26 Mar Why ensuring your children are happy is important!
Is there anyone out there who things that a sick and miserable child (or person for that matter) will perform better than a healthy and happy one?
I'm assuming not!
But it's good to know that there's research to support our instincts that happiness and wellbeing are good…for us and for our children.
Today I'm sharing with you an interesting article that refers to some fascinating research in which it was found that happy teenagers are more likely to earn more money later in life! So ensuring our kids are happy is not just good for their health and wellbeing now but also for their future financial security!
That's pretty good!
The article (from the UK's Guardian) begins like this…
Money, as Spike Milligan noted, can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
However, new research suggests that the relationship between happiness and money is far more complex than has been appreciated. Two leading economists claim that happiness makes people earn more, possibly because happier people are more productive and are promoted faster.
Dr Jan-Emmanuel De Neve of University College London and Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University examined the earliest years of thousands of randomly sampled people and found that, even when other factors were taken into account, their happiness levels when young clearly determined the likelihood of whether they would go on to enjoy higher earnings later in life.
The pair's work, the first in-depth investigation into the extent to which happiness is a predictor of income a decade later on, draws on the "life satisfaction" levels of a large sample of adolescents and young adults in America and tracks this against their levels of income later in life.
The results are striking. Their analysis shows, for example, that a one-point increase in life satisfaction (on a scale of five) at the age of 22 is associated with almost $2,000 of higher earnings per annum by the age of 29.
Their study of 90,000 people, to be presented at the Royal Economic Society's annual conference at the University of Cambridge, speculates that one reason for the causal link may be that people with sunny dispositions are more likely to get a degree, get hired and get promoted.
They compare siblings' data to show that happier siblings tend to grow up to earn higher levels of income. Their results, which consider other factors such as education, physical health, genetic variation, IQ, self-esteem and current happiness, show that the effect of individual happiness on income is greater than the widely acknowledged influence of income on happiness.
"These findings have important implications for academics, policy-makers and the general public," the pair write. "For academics, these results reveal the strong possibility for reverse causality between income and happiness – a relationship that most have assumed unidirectional and causal."
…keep reading the full and original article HERE
And then, if you're worried about your child's happiness (especially if you're worried about their fears and anxieties) then check out one of our upcoming workshops for parents of anxious kids. You can find out more HERE but basically, you'll learn that YOU can help your kids gain confidence and happiness by helping them overcome their fears. Again, more details HERE : )
And PS: feel free to spread the word to any other parents you know who might be interested. Thanks in advance.