Psychology Today: Happy Hour (via MetaFilter).
Interesting stuff about what makes us happy and unhappy, and why we are very bad at predicting what will make us happy and unhappy. Interesting tidbits:
- We seem to have an internal “happiness setpoint” that means that we tend to stay just about as happy in the face of external circumstances which one would imagine would make us much happier or sadder — winning the lottery or losing the use of your legs, say, have a remarkably small effect on your overall happiness in the long term. However…
- We tend to get happier as we get older. On the whole, the elderly are much happier than the young, maybe partly because they’re less worried about the future cause they’ve got less of it to worry about — so they can focus on the present. Speaking of which…
- Focusing on the present moment, being engaged with it and mindful of it, is a big key to happines. A lot of other things that make us happy or unhappy do so by making us engaged or disengaged from the present moment.