Letters Remain

Tag: happiness

  • Want Happiness? Buy Memories, Not Objects

    In one of my very first posts, I wrote about an article that noted how “money will make you happier, up to a point. After that, it makes no difference. That point is the wonderfully quantitative ‘point of comfort‘. That is, once we have enough money to feed, clothe and house ourselves, extra money makes…

  • A Philosophy of Happiness

    In Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, six “anxieties of everyday life” are tackled through the work of six philosophers—one for each chapter in the short book. A few years after publication the book was turned into a six-part documentary, Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness. While both the book and the series aren’t rigorous studies…

  • A Not-So-Good Cry

    Crying has long been espoused as being a cathartic response to traumatic or sad events and/or thoughts. In fact, over two-thirds of mental health practitioners actively promote crying as a therapy tool. That fact comes courtesy of Scientific American discussing the lack of empirical evidence for crying as a coping or cathartic response. One group…

  • The Problem with Happiness Research

    Talking of happiness, University of California philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel discusses the problem with the self-reporting of happiness for research purposes. If the intervention is obviously intended to increase happiness, participants may well report more happiness post-intervention simply to conform to their own expectations, or because they endorse a theory on which the intervention should increase happiness,…

  • The Universality of Happiness

    Or not. Research looking at how different cultures (specifically, Americans and Japanese) perceive the concept of happiness has shown that it’s not a universal constant, at least in terms of how we define it. [The researchers] systematically analyzed American and Japanese participants’ spontaneously produced descriptions of [happiness and unhappiness] and observed, as predicted, that whereas Americans…

  • When Money Buys Happiness (or Not)

    After discussing consumer signalling and Geoffrey Miller’s Spent in his Findings column (mentioned previously), readers of John Tierney’s Lab were asked, List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever…

  • Suicide: The One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem

    A strangely inspiring article comes out of this philosophical look at suicide—that problem with which our species has been ‘gifted’. It feels like a call-to-action for your life. We must recognize that there are multiple forms of suicide. You can release your claim to life by means of a rope, a gun, a tall building,…

  • The Contagion of Happiness

    In a 20-year study of almost 5,000 people it was found that happiness is more contagious than previously thought. While there are many determinants of happiness, whether an individual is happy also depends on whether others in the individual’s social network are happy. Happy people tend to be located in the centre of their local…

  • Fifty Habits of the Highly Successful

    The newly renamed Stepcase Lifehack has put up a great article succinctly describing 50 habits that you can start to make yourself more successful and – I think – happy. Great advice, simply explained. Follow these and you can’t fail but improve your general well-being and productivity. Words of wisdom abound in Fifty Habits of…

  • Official: Money Makes Us Happy, Happiness Makes Us Money

    Newsweek ran an article last year on the link between happiness and money. Here’s an executive summary: Money will make you happier, up to a point. After that, it makes no difference. That point is the wonderfully quantitative ‘point of comfort‘. If you’re happy you’ll typically earn more than those less happy than you. If…