The Pursuit of Happiness

I picked up the Oprah Magazine the other day. I don't often buy magazines. For the most part I find them a huge waist of money since they're overpriced and the promises touted on the cover are not usually met by the articles. Most of the time I see a story that interests me and once I get it home and read it I end up disappointed by the lack of insight offered withing the overly processed model strewn pages.

I haven't made it through all the pages yet but so far I have really enjoyed this issue. I mean, they even complimented my taste in the excellent paint colour choice I made for our living room wall. All joking aside though the articles have so far been enlightening and informative. One article I found especially interesting was one on Burnout. Though this isn't something that I am experiencing right now I could recognizes the helpfulness of the steps they gave for coming back from the brink. I know that in this day in age there are a lot of people out there overworking themselves and pushing themselves past their limits. I was happy to see an article offer real tangible options for turning things around.

There is a lot of articles that are of interest to me in this issue and so far I've only read about 2/3. I'm also going to have to take some time to go back and really work through some that I have already read. There is one point I would like to share though that really jumped out at me. It was just a small column down the center of a page but it really struck me. It made me think about a post I wrote a few weeks ago about thankfulness. It was titled The Latest Science on Happiness.

Here are two of the points they listed:

1. Making joy a goal may not be the best idea. According to a study in the journal Emotion, women who place a high premium on happiness tend to be more depressed, perhaps because they feel disappointed with their failure to meet their high standards.

I found this very interesting. I know that we sometimes have a tendency to put a lot of pressure on ourselves so why would happiness be any different? I think a refocus on trying to be happy with what we have rather than reaching for an elusive idea of what happiness could be. Trying to find an emotion can be a very difficult endeavour! Quite often we expect the people around us to create these feeling in us rather than changing our attitude to one of happiness. Maybe this would be a more attainable goal.

2. A rigorous review in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine showed that for depressed people, finding contentment may be as simple as doing nice things: "Positive activity interventions"- such as performing acts of kindness, counting one's blessings and writing letters of gratitude - reversed apathy, stimulated the brain's pleasure circuits, and restored happiness.

This second point may just be the way to achieve that goal of happiness. Often we're so focused on ourselves it's difficult to see what we do have going for us. Doing nice things for others can be a great way taking a step back to gain perspective on our problems while at the same time brightening someones day.

Those were a few of the small points of interest uncovered so far. I know that there is plenty more food for thought being packed into my brain so the ideas should be spilling over soon.