A Wealth of Happiness:
finding the balance
by Kevin Voigt: Asian Wall Street Journal

WHAT BRINGS US HAPPINESS?

There has been an explosion of research dedicated to the issue in the past decade. Some researchers now believe that our emotional buoyancy is genetically set within a range, which acts as an anchor to our enthusiasm in good times and as a balloon in bad.

One of the first studies into set ranges of happiness, by researchers from Northwestern University in 1978, showed that lottery winners and spinal-cords-injury victims both fall back to their original happiness ranges within a year of either event – a raft of research since has backed their findings.

This creates a happiness paradox: We may imagine we couldn’t survive the end of a marriage or death of a family member, yet our innate “psychological immune system” is well equipped to greet these disasters when they occur, says Daniel Gilbert, a researcher at the department of psychology at Harvard University. The flip side is that things we imagine will make us happy – a new car, a new career or a new spouse – may give some temporary elation, but eventually the exhilaration fades.

Within our set ranges, however, there is room to manoeuvre, says Gordon Parker, psychiatrist and executive director of Black Dog Institute, a Sydney-based facility for treating mood disorders. Happier people, he says, tend to have a few hey traits in common: they believe in causes larger than themselves: they are more optimistic, don’t look to material wealth for fulfilment: and they have many meaningful relationships. “They tend to more resilient ...more flexible and more focused on the present and the future, not the past,” says Dr. Parker.

Simply being in a job for the money doesn’t deliver happiness. Research by Richard Easterlin, professor of economics at the University of Southern California, supports that: His 2003 study of 1,500 people in the U.S. over three decades found that as incomes increased, happiness didn’t.

Finding a job that offers on going and fulfilling challenges is essential (of course, a regular pay check help, too). “If you don’t love what you’re doing, you are living in hell,” says Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach who trots the globe helping business and government leaders reach their potential. “In the past, happiness on the job was much less of an issue… you could work 35 or 40 hours a week in a job you didn’t really like, but could have other things outside of work that gave that to you." For professionals these days, globalization and communications technology make the work hours of old “look like a part-time job”.

The key, he says, to finding fulfilment at work – and to finding overall greater happiness – is “really figuring out what you love to do, and to that.”

In this second part of the Happiness series, Personal Journal looks at professionals in Asia who have sorted out what drives them in life-and are working in ways that best tap into that energy. While there is no magic bullet that brings happiness, their lessons help demonstrate how certain behaviours can keep you on the more emotionally fulfilling side of your happiness range.

by Kevin Voigt: Asian Wall Street Journal Nov 04(used with permission)

PART 2:
An interview with Andrew and Gaia Grant
by Kevin Voigt: Asian Wall Street Journal