I don’t know about you but I can feel overwhelmed about the turmoil in our world.
That’s why I was happy to hear that a study confirmed what I’ve been experiencing–if you want to stay happy, even though it seems like all hell is breaking loose, hang out with happy people (like my friend, Helena, on the right) because Happiness is contagious. If you don’t have happy people to hang out with, try laughter yoga. A few years ago, I attended a laughing workshop where the course leader walked around the room leading us in different laughing exercises. At first, it was a “fake it till you make it” experience, but then it was catchy like starting to yawn when you see a friend yawn.
Soon we were really laughing and feeling good.
BMJ.com, formerly the British Medical Journal, published an article a few days ago about the 20 year study of 4,700 people that shows that happiness is good for you and spreads like the flu. Happiness is more potent than making someone laugh because if one person is happy it increases the chance that others in the group can also be happy.
Researchers suggest that close physical proximity is essential for happiness to spread. A person is 42% more likely to be happy if a friend who lives less than half a mile away becomes happy, the effect is only 22% for friends who live less than two miles away. Happiness lasted for up to three cycles: to the friends of friends of friends. Now this is social networking at its best!
How are you staying happy these days?
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