17 Jul 3 fascinating happiness stories from around the world
From Fox News…Happiness and Sadness May Literally Be Infectious
The study measured changes in people_ã_s emotional states over time by using a model developed to track patterns of how infectious diseases like SARS spread, TheStar.com reported.
Researchers from Harvard University used data collected from a long-term project called The Framingham Heart Study, which has tracked the social and medical information of thousands in Framingham Mass., every two years since 1948.
The participants, who totaled 1,880 when the study began, rated their emotional state as content, discontent or neutral at each visit. Their emotional states were monitored for changes over time and the researchers specifically focused on how changes in one person were affected by the emotions of those that they came into contact with.
The results suggested that happiness and sadness are contagious over long periods of time…READ MORE HERE
And here’s a great story from the Mosman Daily about someone who’s spreading happiness in her own wonderful way…
ANTHEA Krook is serving up happiness – one spoonful at a time.
The 27-year-old Kirribilli resident is the creator of Spoonful, a pocket-sized _ã–zine_ã that gives readers a quick dollop of happiness that can be consumed by the end of a bus ride.
Krook said Spoonful was inspired by her own busy lifestyle.
_ã–There were so many things I wanted to read,_ã she said. _ã–I felt like I wasn_ã_t finishing anything, ever. That_ã_s why I made Spoonful._ã Before creating Spoonful, Krook worked as a graphic designer for five years. Now she divides her time between freelance design and writing, and working on her zine.
_ã–I like being a designer as long as I_ã_m doing something else too,_ã Krook said.
_ã–I guess I have a short attention span._ã
Krook said the response to the zine had been unexpected and _ã–sort of ridiculous_ã. All 500 copies of the first issue sold out, and issue two seems to be heading down the same path.
Krook said she printed 300 copies of issue one, in case nobody liked it.
_ã–I thought, _ãÄIf no one buys them that_ã_s only three small boxes (of unsold zines) that I have to look at for the rest of my life,_ã she said.
_ã–Those sold like hotcakes in five seconds – which was amazing and exciting. It_ã_s really sort of been embraced by the creative community._ã Spoonful is divided into a few staple sections, with a common thread of happiness. The Enhancing the Everyday section is about showing the special side of ordinary, attainable things.
Objects of Affection features a random object that makes you smile. Spilt Milk is a _ã–vitally important section_ã about the positive side of failure.
_ã–We call it a happiness companion – that_ã_s the byline. It_ã_s meant to be something there to remind you (to be happy),_ã Krook said.
CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
And finally, from World Changing, a more political article about happiness that doesn’t cost the earth…
Nic Marks founded the Center for Well-Being, a consultancy that tries to expand definitions of social and governmental progress to include broader quantitative and qualitative measures of well-being.
Martin Luther King didn_ã_t say, _ã–I have a nightmare._ã Marks_ã_s dream, he tells us, is that we_ã_ll focus less on the nightmare and more on the dream. Modern film making is almost always about catastrophe _ã_ he references The Road, a bleak, post-apocalyptic film.
The environmental movement has gotten very good at using fear. But fear leads to a flight reaction, and scares people away. We need a better way to get people to engage.
When we think about positive visions of the future, we have a tendency to keep score in economic terms. But this is a vision based around greed. We_ã_ve got enough, at least in developed societies. Our accounting systems track what we produce, but they don_ã_t track what_ã_s really important.
In 1968, Robert Kennedy began his ill-fated presidential campaign with a talk that closed with the phrase, _ã–The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile._ã If RFK were alive now, Marks believes, he_ã_d be asking economists to design measures that are broader, fairer and more indicative about what people really want and value. People think money is important, but that it_ã_s not nearly as important as happiness, health and love.
Marks has spent his adult life figuring out how we measure happiness. He_ã_s created the Happy Planet Index to measure these factors. The goal is to measure how much well-being we get from the use of planetary resources _ã_ it_ã_s an efficiency index…
…if you’d like to read more about the Happy Planet Index – JUST CLICK HERE