Happy to Be

I have a few questions for you.  I have the answers too! How's that for confidence? But they aren't the answers according to Sarala Godine. They are the answers according to Robert Holden, the author of Be Happy: release the power of happiness in YOU. Are you curious? Here we go:

Would you rather have, 1) wealth or happiness; 2) success or happiness; 3) fame or happiness; 4) status or happiness; 5) attractiveness or happiness; 6) sex or happiness; 7) health or happiness; 8) enlightenment or happiness?

When Holden presents these questions to the participants in his happiness course he calls the exercise The Happiness Genie. (Check out his website to find out more about the book and his happiness project:http://www.happiness.co.uk/) Once participants have conjured up their own personal genies they imagine this phrase preceding each choice: "If you could have just one thing (wealth or happiness etc) what would you choose?"

So here are the results you have been waiting for. Based on thousands of participants, on average, 90% chose happiness over wealth, 92% happiness over success, 94% happiness over fame, 98% happiness over status, 90% happiness over attractiveness, 82% happiness over sex, 65% happiness over health, 60% happiness over enlightenment.

Interesting isn't it? And these results are not limited to Holden's research. He makes the point in his book that in a survey conducted in 2003 by Professor Ed Diener and his colleague, Shigehiro Oishi, that included 9,000 participants in 47 countries happiness repeatedly came first. In fact, happiness even outscored going to heaven!

So here’s the twist. All these questions are presented as either/or choices and, guess what? According to Robert Holden, and a whole host of researchers on happiness and positive emotions, they are all false choices. Why? Because if we chose happiness we “make everything else more possible too.”

Professors Sonja Lyubomirsky and Barbara Frederickson, both researchers on the impact of positive emotions and human happiness, concur that when we are happy we attract greater success in all aspects of our lives – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.  And just to push the envelope a bit further, research also shows that when we are happy we give more. Simply put, “when we feel good, we do good.”

Holden’s Happiness Genie exercise does not end with these eight questions. He has two more questions that elicit quite a different response. Would you rather have, 9) authenticity or happiness; 10) love or happiness?

What Holden has discovered is that 60 out 100 people will choose authenticity over happiness. When asked why, most people respond with something in the vein of, “I won’t betray myself for happiness.” The good news is that, again, we don’t have to choose. Being true to ourselves increases our chances of being happy. In fact, “you cannot be inauthentic and be happy.”

The score for love is even higher, with 70% of respondents choosing love over happiness. Holden makes the point that even lawyers, executives, and politicians choose love over happiness. “Happiness is love, love is happiness”, concludes Holden.  And I love how he sums this up, “when you wish for happiness you are really wishing to be the most loving person you can be.”

When my daughter was a toddler she could not say, happy birthday, yet she was wildly enthusiastic about her special day. She would run around the house calling out with great joy, "happy to be, happy to be!" I think she had the whole thing figured out.