Happiness is an attitude—one that most people strive for. Many studies have shown that you can choose to have a happy or positive attitude . Whether or not you are happy has little to do with the traditional factors people usually connect with happiness. Happiness doesn’t seem to have much to do with a person’s age, gender, occupation, or wealth. 1 What makes for a happy, posi- tive attitude? Psychologist David Myers lists four characteristics that happy people do all seem to have in common. 2
1. Healthy self-esteem. Start liking yourself more and you will be happier.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? The point is that whatever works to increase your self-esteem—such as the strategies you’ve read in previous chapters—will be the same strategies that will improve your overall attitude of happiness.
2. Optimism. Happy people are hope-filled. Several studies have shown that optimistic people are both happier and physically healthier than less optimistic people. Optimists are more likely to cope with their problems better than pessimists, and are less likely to become ill. 3 In fact, researchers have found that traits like optimism and hope–and associated higher levels of happiness and satisfaction with one’s life–
were linked with reductions in the risk of heart disease and stroke. 4 Optimists tend to try to find solutions to their problems; they rely on
social support from others to help them through rough times; and they look for positives—the cloud’s silver lining—in problem situations. 5
attitude
An evaluation of people, ideas, issues, situations, or objects.
positive attitude A position from healthy self-esteem, optimism, extraversion, and personal control.
Measuring optimism is one way to measure a person’s likelihood of success, according to psychologists. How you handle setbacks is a good indicator of how well you will succeed in school, sports, and work. The test below shows you some examples of questions psychologists might ask to find out whether or not you are able to bounce back from a setback such as a poor grade or an unsuccessful sale.
For each of the following situations, pick the response that more closely matches your own, and rate your optimism. (a 5 10 points; b 5 20 points)
1. Your credit card statement shows a $200 charge you did not make. What would you do?
A. Pay the bill and do nothing about it because you feel it would be a waste of time, and the credit card company wouldn’t believe you anyway.
B. Think they made an error, call the company to notify them of the mistake, and tell them that you won’t be paying that portion of the bill.
2. Your vacation week begins tomorrow, and you have a special trip planned, but you feel like you might be getting sick. What would you do?
A. Assume that your vacation is ruined, because this is just your luck. You call your travel agent and cancel the trip, forfeiting your airfare.
B. Take some vitamins and get to bed early with the expectation that you will feel better in the morning.
3. On your way to work, you get a flat tire. What would you do?
A. Panic while you’re driving and barely miss hitting another car as you pull over to the curb, feeling sure that you will get in trouble at work for being late.
B. Tell yourself to keep calm, slow down, pull over to the curb, and proceed to change your tire if you know how; or you look for the nearest phone to call for assistance. You tell yourself these things happen to everybody.
4. Your home computer crashes, and you have a final paper due the very next morning. What would you do?
A. Kick your computer and then get depressed, knowing that your instructor will not understand and will probably give you an F.
B. Call a friend to see if you can use his or her computer to finish your paper.
If that isn’t possible, you plan to ask your instructor for an extension of the deadline until you can use another computer at school, realizing that this situation was not your fault.
5. You’ve just been interviewed for a job, and you have all the necessary skills the company requires. What do you expect will happen?
A. You are sure you won’t get the job, because the interviewer didn’t respond well to you when you fumbled while answering one of the questions.
B. You believe you have a good chance of getting the job, because even though the interviewer doesn’t know you well, you are qualified and you answered all the questions reasonably well.
What was your score? If it was 80–100 points, you are probably able to handle setbacks and rejections. People who see setbacks as permanent and pervasive are more pessimistic, more likely to feel helpless, and more likely to give up without resolving a problem.
figure 4.1
HOW OPTIMISTIC ARE YOU?
Your level of optimism will indicate your ability to “bounce back”
from obstacles, even catastrophes—and will increase your likelihood of success. How optimistic are you?
Test Your Optimism
A Positive Attitude
In a study at the National Institute on Aging, researchers found that regardless of changes in occupation, marital status, or location, people who were happy at the beginning of the study were also happy at the end, 10 years later. 6
mo re a b o u t... By contrast, pessimists do not seem to cope with problems as well as optimists do. They tend to deny that problems exist, and they focus on their negative feelings instead of on solving their problems. 7 A lot of evidence suggests that pessimism is related to poor health. In one example, Harvard graduates who were rated the most pessimistic when interviewed in 1946 were also the least healthy people of those interviewed 34 years later. In another study, college students who were more pessimistic reported more symptoms of pain and illness over the course of a semester than optimistic students. 8 In a study of people who had coronary bypass surgery, pessimistic patients were in the hospital longer than optimists, and took longer to get back to their normal activities than optimists. 9 The most dangerous kind of pessimism is hopelessness. Feeling
hopeless leads to feeling helpless, which leads to giving up. Hopelessness can even be deadly: In one study, men in Finland who reported feeling moderately hopeless or very hopeless had a death rate two to three times higher than men who reported feeling little or no hopelessness. 10 Imagine that you have just been told that your position at work is
going to be eliminated. How do you feel? After the shock wears off, you probably feel angry and frustrated, but then what? You may begin to feel depressed, hopeless, and helpless. While you are feeling this way, on what are you focused? Most likely, your focus is on yourself and your negative emotions, and not on what to do about losing your job. Your self-esteem may suffer as a result of your depression. You may internalize your nega- tive feelings instead of looking for productive ways to find another job.
It’s not surprising that people with this negative focus on their feelings begin to have physical symptoms of illness and stress. Chapter 14 will examine stress and the body’s reaction to stress in greater detail.
3. Extraversion. The third component of a good attitude is extraversion. An extravert is an outgoing person—one whose behavior is directed out- ward toward others. As the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung said, behavior of extraverts is directed to the objects in the external world. 11 Notice, though, that this factor is also very directly related to one’s level of self- esteem. People who feel comfortable in new situations and who feel cer- tain that others will accept them are usually people with relatively high self-esteem. These people will most likely be relatively happy at work and in their personal lives.
Indeed, the secrets to effectiveness and happiness at work may very well be as simple as communication, friendship, and social interaction among colleagues, say research scientists from Sociometric Solutions, a manage- ment consulting firm that has studied workplace dynamics. 12 When we are happy, it ripples well beyond our colleagues at work or inner circle of friends and family. And as we age, having regular interactions with a wide
extraversion
Characteristic of a happy attitude in which a person’s behavior is directed outward, toward others.
Extrovert or Extravert?
Many people spell extrovert with an “o,”
but the “a” spelling was originally used by the renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who coined both extravert and introvert. Because of this book’s focus on his teachings, his spellings will be used.
mo re a b o u t...
circle of friends has a significant impact on psycho- logical well-being well into our middle years. 13 Some might wonder, “Can we reap the same
benefits of extraversion on the Internet,” where a person might have a large number of “online friends” through social networking Web sites such as Facebook or Google 1 ? Surprisingly, researchers studying a sample of 5,000 Canadians found that real-life friends have a very large impact on one’s level of happiness, while there is no such impact from the size of one’s online network; further, the research-
ers found that doubling the number of real-life friends has an effect on well-being equivalent to a 50 percent increase in income. 14 The conclu- sion: Interaction with real- life friends makes you happier.
4. Personal control. The fourth component of a good attitude is a feeling of personal control . In Chapter 2, you learned about an internal and external locus of control. This is the idea that you believe either that you are respon- sible for your own situations and life events (internal locus of control);
or that other people, luck, chance, or fate are in charge of the events in your life (external locus of control). A person with a positive attitude is more likely to have an internal locus of control. Happy people control their own destinies: They control their own futures. They plan and manage their time well. When someone else controls your choices, either large or small, your happiness will probably diminish.
Health psychologist Judith Rodin conducted research with nursing home residents on control and choices over many years. She found that those who were able to make their own choices about simple things, such as decorating their rooms with plants, were sick less often and actually lived longer than residents who had less control over their lives. 15
personal control The power people have over their destinies.
Happiness
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.”—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
Source: Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Out of Life. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1960, p. 92.
mo re a b o u t...
The characteristics of happy, positive people are helpful to know, but beyond just knowing about these attributes, there are specific actions you can take to achieve a more positive attitude.
Dr. David G. Myers says that by acting happy, you can actually help yourself become happier. Does that sound too simple? When things happen to you, as they do every day—things over which you have no control—you choose how to react.
Many people are quick to blame the other per- son, the situation, or their own physical condition when things go wrong. People make the choice of the reactions they feel. Myers is simply suggesting that making the choice to act happy, and doing so on a regular basis, will go a long way to improving
your overall attitude. 16