Keeping the "Happy" in Happy New Year
As we begin the New Year, I thought it appropriate to explore the very greeting that so many of us share with one another this time of year. My unscientific assumption is that most of us want very much to be happy. For me, it's like a dashboard indicator that the myriad pieces that make up my life are generally working well and are in harmony with each other. But how do you find it? I've long heard that happiness is a journey, not a destination. Others have opined that happiness is a choice we make (or not) each day. Both notions are true of course, but they're not the whole story. Happy New Year GIFTS New Research on Happiness There have been several studies published recently which have explored the notion of happiness on a much more thorough and scientific basis than ever before. In her new book, The How of Happiness, University of California Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky concluded that as much as 50% of a person's capacity to be [consistently] happy is either g...