and the integrity with which we have claimed
independence, freedom and equality, we can become that nation which
makes nonviolence an organizing principle in our society, and in doing
so change the world.
That is the purpose of HR 2459. It is a
bill to create a Department of Peace. It envisions new structures to
help create peace in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in
our neighborhoods, in our cities and in our nation. It aspires to
create conditions for peace within and to create conditions for peace
worldwide. It considers the conditions which cause people to become
the terrorists of the future -- issues of poverty, scarcity and
exploitation.
Now is the time to think, speak, write,
organize and take action to create peace as a social imperative, as an
economic imperative, and as a political imperative. Now is the time to
think, speak, write, organize, march, rally, hold vigils and take
other nonviolent action to create peace in our cities, in our nation
and in the world. And as the hymn says, “Let there be peace on earth
and let it begin with me.”
This is the work of the human family,
of people all over the world demanding that governments and
non-governmental actors alike put down their nuclear weapons. This is
the work of the human family, responding in this moment of crisis to
protect our nation, this planet and all life within it. We can achieve
both nuclear disarmament and peace. As we understand that all people
of the world are interconnected, we can achieve both nuclear
disarmament and peace. We can accomplish this through upholding a
holistic vision where the claims of all living beings to the right of
survival are recognized. We can achieve both nuclear disarmament and
peace through being a living testament to a Human Rights Covenant
where each person on this planet is entitled to a life where he or she
may consciously evolve in mind, body and spirit.
Nuclear disarmament and peace are the
signposts along the path of an even brighter human condition wherein
we can evolve and reestablish the context of our existence from peril
to peace, from revolution to evolution. Think peace. Speak peace. Act
peace.
Peace.
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