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#HappyFacts: Money Can Buy You Happiness

Each week, Live Happy Radio presents #HappyFacts designed to enlighten, educate and entertain you. Here’s a look at what we’re talking about this week: Can’t get no satisfaction? Go to a concert! If you need a quick pick-me-up, catching some live music can do the trick. But now researchers have found that going to live shows can make a lasting difference. In a study of 1,000 adults in Australia, those who regularly went to live music shows were found to have a greater sense of subjective well-being, or life satisfaction. While music in any form has been shown to have positive effects on our well-being, researchers found a notable difference between those who engage with others through live music events and those who listen to recorded music alone. Is it the social connection with other music lovers? The tendency of live music to encourage you to be in the moment? Researchers aren’t yet sure, but they are now convinced that a little live music is good for you in more ways than we have realized in the past. Banking on meditation Employers who want happier, more productive employees might want to invest in some meditation training. Around the globe, corporations have started using meditation as a way to soothe the stress of the workday and help employees become calmer and more productive. In the UK, the Bank of England began offering mindfulness and well-being courses as part of their “working life seminars” about four years ago. They, along with such companies as Unilever, KPMG and Goldman Sachs, offer meditation and mindfulness training, and regularly encourage employees to use guided meditations and apps to help them shake off the stress of the day. Science shows a direct correlation between happy, healthy employees and productivity. It improves creativity and collaboration between employees, creating a competitive advantage for businesses. Since mindfulness and meditation can help change the way employees think about and react to stress, it creates the healthy, happy employees needed for that winning edge. And both the employee and the company benefit from it! Money CAN buy happiness The old saying goes that money can’t buy happiness – but now it appears it can … if you know how to spend it right! In a world where we are increasingly pressed for time (and openly stressed out about it), being able to pay someone else to do a dreaded or time-consuming task may be the best way to spend a hard-earned buck or two. One recent study showed that the practice of “buying free time” could help ease the time famine felt by many people in today’s busy world. Those who spent money on purchases that saved time were happier than those who spent money on material goods. The exception came when people paid someone to do a task for them, but then spent that extra time working or doing something equally stressful. The key to making the most of the time you buy is to get out there and do something you enjoy. What is one thing you could pay someone to do that would increase your happiness?

Practice

The Best of Intentions

We have to-do lists (take Benji to the vet; bring the car in for an oil change; complete the PowerPoint presentation). We have goals (run in a Turkey Trot; turn the garage into a workshop; get promoted in the next six months). We may even have a bucket list (deliver a TED Talk; visit every continent on the globe; earn a pilot’s license). But what’s missing for many of us, and may lead to a feeling that our days are being spent in a slapdash way, is intention: a constellation of purpose and values that gives direction and meaning to actions large and small. “I think of intention as the inner compass that sets us on our journey,” says Hugh Byrne, Ph.D., co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute of Washington, D.C., and author of The Here-and-Now Habit. “Without clear intentions, we drift, acting out old habits and patterns, like flotsam swept by the water.” Intentions help us channel our energy into what matters most to us, adds Tina Chadda, a Toronto psychiatrist and creator of the Akasha meditation app, which offers mini tutorials on subjects like “the mindfulness of mistakes” and “maintaining flow.” “More loosely, you could say intention is how we address the question, ‘What the heck are we doing with ourselves all day?’” she says. Tina offers an example of how this plays out in real life. “Your intention may be to give your best to the world,” she says. “And, sure, that sounds airy-fairy, but then you break it down, first to a value—I want to be of service to my community and then to a goal: By the end of this month I’m going to volunteer five hours of time to my local homeless shelter.” Intention can imbue with meaning small tasks that would otherwise be annoying (and easy to put off). “For me, I value my well-being and sense of serenity,” Tina says, “and that translates into the goal that by the end of next weekend, I’m going to unpack the boxes in the corner of my office.” You can even be intentional about wasting time, points out Mallika Chopra. Mallika is the founder and CEO of Intent.com, an online community where members support one another in moving from intention to actions. In her book Living With Intent: My Somewhat Messy Journey to Purpose, Peace, and Joy, Mallika describes how she learned to stop chastising herself for playing video games or checking in with friends on Facebook, things she found relaxing and pleasurable and that didn’t take time away from her other priorities, like sleep. “What if I welcome activities into my life just because they’re fun and feel good?” she mused. “Just thinking about indulging in my ‘bad habits’ free of guilt makes me feel lighter and less stressed.” While goals are focused on future outcomes, intentions are about how we want to show up in our lives in the present. Jamie Price is the Los Angeles-based co-founder of Stop, Breathe & Think, a wellness app that offers brief guided meditations. Eight months pregnant as she chats, she says her overriding intention right now is “to nourish my child with food as well as with what I’m thinking and doing.” One way she fulfills that intention is by taking a nightly walk with her husband. “We’ve been married for five years and it’s easy to take someone’s presence for granted,” she says. “Instead, I’ve been trying to foster a kind, attentive and loving presence with my husband on a daily basis. After dinner we walk through the neighborhood together for 40 minutes, inhaling the smells of rose and jasmine or walking to a cliff above the ocean at sunset. Since I’ve been pregnant, we try to leave the devices at home so we can talk about our day or just hold hands and walk in silence.” How Intentions Help Us Learn and Perform Better When your yoga teacher asks you to set an intention before class, she’s actually inviting you to turn on parts of your brain that wouldn’t be activated if you just went through your sun salutations mindlessly. Intention, it turns out, is not some kumbaya concept; when we engage with intention it actually shows up in brain scans. Neuroscience research has demonstrated that when you watch someone else’s movements or actions with the intention of engaging in that same behavior yourself, neurons in your brain that make up the “action observation network” are stimulated. In one study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, for example, students watched videos of another person putting together or disassembling a Tinkertoy structure. One group of students simply watched the video; another group was told that they’d have to construct that same object a few minutes later. Brain scans showed that students who were watching with intent had more activity occurring in a part of the brain called the intraparietal cortex. Another study, by language researcher and University of Ottawa, Ontario, professor Larry Vandergrift, Ph.D., confirmed the power of listening with intent. Working with undergraduates learning French as a second language, half the students were given guidance in active listening. Before the lesson began, they were instructed to mentally review what they already knew; to form an intention to “listen out for” what was important; to bring their attention back to the words being spoken by their instructor, if it wandered; and to take note of what they didn’t understand without allowing their focus to be undermined. The control group wasn’t given any instructions. The results: The students who listened with attention and intention significantly outscored the less skilled listeners in a test of comprehension. Whether it’s perfecting your eagle pose, your subjunctive French verbs or any other endeavor that’s important to you, engaging with intention will give you a performance boost. And science shows that’s just the beginning of how intentions can change your life. The Neuroscience of Intentions Shifting your perspective from goals to thoughtful intentions just might be the secret sauce in achieving your dreams. That’s according to some fascinating research that’s coming out of science labs, including that of social psychologist Elliot Berkman, Ph.D. Elliot is the director of the Social & Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of Oregon, and he and his team are studying a field called “motivation neuroscience.” They use neuroimaging tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to learn how our brains support setting, pursuing and eventually succeeding, or failing, in achieving behavioral changes like smoking cessation and dieting. The field has established that when people are thinking about core values or reflecting on the self, there’s activation of the “self-processing regions” of the brain, including the medial prefrontal cortex. If you can recruit this part of your brain, even difficult activities will seem less effortful, Elliot says, because you’re getting the signal that what you’re doing is the most important thing to you. You’re not paying what both psychologists and economists call an “opportunity cost,” forgoing the rewards you might have reaped if you were doing something else instead. Elliot wants to help people find a way to turn extrinsic goals—something they pursue because of external pressure, like their doctor advising them to lose weight to avoid diabetes—into intrinsic goals, ones they seek because they’re connected to their enduring passions and principles. In other words, Elliot says, identify why resisting that cookie shores up your values and beliefs and—bingo!—you’re in the arena of intention and you’ve ignited those powerful self-processing parts of the brain. “If you can find a way to put your goals into alignment with who you want to be in the broadest sense,” he says, “that will provide powerful and sustainable reinforcement for the changes you want to make.” Elliot calls this alignment “psychic chiropractic,” and he says the most effective way to practice it is through self-affirmations. Studies show that affirming values and beliefs is potent: It boosts self-control, lifts your mood, expands your sense of yourself and your capabilities, offers protection against stress and makes you more open to feedback and to persevering in the face of setbacks. In Elliot’s lab, self-affirmations begin with people choosing the two or three core values that are most important to them from a list of 10 or 12 that might include honesty, loyalty, family, honor, friendship, creativity, courage and love. Then the participants are asked to spend a couple of minutes writing about what each means to them. In an ongoing experiment, Elliot and his team parse these essays into brief snippets, such as, “Family is the most important thing to me.” Those affirmations are then sent to the writers two or three times a day. Here’s how you can apply this science to your life: If you wanted to lose 10 pounds, for example, you might connect with the intention, “I want to be a healthy and active parent,” or “I want to experience life with energy and vigor.” Then, you’d text yourself this avowal before you head out to dinner or the supermarket. (You can schedule texts with apps like TextItLater or Delayd.) Overcoming temptation—whether a molten chocolate pie, staying in bed instead of going to the gym or procrastinating when you have a difficult project to complete—is all about increasing the value of long-term, abstract rewards so they’re greater than the reward in front of you, Elliot says. The tipping point, he adds, is tapping into our “self-concept of who we are and who we want to be.” Intent Alert: Attention Required Staying aligned with our intentions takes effort and vigilance. Elliot uses the word “deliberate” to describe actions that are intentional. “Acting automatically is less costly in terms of energy than acting with deliberation,” he says. “Our brains evolved to be energy conserving, so unless we pay attention, they’ll default to habit and inertia. On a neuroscience level, being intentional is a bottleneck.” One reliable way to break that bottleneck is by maintaining a regular meditation practice. Committing to a daily practice of spending just a few moments in silence, cultivating a contemplative mindset, provides access, Mallika says, to “a deeper well of understanding, insight and awareness.” This heightened self-knowledge can also help you recognize why you feel drained and help you discover what fills you up. In this way, mindfulness functions as an early warning system when you begin to stray from your intentions. Hugh offers an example. A couple of years ago he was in the habit each evening of pouring himself a small glass of Dogfish Head, his favorite beer, and dishing out a scoop or two of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, then chilling in front of the TV. “It wasn’t a large amount of beer or ice cream,” he says, “but after a while it felt like something I was doing by rote, and I began to feel a little neediness and a lack of spaciousness and ease. It was getting in the way of my intention to be fully present and fully at ease.” Hugh now stops watching TV after 10:30 at night, and while he still has an occasional glass of beer or wine, he does so out of conscious choice and not habit. On the other hand, Sam Chase, who co-owns New York City’s Yoga to the People studio, sees no need to abandon his sometime habit of stopping in at a local pinball parlor for an hour of what he admits is “vegging out.” “It’s an immersive experience, and a way to decompress from a hard day, but it’s not high stakes,” Sam says. Bouncing steel balls off the flippers in a pinball game leaves him “recharged.” That sense of replenishment, Tina points out, is evidence that you’re nourishing your intentions. “When you’re using your energy in a healthy way you feel energized,” she says. “When you’re not, you feel depleted and empty.” Get to know yourself through meditation and you’ll easily cue into the difference between the pleasant fatigue that follows, say, an 8-mile run or an afternoon spent building sets for a community theater production, and the lethargy you experience after you’ve camped out on the sofa and aimlessly dawdled away two hours watching infomercials. How to Set Intentions Whether you come to it from a mind-body perspective or the mindset of a scientist, the guidelines on how to set intentions have the same starting point: Devote some quiet time to clarifying what matters most to you. Hugh suggests asking yourself the question: What’s my deepest longing for the world and myself? (The answer for him is “peace, loving relationships and a more compassionate world.”) Next, says Hugh, “identify habits that prevent you from living out these intentions, and commit to take action to change those habits.” Then, begin to align your moment-to-moment thoughts and actions with the qualities you want to cultivate. Ask yourself, Hugh suggests, “Does this thought/ action/response serve happiness? Does it support my deepest aspirations?” Mallika is a big fan of what she calls “microintents”—small steps that, she says, make our day-to-day lives happier and healthier and also help give clarity and momentum to long-term intentions. Mallika’s microintents included starting a book club with some friends and meeting a close pal for walks in nature instead of their usual breakfast or lunch date. “With these small changes, my whole life shifted,” Mallika says. “For me, intentions are soulful. They’re the expression of who we aspire to be physically, emotionally and spiritually. When we ask ourselves, what is going to make me feel happy, more connected, healthy and of purpose, we plant the seeds of what we yearn for in our lives.” Read more about intention: 4 Ways to Live Each Day With Intention Shelley Levitt is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles and editor at large for Live Happy. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, People, SUCCESS and more.

Practice

House of Shine Helps Kids Find Their Life’s Passion

As a lifelong educator, Claudia Beeny, Ph.D., has seen how beneficial it is to take a break from the daily barrage of noise and distraction. “You need quiet,” Claudia says. “Slow down long enough for your head to hear what your heart is saying.” She speaks from personal experience. It was during one of her own breaks that she realized her dream was to start House of Shine, a North Texas-based nonprofit that offers mentoring programs that help women and children find their true passions. She believes once people take this time for self-reflection, they not only improve their lives but the world as a whole. “We all want to know at the end of the day that our life here on Earth mattered,” says Claudia, who spent 23 years working in higher education. Despite her professional success, she felt disconnected from her creative side. So, a decade ago, she started a blog where she shared one creative idea every day. The value she felt from this project ignited the spark that led to the creation of House of Shine. Many of her early insights from the blog are woven into House of Shine’s custom workshops, weekly classroom curriculum and projects such as a DO52 kit that has action words for every week of the year to encourage creativity and nurture self-reflection. People of all ages and backgrounds have been drawn to House of Shine’s workshops, including schoolchildren, grandmothers and stay-at-home moms. “What binds everyone together is the desire to live a full and rich life,” Claudia says. During a typical workshop, Claudia shares personal insights and raises questions about a main topic. For example, one recent theme was happiness. Attendees then had time to reflect, journal and discuss their answers in small groups. It’s this community mentoring that helps make the programs successful, Claudia says. She notes that participants learn as much from each other as they do from experts. “We’re the pause in people’s lives,” she says. “The real work is when they take the time to think about how these concepts matter to them.” Never Too Early Katie Kolkmeier, a college student of Claudia’s long before the nonprofit was formed, continues to benefit from House of Shine’s ideas. Katie says Claudia has always been a natural at mentoring and life coaching. “I feel like I am a product of House of Shine,” Katie says. “My time with Claudia brought out in me what I never knew was there.” After graduating, Katie decided to start working for House of Shine so she could help others have similar life-changing discoveries. Now, as the director of programming, Katie helps write and teach the curriculum used in all grade levels. Most of the students who take the weekly classes are journaling and exploring their talents for the first time. “It gives the students an opportunity to hold a mirror up to themselves,” she says. The curriculum helps students pinpoint their interests and find their innate abilities. Students can choose school assignments, service projects and internships they care about. When kids learn their core values at a young age, they will be set up for success for the rest of their lives, Katie says. One of the most important lessons is “helping people see that things that come to you naturally aren’t meaningless.” Read more: The Path to Purpose Group Effort Even if these concepts sound simple, Claudia has seen how easy it is to get lost in the daily struggle of work and excuses and insecurity. But things can get back on course, she says. “You already know what you need to do to shine,” she says. “Often the question is, ‘Am I listening and acting on what I need to do?’” House of Shine is always seeking volunteers to help with fundraisers, special events and craft projects. Claudia looks forward to continued growth and sees potential in offering curriculum and workshops nationally. “There is a need,” she says. “People want to have this conversation together.” Read more: 4 Ways to Stay Engaged With Lifelong Learning Mary Dunklin is a writer and editor who specializes in family, fitness and travel. Her last article for Live Happy was about yoga's impact on depression.

Lifestyle

7 Ways to Beat the End-of-Summer Blues

As summer winds down, so does some of the fun and freedom we enjoy during this time of year. For kids, it’s time to head back to school and activities; for parents, it means supervising homework, making lunches and keeping everyone on a schedule. This transition can cause the blues for children and adults alike. One of the best ways to handle the change is to develop a solid strategy to make things easier and less stressful. Here are seven suggestions to beat the end-of-summer blues: 1. Plan ahead Remember past challenges and think about how to improve in the future. If you have kids, teach them problem-solving by involving them in the planning. Find ways to modify your family’s daily routine, including transitioning to an earlier wake-up time once school starts. Instead of shocking them awake on the first day of school, start implementing earlier bedtimes and earlier wake-up times about a week before school starts, backing up five to ten minutes each night until you reached the correct time. 2. Focus on the positives As the weather grows colder, instead of staring out the window pining for the sun, get cozy in oversized sweaters and cuddle up with your family. Fall and winter provide opportunities to engage in indoor bonding activities such as puzzles, baking and the like. Light a fire, roast marshmallows and teach your kids to make hot chocolate from scratch. Before you know it, holiday festivities will be here, bringing all kinds of cheer. Have fun in the fall by planning your Halloween costumes, begin holiday crafting or even start working on your holiday wish lists. 3. Get the family involved Get together with your whole family to brainstorm fun activities you can do in the coming months. Create a giant calendar and mark off school and work holidays. Then choose dates for fun activities during the fall and winter. Make those activities stand out on your calendar by using bright colors and stickers. 4. Create an end-of-summer tradition Plan a big barbecue with friends and family; spend an end-of-summer weekend away or plan a staycation; plant new flowers in your garden; or clean out closets and donate what you no longer use to those in need. Whatever you decide to do, as long as you enjoy it, commit to doing this same thing every year. Read more: 4 Ways to Navigate Life's Transitions With Ease 5. Make a scrapbook or collage Do an art project with your family that includes photos, ticket stubs and other memories to help document the summer. Put it in a visible place in your home to remind yourself of the fun that you just experienced. (This exercise could also be your end-of-summer ritual!) 6. Work on goal-setting Think intentionally about what each member of your family would like to accomplish or improve on in the coming months. Many people believe that this type of planning is only for January, but setting goals only once a year can increase the pressure on you to complete those goals, and wind up resulting in disappointment. Making seasonal goals is more effective and a great positive activity. 7. Make a fall and winter music playlist Pick out songs to represent the fall and winter holidays or music that evokes feelings of joy for this time of year. You can find spooky songs for Halloween in October, festive tunes to play during Thanksgiving in November, and there is no shortage of holiday favorites to choose from in December. Instead of closing out the summer with the blues, end the season with some proactive and happiness-filled fall and winter to-dos! Read more: 3 Tips for a Low-Stress Start to the School Year Stacy Kaiser is a licensed psychotherapist, author, relationship expert and media personality. She is also the author of the best-selling book How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know and an editor at large for Live Happy. Stacy is a frequent guest on television programs such as Today and Good Morning America.

Lifestyle

Make a Happiness Plan for Retirement

Sally Balch Hurme, author of the new book Get the Most Out of Retirement: Checklist for Happiness, Health, Purpose, and Financial Security, published by the American Bar Association, says that people facing the “R” word are split on the idea; some look forward to a leisurely life on the golf course or becoming world travelers, others are terrified at the prospect of not having enough to do. Recently retired after spending 25 years practicing law, Sally wrote her book to help others with life planning. Not wholly comfortable with the word “retirement” and being the “least retired” person she knows, she wanted to create a handbook that covers all aspects of life after work. “A lot of people dread retirement because they don’t know what it is going to be like,” she says. “I am having a blast, so I hope I can give [readers] some things to think about so we can go into retirement without trepidation and have a positive outlook.” Find yourself again We spend decades defining ourselves by our careers. One of the first steps into retirement, Sally says, is finding out who you are again or want to be for the next few decades. This new life stage is an opportunity to spend your time on what’s important to you. “It’s going to be different with every person, but even though you are no longer an employee or have this job title or run this business, you are still a lot of other things: you are a spouse and a parent and a grandparent. I am still a lawyer even though I am not practicing law. I still have my volunteer commitments, I still love to garden, I still love to travel.” Read more: The Path to Purpose Plan for change When your new adventure starts, plan A doesn’t always work out. And when it doesn’t, you’ll need to fall back on plan B or even C and have a good dose of resilience. In Sally’s case, two months into her retirement, her husband’s declining health forced them to alter their plans of traveling abroad. So, have some flexibility in your gameplan. “Instead of going to Europe for a month, we plan around shorter weekends,” she says. “We did relocate so I can be around family and have some assistance with caregiving. Health issues are not necessarily the primary reason to move from plan A, but at our age, that is something that we do need to keep in the back of our minds.” Repurpose Finding purpose is great at any age, but it can be especially meaningful when you have more time to dedicate. Sally recommends volunteering more, finding part-time work in a field you enjoy or continuing your education. Researchers at Florida State University’s Pepper Institute on Aging and Social Policy find that there is no other greater force for successful aging than meaningful educational experiences. And, most state colleges offer discounted classes for retired people. Entrepreneurship is another popular way people can embark on a career they have always wanted. According to Sally’s book, people in their 50s and 60s make up a quarter of all startup businesses. Retirees often have their own money to work with and a lifetime of networking and experience to rely on. Stay connected The Japanese never retire from being active and boast some of the longest life spans. Their philosophy of ikigai, or a worthwhile life, is doing what you love around the people you love to make the world a better place. Sally says it may be a good idea to get involved in your local Rotary Club or chamber of commerce to contribute to the greater good. “Broadening our social networks can add value to the community around us in multiple, exceptional ways,” she says. “Getting over that trepidation about trying something new” can help kick-start a new chapter. While it may be daunting at first, having a plan, or multiple plans, can provide plenty of opportunities to keep you occupied, active and connected to the world, which can add meaningful years to your life. “There are so many options out there, you need to explore and not be timid to investigate,” Sally says. “You’ve got the time to plan and execute a very exciting second life.” Read more: 8 Ways to Thrive in Midlife and Beyond Chris Libby is the Section Editor for Live Happy magazine. Some of his recent articles for the magazine include Happiness is a Walk in the Park and Find Your Funny Bone.

work

4 Ways to Stop Work Stress From Following You Home

While work stress might start at work, let’s admit that it never stays there. Companies demand more from employees not only in terms of tasks but also time—and technology makes work not only omnipresent but omnipossible. This increased demand has negative consequences even for those not on the company payroll, as work stress seeps into home life. Since we are married happiness researchers, this topic is not only professionally interesting but personally important to us. We have both fallen into the trap of getting stressed at work outside of the house and then bringing that stress home to inflict on the other—even when we know better! Based on our work with nearly half the Fortune 100 companies, we believe that the solution to helping ourselves and our loved ones deal with the stress of work comes, ironically, from the very companies that give it to us. The problem is not merely that work is too powerful of a demand, it is that we fail to create a strong enough protective culture at home. Only by understanding how the best companies create positive cultures can we replicate those successes at home to create a family culture that rejuvenates and restores us. It’s imperative we stop letting a toxic company culture dictate our family culture. Positive cultures are based on often unspoken rules that encourage habits that support high levels of well-being and success. Just as a car gets regular maintenance, forward-thinking organizations set up a culture that encourages routines that help recharge and renew employees, such as taking vacation days, meditating as a midmorning break and regularly receiving meaningful praise. These positive behaviors are good for the individual and the company. Our research has found that if you take 11 or more of your vacation days, you’re 30 percent more likely to receive a raise. (And that positive outcome is not simply because people missed you!) The break from work relaxes your mind and body and puts you back in the performance zone, which leads to better-quality work. Aetna made time for meditation during the workday and subsequently decreased employee health care costs and increased work satisfaction. We have been experimenting with strengthening our family culture at home so that work doesn’t take over. Try these research-based practices to help set up and maintain a positive family culture: 1. Hold a stakeholders meeting Too often we live life as it unfolds, without intention. Invite all members of the family old enough to meaningfully contribute to a meeting to discuss family values. What kind of environment do you want to create inside your home? How do you want to spend your time? What are the rules around use of electronics? By identifying your values and setting your collective plan of how you’ll support that vision, you can start to craft a life that follows it. Set up an environment that is nurturing and relaxing, so you get a mental break. 2. Start culture at the door When we walked through the door to address senior leaders at Kimball International, it was clear what the organization stands for because its mission statement and values are posted at the door. A similar physical reminder of culture at home can refocus family members as they walk through the door after a long day at the office. Post loving messages, a list of values or even pictures of you as a family living those values. Think of this as a visual reset button so you start your time at home with a renewed mindset. 3. Bag up tech Social connection is one of the greatest predictors of long-term happiness, but we can’t create that with phones in our faces. A study published in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture found that of the women surveyed who were in a romantic relationship, 25 percent said their loved ones sent text messages or emails to other people while they were having a face-to-face conversation. Move your phone out of your physical space so it is not easy to absent-mindedly use it. We’ve experimented with putting our phones in a zip-top bag with a rubber band around it as a reminder. Consider leaving at least one person’s phone at home for the day to get a chance to detox. 4. Sleep your way to the top Research shows we make more positive memories if we get more sleep. In a study from the University of California, Berkeley, in which people were asked to memorize two lists of words, one positive and one negative, those with five hours of sleep remembered the same number of negative words (about 80 percent) but significantly fewer positive words than those who got eight hours of sleep. Write positive memories with your spouse by hitting the hay together early. You can help your spouse support this positive habit by brushing your teeth in plain sight or turning off the lights in the bedroom to remind him or her that the day is over. How do you strengthen a positive family culture? We’d love to hear! Read more by Shawn and Michelle: Are You a Phone Snubber? and 60 Seconds to Happiness Listen to our podcast: Becoming Stress-Proof With Mithu Storoni SHAWN ACHOR is the best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. Shawn’s TED Talk is one of the most popular ever, with more than 5 million views, and his PBS program has been seen by millions. Learn more about Shawn at Goodthinkinc.com. MICHELLE GIELAN is an expert on the science of positive communication and the author of the book Broadcasting Happiness. Formerly a national anchor for CBS News, Michelle holds a masters of applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Learn more at Goodthinkinc.com.

work

10 Best Books to Inspire Courage

Many make the mistake of thinking that you need to feel courageous and confident before you take that first brave step. In fact it’s the other way around: You have to act while trembling. Doing the thing that scares you emboldens your courage. You must be willing to feel uncomfortable and awkward—and resist the urge to run in the other direction—when it’s time to be brave. Rather than waiting for a magical moment when you feel filled with strength, these ten tales of daring will inspire you to act courageously even when you are afraid. Reading biographies of courageous individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela stirs and inspires our souls, and we recommend those books as well. But because the achievements of these icons can seem so far beyond our own capabilities, their stories help us dream but not necessarily to act or accomplish. For that we need to start a bit closer to earth—with books written by “ordinary” human beings or spiritual teachers, filled with well-chosen words of motivation and inspiration, laced with the humility and wisdom that comes from having lived and learned. By reading these books we might even find the hero inside ourselves. 1. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by Brene Brown, Ph.D. Theodore Roosevelt once famously said, “It is not the critic who counts…the credit belongs to the man…in the arena.” In Daring Greatly, professor at University of Houston and motivational speaker and writer Brene Brown challenges readers to take the risk and step into the arena—whatever that may be for each person. Discover that vulnerability is not weakness, it is actually the quickest path to courage. By daring greatly and sharing our feelings and experiences, Brene writes, we find a life of meaning and common humanity. Inspiring words: “Sometimes when we dare to walk into the arena the greatest critic we face is ourselves.” 2. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man and Life’s Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom Newspaper sports columnist and author Mitch Albom had a college professor named Morrie Schwartz, who was also a trusted mentor. Finding him 20 years later, Mitch chronicles the life wisdom and insights Morrie shares with him during his last few months of life. Morrie’s treasured advice comes as gifts of courage to every reader: “Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied. You won’t be envious. You won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you will be overwhelmed with what comes back.” Inspiring words: “The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say, if the culture doesn’t work, don’t buy it.” 3. The Light of the World: A Memoir by Elizabeth Alexander When acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander suddenly loses her husband, she strikes out on a quest for meaning, reflecting on her love story and devastating loss. This beautiful memoir reminds us of life’s most important blessings of love, art, family and community. Inspiring words: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.” 4. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he gave his last lecture, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” A wonderful book to read and reread, The Last Lecture is about realizing the value of time and acquiring the drive to overcome obstacles in order to pursue your dreams. Finish this book with a renewed desire to really live. Inspiring words: “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” 5. The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer Spiritual teacher Michael Singer shows us how to let go of negative thinking patterns and expand our consciousness through meditation and mindfulness. Remove the limits of what you think is possible for you by understanding your inner energy. Inspiring words: “Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can.” 6. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi was constantly striving and deferring gratification for his future until he became a patient faced with a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis. His powerful memoir seeks to answer what really matters in life and what mortality can teach us about living. As one reviewer said, this book will leave you “stunned and hopeful at the same time” with his quiet resilience. Inspiring words: “The fact of death is unsettling, yet there is no other way to live.” 7. The Places that Scare You:A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chodron American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism Pema Chodron writes that we can let our lives make us bitter or make us better. We can hide with fear or we can evolve to more compassionate and kind people. Awaken to the goodness in you and connect with others by accepting yourself and your imperfections. Inspiring words: “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” 8. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Writer and philosopher Paulo Coelho set out to write a book about his own life—as someone who took too long to go in pursuit of his dreams because he thought his dreams impossible. Instead he wrote The Alchemist, a mystical fable of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who goes in search of worldly treasure, which became an international bestseller. Through his journey, we learn the value of listening to our inner voice and heart. After you read this awe-inspiring classic, get a renewed sense of determination to pursue your dreams. Inspiring words: “Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.” 9. Sit, Walk, Don’t Talk: How I Survived a Silent Meditation Retreat by Jennifer Howd In her debut memoir, Sit, Walk, Don’t Talk, Jennifer Howd takes us inside her journey to a silent meditation retreat. Get a unique perspective inside her mind as she goes to battle with her inner critic. With compassion, insight and humor, she takes the reader on a personal walk through her mind and shows us the liberation that comes from accepting our imperfect selves. Inspiring words: “You don't have to necessarily go away for days on end," she says, "but just sitting still and being quiet and being with yourself and just allowing yourself tobeand notdois so beneficial on so many levels. It's kind of a radical idea to do these days you know because we're so busy." 10. #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso Though a lighter read, #GIRLBOSS is serious about empowerment. If you’ve ever felt like your path to success is filled with blunders and naysayers, get fired up with author Sophia Amoruso. Broke and directionless in her 20s, Sophia turned a hobby of selling vintage clothes into a successful fashion retail business. Today she’s the founder, CEO and Creative Director of Nasty Gal, a $100+ million fashion retailer with more than 350 employees. Her success story will inspire yours. Inspiring words: “No matter where you are in life, you'll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. The earlier in your life that you can learn that, the easier the rest of it will be.” Read more: 10 Life-Changing Books That Will Stay With You Read more: 10 Best Books to Help Achieve Your Goals Sandra Bilbray is a contributing editor to Live Happy, and Founder and CEO of themediaconcierge.net.

science

Be Real About How You Feel

New research suggests that a key to happiness may include embracing more negative emotions. Traditionally, psychologists have held that in order to increase happiness, it is important to increase positive emotions and decrease the negative. However, in the new study “The Secret to Happiness: Feeling Good or Feeling Right?,” researchers suggest that people are happier when the emotions they experience align with the emotions they desire, even if those are unpleasant, such as anger or contempt. “People are happier if they feel what they want to feel or if they want what they feel,” says Maya Tamir, Ph.D., lead researcher on the study and psychology professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “If people want to feel unpleasant emotions, they are happier if they feel them, at least to some extent. If we feel angry, but consider these the right feelings to have—we’re probably better off than if our feelings don’t match what we want them to be.” Embrace your dark side Maya explains that some negative emotions can be helpful and even beneficial when those emotions are aligned with our desires. For instance, if you are feeling angry about a great injustice, your desires are probably related to your core values. The anger you feel may spur you into action, which can provide meaning in your life as you work to correct the injustice. Embracing your anger may motivate you to pursue a fitness goal if you are out of shape or strive for a promotion at work if you are not happy with your current financial situation. If your emotions are misaligned with your values, Maya says, that can have the opposite effect and lead to dissatisfaction. One example would be getting angry at your child for breaking a dish but then feeling guilty later for being too harsh about the mishap. By pursuing the emotions we care about most and embracing the feelings we have about those emotions, we can feel better about ourselves and have less inner conflict. “Happiness is not only about the emotions you have, but also about the emotions you want to have,” Maya explains. “You are happier when these two match than when they mismatch, regardless of whether that means feeling more or less pleasant overall.” Don't sweep negative emotions under the rug Stacy Kaiser, Live Happy editor at large and psychotherapist, strongly agrees with the findings and says that being true to who you are is an important part of emotional well-being. “Dismissing or ignoring our feelings typically leads to greater sadness and discomfort overall,” she says. “I regularly encourage people to allow themselves to feel their feelings, good or bad, to process them and to move forward,” she says. “Taking time out to do this typically provides relief in the moment and greater happiness overall.” Read more: Are You Trying Too Hard to Be Happy? Read more: Face Failure Head On With These Essential Tools Chris Libby is the Section Editor for Live Happy magazine. His last feature article was Happiness Is a Walk in the Park.

Live Happy Tips to Buy Yourself Free Time

science

Buy Yourself Free Time to Find Happiness

A recent study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that even though we may have more money and our income levels are higher, the unintended consequence for this success is an unhealthy decrease in our free time. And that’s bad for happiness. When you are constantly pressed for time, the negative stress can increase anxiety and lead to unhealthy habits in eating, sleeping and exercising, the study found. But, if you take your earnings and trade them for time, such as paying someone to mow the lawn or clean your house, you can free up time to spend with the people you enjoy doing activities that bring you pleasure. Time: the scarce commodity “We spend our time in ways that doesn’t pay out in terms of our overall well-being,” says Christine Carter, Ph.D., sociologist and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. “Neurologically, the busier that we feel and the more overwhelmed that we feel, the worse we are at managing our time, planning out how we’ll spend our time and perceiving time.” She says that any time we feel like we don’t have enough of something, it creates a “scarcity mindset” in our brain which triggers our fight-or-flight response. “It worsens our relationship with time and productivity.” Too many things to do and not enough time to do them results in both mental and physical distress. When your brain is constantly zipping back and forth between tasks, you are burning glucose and oxygen and creating physical tension. Read more: Upping Your Downtime Take time to daydream According to the study, if we spend money on time-saving activities instead of material goods, we may feel more relief at the end of the day and have a more a positive mindset. If we string these positive events together, as explained by Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden and build theory, we have a greater chance at improving our life satisfaction. But, if we overdo it, we can stoke feelings of having less control over our lives or we can fill that time with more of what got us in trouble in the first place, such as checking email, scrolling through our phones or just doing more work. “If you are focused and your cognition is engaged at all times, the human brain really starts to have problems,” Christine says. “A lot of the things that we pay people to do for us take away our unspoken mind-wandering time. That’s when a lot happens in the brain.” She adds that trading money for time is good if we use our free time the right way, like spending your it to find fulfillment and connect with people we are close to, which is essential for our well-being. Also, having plain-old down time is not a bad thing, either. She says if we don’t use our extra time to let the mind wander, the brain will find inopportune times to day dream anyway and interrupt your creativity and productivity. Read more: 33 Ideas on Play Spend it wisely Pedram Shojai, the best-selling author of The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdom and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace says that time, money and energy are interchangeable in a lot of ways. He explains that when we run out money, we can often borrow more. “If you run out of time, you’re done.” When we burden ourselves with too much to do and not enough time to do it, we fall into what Pedram calls the time-compression syndrome on his website The Urban Monk. All that stress and worry takes us out of the present moment and makes it hard to focus on the task at hand. Pedram says, while we can swap money for other people’s time, we also need to be more mindful of where that time is being allocated and to pinpoint the moments in our lives where we are really bound. “It requires a good understanding of what your goals are, what you want to be and where you want your life to go to,” Pedram says. “Really look at how you are allocating that time so you are not being frivolous or needlessly wasteful.” Good-quality time could be spent savoring the moments with your young children, catching up on much needed rest and getting more exercise. All of these factors can increase lasting happiness. Read more: How to Buy Happiness for Less Than $25 Chris Libby is the Section Editor for Live Happy magazine.

Self-Care

Ikigai: The Secret to a Long and Happy Life

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that roughly translates to “the happiness of always being busy.” More broadly, it means having a purpose or reason for living. A new book called Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Lifewas written by Spaniards Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, who came up with the idea while chatting in a bar in Tokyo. Could ikigai, they wondered, be the reason Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world (86.8 years for women and 80.5 years for men, according to the World Health Organization), and lays claim to the highest ratio of people who live to the age of 100 or beyond? To explore that question, Héctor and Francesc decided to interview Japan’s centenarians in person. After a year of research, they decamped for Ogimi, a rural town of 3,200 on the north end of the island of Okinawa. Ogimi has been nicknamed the Village of Longevity, as people live longer here than in any other place on the planet. This distinction, of course, wouldn’t mean much if these elders turned out to be frail, sickly and depressed. But, as Héctor and Francesc discovered, the longest-living people in the world exude happiness, friendliness and a remarkable vigor. (One woman who had recently turned 104 beat the authors in gateball, a fast-paced, croquet-like sport popular among Okinawa’s older residents.) As they conducted their interviews with the eldest residents of the town, the authors recognized that something even more powerful than the area’s rich natural resources and beauty was at work: “an uncommon joy that flows from its inhabitants and guides them through the long and pleasurable journey of their lives.” Here are some regular habits that help the elders of Ogimi cultivate ikigai. They stay busy without hurrying. The older residents of Ogimi are always doing something, and they approach each activity attentively and slowly, whether preparing tea or crafting objects out of wicker. Every single elder the authors spoke to has a vegetable garden they tend to daily. As one centenarian noted, “I plant my own vegetables and cook them myself. That’s my ikigai.” They nurture connections with friends every day. Ogimi is divided into 17 neighborhoods and each one has a president and other community members in charge of things like culture, festivals, social activities and longevity. There are few restaurants and no bars in Ogimi. Instead, social life revolves around the community center where everyone gathers frequently for celebrations and events such as birthday parties, weekly gateball competitions and karaoke. Read more about Okinawa: Secrets to a Happy Life They move throughout the day. Even the Ogimi townspeople who are over 80 and 90 years old are still highly active. They don’t go to the gym or exercise intensely, but they are on the move during the course of their daily routines. Most get up early and spend an hour or so before or after breakfast tending their gardens. They meet friends for walks. And almost everyone follows a morning warm-up called “radio taiso,” gentle exercises that were first introduced to Japan through radio broadcasts in 1928. The movements, such as lifting your arms above your head and circling them to your sides, are simple and take only a few minutes. But they’re an effective, low-intensity form of dynamic stretching that helps keep residents limber. Try the calisthenics yourself with this brief video. They eat healthy foods in moderation. Okinawans, research has shown, eat a diet rich in vegetables and herbs, and low in animal products. Daily staples, like seaweed, sweet potatoes, green tea and miso, are high in antioxidants. Okinawans consume one-third as much sugar and nearly half as much salt as the rest of Japan. Locals, the authors note, eat a wide variety of foods, especially vegetables and spices—an average of 18 different foods a day. They also consume fewer calories—1,758 per day compared to 2,068 in the rest of Japan and an estimated 2,200 to 3,300 calories in the U.S. The Okinawan diet is built around nutrient-dense, low-calorie vegetables and fruits. They also subscribe to the Japanese concept of hara hachi bu, which means “fill your belly to 80 percent.” In other words, stop eating before you feel completely full. They connect with nature every day. Okinawans spend time in nature—often while moving and engaging with friends. One Ogimi centenarian sums it up this way: “I wake up at 5 every morning, leave the house and walk to the sea. Then I go to a friend’s house, and we have tea together. That’s the secret to a long life: getting together with people, and going from place to place.” Read more about global secrets for happiness: What the Heck Is Hygge? Shelley Levitt is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles and editor at large for Live Happy. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, People, SUCCESS and more.