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The Happiness Factor
By: Brittany Glenn
Issue: January/Expo 2010

What’s behind happiness and how can we create more of it in our lives?

Happiness: It’s what we seek—but it can sometimes be elusive. At one time, it was said money was the root of all happiness—maybe not all happiness, but at least a lot of it. Happiness was buying a new car; a bigger and nicer house; exotic vacations.

We shopped ’till we dropped, consuming fleeting moments of joy, and then set our sights on our next fix: buying new clothes, jewelry or the latest electronic gadget, planning a cruise, dining at expensive restaurants.

However, in the face of troubled times, money is not so easily earned or spent. These days, we’re forced to look elsewhere for our good vibes. But, where do we look?

“For me, happiness is a byproduct of attitude,” says Doug Greenhut, president of Delray Beach, Florida-based supplier The Book Company (UPIC: BOOKCO). “By staying positive and balanced in my work and life, happiness seems to follow. A nice, strong cup of coffee in the morning seems to help, too.”

Greenhut doesn’t believe money can buy happiness, yet there is a correlation between the two. “I feel happiest walking on the beach, paddling a kayak in the mountains, drinking a cold beer on a hot day, and spending time with my wife and daughter,” Greenhut says. “However, money does facilitate happiness. You need to get to the beach, rent the kayak and buy the beer—but time with people that make you happy is free.”

Looking At Loyalty
Greenhut’s emphasis on family ties as a means to happiness supports the theories of Lerzan Aksoy and Timothy Keiningham, co-authors of the book, “Why Loyalty Matters.”

Aksoy says happiness is closely tied to our loyalty to others. She says there are three domains that we feel loyalty to—friends and family, workplace, and community—and we need to feel a high degree of loyalty in each of these three domains.

“Happiness is dependent on feeling connected rather than feeling isolated,” says the associate professor of marketing at Fordham University in New York. “What makes us happy is feeling a connection to other people and to some cause or idea other than ourselves. Loyalty is the glue that binds these relationships together.”

Aksoy and Keiningham commandeered a comprehensive study of loyalty: the Ipsos Loyalty Study, which found the one thing that strongly impacts our overall happiness isn’t money, it’s loyalty to others. We are happy when these connections are a part of our lives, whether they are with friends and family, our workplace or society.

If happiness is tied to loyalty, how can we generate more happiness in our lives? “Recognize where your loyalties lie. Then figure out how you spend your time, energy and effort,” Aksoy says.

“We often don’t realize what makes us happy. If we understand that family and friends, work and community are important to us, we can spend more time building those relationships and connections,” Aksoy says.

Although loved ones, work and community are certainly worthy of our loyalties, there is another that may be just as important to happiness: loyalty to self.

Realizing Self-Reliance
Let’s say you’re loyal to your friends and family, your workplace and your community. But then you decide to do something that rocks the boat, and they resist you? If you want to make a new choice, one that might encounter resistance, you may feel at cross-purposes. Should you be loyal to friends and family or to yourself?

Denise Cooper, president of Charlotte, North Carolina-based consultancy Coach HR LLC, says we need a strong inner compass so we are able to take action even when others don’t agree.

“Some of the literature around happiness says it is dependent upon a strong support system—your network of friends,” Cooper says. “However, if you’re not careful and you don’t know who you are, when you decide to make big changes, that circle of friends paves a resistant culture around you. That also may mean that you need to upgrade your friends.”

Aksoy points out that some relationships are toxic and should not be maintained. But what about the times in our lives when we go through big change—something that changes the status quo—and we encounter resistance from even our closest companions?

Cooper believes many people don’t achieve happiness because they are afraid of what people will think of them—that their friends and family will judge them. “This stops them from going for the gold,” she says.

In order to be happy, we need to know what’s important to us and why it’s important to us. We must know what our unique value to the world is, Cooper says. “This sets your internal compass in the right direction and gives you a sense of who you are.”

A little selfishness is good, says Andy Feld, author of “Simple Happy: Finally Learning to Listen to Yourself,” and “Wake Up! Your Life Is Calling!: Activating Spirit, Happiness, and Abundance.”

“When we feel better about ourselves, when we are filled with a little bit more self-love, we are much nicer to everybody else,” Feld says. “Get in touch with that inner radar that’s telling you what’s good for you. Act on it regardless of whether someone else says it’s selfish. As we start to love ourselves more, we are much nicer to everybody else.”

Give And Take
Ronald Kaufman, a success consultant for Los Angeles-based Ronald Kaufman Consultancy, says he derives the greatest joy from giving to others. “You can look for ways to help other people like holding the door for someone or helping them with their computer,” he says. “Just look for places to be of service.”

Cooper puts a different spin on the subject of giving. “When people give to someone else there are two things that happen: 1) There’s an internal reaction—you get kind of an adrenaline rush from the actual giving of something to someone else,” she says. “And 2) The act gives you a sense of power, that you have something worthy to give.”

Happiness Is A Choice
The implication is, of course, that we can choose to be happy. Yes, we can—to an extent. External circumstances do matter, and bad things do happen to good people. “Over time, your life experiences impact your happiness,” Cooper says. “These experiences can either propel you to be happy or they can keep you in a certain place of non-happiness.”

Happiness seems closely tied to resilience—in other words, it’s not so much the bad things that happen, but our reaction to them.

Happily, it is possible to rewire our brains to improve our happiness potential. “This happens when you align your behavior with your thinking pattern,” Cooper says. “I think happiness is a learned skill.”

Feld believes happiness is a day-to-day choice. “We always get what we think and feel relative to what we do. So, if you want to change your life you have to change your thoughts and your emotions,” he says. “It takes a tremendous amount of will power and practice to not allow your thoughts, emotions, words and actions to deviate from your goals. Negative thoughts and emotions keep us so much from getting what we want.”

Kaufman says it’s important to understand our values and beliefs, and to be clear on who we are. “Understand what your self-concept is,” he says. “What do you believe is true about you as a human being? What are your values? All these things affect our behaviors and how we respond and evaluate what happens to us.

“You can choose to be happy,” he says. “You’re only as happy as you make up your mind to be. We can choose to change our thoughts, beliefs and values, and set certain goals.”

Cooper reminds us that happiness is a journey, not a destination. “The thing that everybody forgets is you have to struggle so that you get perspective to understand that you’re happy,” she says. “You cannot be happy all the time because then you wouldn’t be risk-taking or growing. The world is going to change, and you’ll have to reorient your compass.”

A happy and joyful Dallas-based freelance journalist, Brittany Glenn writes about current issues, trends and the economy for consumer and business-to-business magazines. She is a former associate editor of PPB magazine.

Five Steps To Happiness
“There are five simple daily things you can do to feel happy right now,” says Andy Feld, author of “Simple Happy: Finally Learning to Listen to Yourself,” and “Wake Up! Your Life Is Calling!: Activating Spirit, Happiness, and Abundance.”

Try these five small steps to happiness for at least two days, and see if they don’t make you feel happier.

1. Smile. “As soon as you wake up in the morning smile and then during the day, smile,” Feld says. “What happens 90 percent of the time when you smile at someone else? They smile back. All you have to do is smile at others and they’ll smile back at you all day long.”

2. Appreciate. “Wake up in the morning and appreciate all the little things you have,” he says. “Start with the clothes in your closet, the food in your refrigerator, the shelter that keeps you warm, your hot running water, your relationships, the beauty of nature and animals in your life.”

3. Forgive. “Forgive everybody, starting with you,” Feld says. “You can only create your life from the present. When we are not forgiving, we are living in the past—where you have no opportunity to create your life going forward.”

4. Allow. “Allow people to be who they are,” he says. “Everybody is different. Don’t make people be the way you feel they have to be.”

5. Read less news. “When you read and watch the news, it’s all about the murders, the diseases, the terrorism, banks, the mortgage crisis, unemployment, etc.,” Feld says. “The more you absorb this stuff, the more you develop a negative mentality.”

How Happy Are You?
Take the happiness quiz. Visit Dr. Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness website, fill in the questionnaire, and find out how happy you really are.

You have to register to take the quizzes, but it’s quick, easy and free.

Choose from 18 questionnaires, including Compassionate Love Scale, Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire, General Happiness Questionnaire, Gratitude Questionnaire, Grit Survey, Brief Strengths Test, Optimism Test, Satisfaction with Life Scale and more.