A month and a half before Elvis Presley died, a reporter interviewing him asked an interesting question: “Elvis, when you first started playing music, you said you wanted to be rich, famous and happy. Are you happy?” His response was simply: “I am lonely…” The interesting thing about this response is that Elvis had achieved everything he had ever desired. For that matter, in terms of wealth, success, and the adoration of millions, Elvis’ success exceeded the desires of most people in general, but despite all of that, he found himself lonely. Recent groundbreaking research on the topic of happiness has discovered some interesting things. One of them relates to money and happiness: There is a point of diminishing return when it comes to wealth. Researchers found that people living on very little money tend to be as happy as those who have significant personal wealth. In fact, studies involving lottery winners have found that, over the long term, lottery winnings had little impact on personal happiness or had the opposite effect of making the winner less happy.
Researches have found several common traits amongst those who tend to be happier in life, of which I think that several are worth highlighting, largely because they are easily reached through relatively minor changes in habits or lifestyle.
One of the most important traits of happy people is close family and community relationships. The idea behind this is simple: People with more intimate connections are happier. This, however, does not extend to social media. In fact, studies have found that heavy use of social media tends to be connected to less happiness in life. Rather, it involves time spent building deeper, more open connections with other people. People are designed to be social creatures. As a result, we tend to be happier when we are deeply connected with others.
Another trait that tends to correlate to happiness is an attitude of gratitude. People who are thankful for the things they have are more likely to be happy. This is especially interesting when you consider the cultural tendency to look to possessions or financial comfort as a source of happiness. Often, desiring more stuff or more money tends to be connected to discontentment with our current situation. Being thankful for the things we have fosters an attitude of contentment, which tends to make us happier.
A final trait that is particularly interesting as it relates to happiness is regularly spending time doing things we love and find meaningful for work or play. With work, this would be anything we can lose ourselves in. In my case, I love reading and researching. I can easily lose myself in sermon prep. I have friends who love their jobs and routinely get lost in their work for hours on end. Hobbies fall into this category as well. I have friends who lose themselves in baking, sewing, building, painting, etc. The idea is to do things you love doing and that make you feel like you are doing something important.
