I wish to share this meaningful email I received from Sangeetha (who is in the US) with everyone....

Peace,

Nithya

Dear Nithya:

 

I hope all is well. I was recently flying in US airways and I read this interesting article on Happiness. I wanted to share it with you as I found it interesting. I found this article useful to understand my own depression. Many ideas expressed in this research are similar to your teaching and so I thought you might be interested.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Researchers and psychologists have discovered that the formula for happiness can be expressed in a surprising single formula:

 

"H = S+C+V or Level of Happiness = Set Point+ Conditions in your life+ Voluntary Activities. Our formulation of happiness, which we call subjective well-being, is composed of life satisfaction, positive emotions, and low levels of negative emotions. This does not mean that people need to be euphoric or ecstatic all the time, but rather that people who are in a positive state majority of the time have an advantage in terms of success. The surprise is that anyone can be happier – and it really isn't all that hard.

 

SET POINT

 

50% of our proclivity for happiness and for melancholy (our set-point) is determined by our genes. From person to person, the variation is really quite large. Some people's brains are set to see opportunities and other people's brains are set to see the world as full of danger.  But genetics is not destiny. All the set point means is that in the same way some people have to work on maintaining their weight, you may have to work to achieve the same level of happiness as someone else. It may be harder but it can be done. You can't change your genes, but you can tinker with the essential wiring of your brain. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac, Zoloft and others work to prolong the action of serotonin, the brain chemical that helps to regulate mood.

 

Meditation, it turns out, also works with the brain's basic structure. Researches at the University of Wisconsin hooked meditating Tibetan monks up to brain monitors and found that the left prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that is most active when we are happy and alert – lit up like Times Square. Follow-up studies with a group of stressed out employees at a biotech company proved that even non-monks can raise their set points through meditation.

 

A third effective way to reset the set-point is through a type of therapy called "cognitive therapy", a process designed to retrain the brain to break the cycle of its own negative thoughts – essentially to recognize the world of opportunites instead of the world of dangers.

 

CONDITIONS

 

Variables such as age, health, education, income, personal appearance and even climate are ineffective at our overriding our genetically determined set point. These variables contribute surprisingly little – somewhere between 8 and 15 % to our sustained happiness. The reason external factors have little impact on our level of happiness lies deep in our brains, which turn out to be amazingly adaptable to both good and bad circumstances. Using experimental MRI and EEG techniques, scientists observed neurons firing most urgently to new stimuli; once nerves habituate to a situation, whatever its nature, they respond less. Studies of lottery winners on one hand and people who became paraplegic from an accident on the other prove the point. Within a year after the event that changed their lives, they were pretty much back to their earlier level of happiness. That holds true for less dramatic conditions. If you make a stable change, if you buy a bigger house for instance you will get used to it after a while and return to your set point. It works the opposite way as well, which is why daily hassles make people very unhappy. You never get a chance to adapt because the conditions are constantly changing. With habituation comes an internal hitch which is why, for good or bad, we are always chasing rainbows. We evolved to be not content. We are the offspring of our discontented ancestors.

 

VOLUNTARY ACTIVITIES

 

The S and C account for a hefty 60% of our happiness. The remaining 40%, which is quite a lot, attributes to the V factor. The V in the happiness formula is made up of a long list of small powerful voluntary actions we can take to change our lives and our attitudes. Martin Seligman, originator of the term "positive psychology" and director of the Positive Psychology Center at University of Pennsylvania, divides the building blocks of happiness into two categories: pleasures and gratifications. Pleasure is sensual in nature and fleeting in effect. Gratifications are those activities that call on our strengths and skills and give us a sense of a job well done. Seligman further divides gratifications into what he calls "signature strengths" – marks of character such as perseverance, kindness, humility and curiosity that make each of us the individuals we are. We are an ultrasocial species; we evolved to live in intensely social groups. We are most fully engaged in life when we are a part of something that isn't just for ourselves.

 

HAPPY FEATS

 

An experiment conducted on Martin's website, authentichappiness.org reinforces the revolutionary idea that true happiness lies in building our strengths not rooting out our flaws. Test subjects reported that benefits from these three simple exercises lasted for as much as 6 months.

 

1. Write a letter of gratitude to someone from your past who has been particularly kind to you, but who has never been properly thanked. Then deliver the letter in person.
2. Every evening for a week, write down three good things that happened that day and explain what brought them about.
3. Take the signature strengths questionnaire on authentichappiness.org to identify your own strengths, and then use one of your top five strengths in a different way every day for a week.

 

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once you start deliberately offering thought, then you can never offer
enough action to keep up with the thought. Once you access the Energy
that creates worlds, a huge vortex comes into place, and there's just
not enough action for you to keep up with that. And so, what you have to
do is visualize every step of the way, envision you happy in the
process. Envision things in place, envision people catching on. Just
envision it working. Skip over the how and the where and the when and
the who -- and just stay focused upon the what and the why.
www.abraham-hicks.com

http://lovingsilence.org