20 May The Happiness Institute and LG’s Life’s Good Project
As many of you would already know, I'm currently involved in a fascinating and exciting happiness project in collaboration with LG called the Life's Good Project.
What we're trying to do is understand what every day Australian's consider to be their life's good moments (i.e. what makes for happiness and a good life).
I've explained the project previously so I won't elaborate on it again here but just recently, our happiness explorations were nicely written up by Emma-Kate Dobbin in her News blog. This is how she starts…
Emma-Kate Dobbin
Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 08:03am
Tweet Me: @TheSocialHeart
This week, a Facebook study called The Life’s Good Project (LGP) caught my attention.
The LGP is basically a social study created by LG running for eight months and being led by psychologist Timothy Sharp – aka “Dr Happy” – who specialises in…you guessed it, happiness!
It aims to discover just what it is that makes “life good” for Australians.
While surfing the Facebook page – I noticed that a lot of the “Life’s Good When…” moments posted by participants were to do with romance.
For example: “Life’s good when I met the woman of my dreams and asked her out.”
Which brings me to my next point.
For the first time in the two years that I’ve been writing this blog my dear readers I’m in a relationship (er, well… one that I would talk about in public).
Now, clearly – for all the regulars, I’ve had “relations” (that word will forever remind me of Monica Lewinksy) – be it of the romantic, quirky or disastrous kind with various men within that timeframe. I’ve certainly been through enough dates, flings and failures over the past two years that “Women On Men” has been in operation.
At times they felt great – and other times like anyone who is dating would know – just horrible.
Would I change any of it? Nope. Overall my life felt really good.
But over the past few months, life’s changed. And the reason is because I met someone – someone different. Someone that I didn’t end up having to see as a lesson learned or a possible blog topic.
And so, instead of him turning into a story – the story of us has continued to unfold.
Which has meant that for me lately life’s felt extra good… I’d go as far as saying “great”.
As a friend of mine put it in the middle a “hellish” working day last week: “It’s amazing, how much more palatable love can make everything seem.” (He was talking about his partner.)
So my question this week is – rightly or wrongly – do relationships make people happier?
I think it always gets touted by the “couple police” that they do – but I don’t think it’s always true.
Women are often made to feel like life would be better if they were with someone – and men that they are better off without “the ball and chain”.
So I decided to put it to “Dr Happy” directly – do relationships make people happier?
…keep reading HERE to see my responses and the full and original article
And obviously we'd love you to get involved in the project so click HERE to take part in the LG Life's Good Project and tell us what makes you happy!