Dangers of Excessive Happiness?
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What the study and researches say
Usually, we hear people say that instead of thinking about our troubles, we have to laugh at them. To choose to be happy is to feel younger, and it will prolong our lives.
But new studies tell otherwise. There are experts that say people who are excessively cheerful could die earlier than those who are cheerless or burdensome. Their study focuses on children from the year 1920 up to the old age. It showed that happy children died earlier than the others.
The study also showed that these children are mostly likely to have bipolar disorder, or has frequent mood swings. These children are exposed to dangers, risks, or accidents because they try almost everything and treat them all with the light feeling of happiness.
Grown-ups, too, could also be exposed to the dangers excessive happiness entail. To show these positive feelings of happiness could anger more those who are not happy, and thus cause these people to inflict harm to the happy person. Depressed individuals forced to be happy makes it all the more difficult for them to be one and makes the situation more unbearable for them.
It was concluded from these studies that the real key to happiness is a meaningful relationship with family and friends.
June Gruber, co author of the study, from the Department of Psychology at Yale University, said "When you're doing it with the motivation or expectation that these things ought to make you happy, that can lead to disappointment and decreased happiness."
According to Ms. Gruber, the best thing to do to be happy is to stop thinking of being happy but to start considering on how to improve one's relationship with other people. That should be the focus.
What I thought of it
I have to say that anything forced to anyone does not yield positive results. Even if it is happiness. If one is obligated to do something, it becomes unnatural, and more efforts are being utilized. This could exhaust one's emotional reservoir, and results to aggravated feelings of loneliness and worse, depression.
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i am not sure if it was funded by the US government. :-D
in some aspects it makes sense. i have to agree that to force one's self to be happy will require a lot. it could truly bring one more to depression. when one is faced with loneliness or a struggle, it has to heal naturally.
as to limiting ourselves to be happy around people who are not happy, that aspect is truly questionable. why would one limit himself or herself with the fun and light feeling he or she feels?
Hi Maria...Interesting study but I have to agree with balimermaid, happy people are usually positive thinking and enthusiastic about life in general...I think most approach life with low expectations in most things...High expectations will always result in relative deprivation, so go low and be pleasantly surprised when it exceeds your expectations...
Hope all is well with you and your family...Voted up and useful...Thanks, Larry
hello, larry! how are you? it's been a while. :-D
i have to agree with that, too. but some aspects of the study are important, too, especially what Gruber mentioned, "When you're doing it with the motivation or expectation that these things ought to make you happy, that can lead to disappointment and decreased happiness."
BaliMermaid 12 months ago
What a crock - so these researchers motto is "don't experience the world, you might get hurt. They remind me of a sign at the park that read.
No picknicing
No biking
No tree climbing
Don't feed the fish or ducks.
Have fun at the park.
What a crock - happy people are usually more optimistic and if something does not go their way or go right they learn from that situation or that mistake and rarely repeat it in the future.
I hope this research was not one of the boon doggles the US government too frequently spends US tax money on.