C’est grace à un ami généreux que j’ai pu voir Deepak Chopra en chair et en os. C’est grace à une rencontre dans la file d’attente que nous sommes passés en VIP et que nous nous sommes retrouvés à une place de choix pour écouter son accent roulé à l’indienne.
J’avais dans ma poche mon Lumix, fidèle compagnon de voyage. “La formule du bonheur”. Je dégaine et je vous offre cet extrait de la conférence où Deepak nous parle de la formule du bonheur.
Il expose quelques résultats d’études menées en psychologie positive notamment par S. Lyubomirsky.
La formule du bonheur H = S + C + V
Le niveau de bonheur que vous expérimentez (H) est déterminé par votre niveau naturel de bonheur (S) plus vos conditions de vie (C) plus les activités volontaires (V) dans lesquelles vous vous engagez.
S représente 50% de votre taux de bonheur.
C représente 10 à 12% de votre taux de bonheur.
V représente 40% de votre taux de bonheur.
Ce qui rend heureux, c’est la créativité, les activités porteuses de sens et les relations avec les autres.
Une manière immédiate d’être heureux est de rendre quelqu’un heureux. Et pour rendre quelqu’un heureux, il faut suivre les 3A:
Attention: l’écouter
Appréciation: remarquer une de ses forces
Affection: se soucier de l’autre
Deepak cloture en parlant de l’exemple français et de son malheur existentiel. Et si ensemble on changeait cette image des français déprimés et pessimistes?!
74% of moodtep’s readers are located in France. So I believe the question is legitimate: should I switch this blog to french? Help me out to take a decision.
74% des lecteurs de Moodstep sont en France. Peut-être est-il temps de rechausser ma plume française pour explorer le bonheur? Qu’en pensez-vous?
When I was younger, I studied Economics at the University. I had to use esoteric terms, complicated theories, hypothesis “all things being equal”, going from micro to macro… I felt I had to understand a monster created by us but not for us.
We have to feed the giant to maybe have a chance to see him do what we want him to do. The pulse of the beast: the GDP. But didn’t we develop all those tools to have a better life? Is it working? What’s the point of all that if human wellbeing is not in the center of our economics?
A small but famous country, Bhutan, is showing us a new way. Bhutan is Famous for it’s measurement of gross national happiness instead of GDP. But measuring happiness is a first step and doesn’t mean that the country is the country of happiness. A wave of suicide has been reported as a consequence of modernization and weaker family links.
Let me introduce you to my friend Gilles who is passionate about emotions and founded an emotion based city guide: Sencities. He is working with specialists in the field of emotions and introduced me to Florent from the Lab LUTIN (Imp in French). They pluged me on a machine that took several data like my heartbeat, my eyes movements and my breathing. The lab is studying and measuring our emotions for industrial purpose, in this lab it’s specifically for the videogame industry but we can easely imagine that it could be used to measure happiness eventhough for the moment they can’t make the difference between anger and happiness for example.
I tried an other machine/gadget/tool that claims it can raise your happiness level: hearthmath. It helps you monitor your emotions and through exercices coordinate your brain and your heart. It’s called coherence.
Technology is trying to measure happiness but on a world level it seems that happiness became a hot subject. Even the very famous social network Facebook launched an analysis of our happiness level using keywords in users status. Learn more about it with this article or this video.
But in the end do we need so many criterias to measure happiness?
In Hypertension and Happiness across Nations , David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald measured blood-pressure of 15,000 randomly sampled individuals from 16 countries. They compared well-being with high blood pressure and found evidence that suggests that happier nations report fewer blood-pressure problems. It matched happiness measurements that were made with a simple scale of subjective happiness.
This other study “examined the accuracy of measuring happiness by a single item (Do you feel happy in general?) answered on an 11-point scale (0-10). Its temporal stability was 0.86. The correlations between the single item and both the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI; Argyle, Martin, & Lu, 1995; Hills & Argyle, 1998) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985; Pavot & Diener, 1993) were highly significant and positive, denoting good concurrent validity. Moreover, the single item had a good convergent validity because it was highly and positively correlated with optimism, hope, self-esteem, positive affect, extraversion, and self-ratings of both physical and mental health. Furthermore, the divergent validity of the single item has been adequately demonstrated through its significant and negative correlations with anxiety, pessimism, negative affect, and insomnia. It was concluded that measuring happiness by a single item is reliable, valid, and viable in community surveys as well as in cross-cultural comparisons.”
We can continue measuring cold data like money but I believe that there is space to use happiness as a legitimate indicator and driver for our society. Who’s in?
Astounding. I have a blog about happiness trying to conceptualise it and now I say there is no recipe.
It’s true. For me. Everything I write on this blog is my path on happiness. Those are the steps I made to understand my truth. I guess there are as many ways to reach happiness as there are individuals.
So yes you can try to squeeze happiness in a book or an application but true happiness is boundless and there could be as many books as people. My happiness is what you may sense in this blog through words. But It’s a every moment appreciation.
Happiness is a cursor. Happiness leads you to your true self.
True self could sound mystic but let’s take out the glitter. True self is for me when my thoughts, my emotions, my acts, my heart are in sync.
Happiness opens the doors of compassion, love, excitement, peace.
It’s the flow of coincidences, the smile, the quick steps on the pavements. Happiness is confidence, the eye quick to catch. Happiness floats around you, generous.
Sure now I can look back and see the books, the people, the events that touched me but take those same books, people, events and throw them at me in a different timing and I would have heard nothing.
There is no recipe to happiness. There is a questioning and a listening to the answer that can come in any shape like a dialogue with yourself.
A few month ago, I had the crazy idea to do world stats on happiness. And now it’s finally live on the Appstore!!!!
You launch the application plug in your mood and discover the mood of others around you. It’s so funny to see happy and sad faces in the street you are walking in. Zoom out and the world is covered with happy faces. Then you can check you happiness level compared to your country and the world with the stats.
It’s also possible to post your mood on Twitter or facebook.
Creating an application was a totally new job for me but it’s so fun to see it out there. So if you have suggestions on how to improve it, send me a message
Happystep is now available at the Appstore:
If you want to develop your own Iphone application, contact me, I will give you the developper and designer contact info.
Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788 in Danzig, Poland. He had a pessimistic personality. He said for example: ““Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom”
Arthur was not a happy fellow so what a surprise to find after his death, in his personal notes, a manuscript in the writings entitled “Die Kunst, glücklich zu sein” which could be translated as the art of being happy. I couldn’t find any trace of it in English bibliographies. Schopenhauer says that we can’t be happy but at least we can follow rules to avoid pain. He lists 50 rules. The first rule is not to aim for an unachievable happiness but to manage your life as well as you can by avoiding unnecessary suffering for you and others.
The second rule is to avoid jealousy by comparing with others (hum that sounds like positive psychology)
The third rule is to not drift from your natural tendencies. Some are creative others contemplative. Don’t go against your nature
An Other rule is to be self-sufficient: “Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure, are by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance.”
In his essay “on the wisdom of life” from Schopenhauer final work, “Parerga und Paralipomena” (1851), Arthur sees health as the most important factor of happiness that can’t be traded for honors.
“For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care. There can be no competition or compensation between these essential factors on the one side, and honor, pomp, rank and reputation on the other, however much value we may set upon the latter. No one would hesitate to sacrifice the latter for the former, if it were necessary. We should add very much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that every man’s chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people’s opinions; and, consequently, that the actual conditions of our personal life,—health, temperament, capacity, income, wife, children, friends, home, are a hundred times more important for our happiness than what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise we shall be miserable.”
“It is the possession of a great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame of it, which is worth having, and conducive to happiness”
Schopenhauer has been influenced by Buddhism and believed in the limitation of your desire to lower suffering. Life was for him a painful road and his (limited) happiness rested in avoiding, reducing, coping. None the less, his rules are good guidelines to live a happy life.
I leave you with a sample of a six part series on philosophypresented by philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers and their ideas about the pursuit of happiness. This episode is about Schopenhauer.
Click on the painting to discover the artist Bob Row and his gallery of portraits
“Joanna, would you like to interview Jacques Morin?” asked my friend Damien on the phone.
Damien is a documentary director. I saw the DVD about Jacques Salomé (a great psychologist and a best selling author in France) that Damien and Jacques did together so I was eager to meet him.
The meeting was on the set of their new documentary in beautiful Place des Vosges in the heart of Paris.
74% of moodtep’s readers are located in France. So I believe the question is legitimate: should I switch this blog to french? Help me out to take a decision.
