What I’ve learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0047

2301.  Happiness is even more than a good feeling – it is also an indispensable ingredient of our success;

2302.  Happiness leads to success in nearly every domain of our lives, including marriage, health, friendship, community involvement, creativity, and, in particular, our jobs, careers, and businesses;

2303.  Data abounds showing that happy workers have higher levels of productivity, produce higher sales, perform better in leadership positions, and receive higher performance ratings and higher pay.  They also enjoy more job security and are less likely to take sick days, to quit, or to become burned out;

2304.  Happy CEOs are more likely to lead teams of employees who are both happy and healthy, and who find their work climate conducive to high performance;

2305.  Study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving.  Happiness causes success and achievement, not the opposite;

2306.  One study measured the initial level of positive emotions in 272 employees, then followed their job performance over the next eighteen months.  And they found that even after controlling for other factors, those who were happier at the beginning ended up receiving better evaluations and higher pay later on.  Another study found that how happy individuals were as college freshmen predicted how high their income was nineteen years later, regardless of their initial level of wealth;

2307.  One of the most famous longitudinal studies on happiness comes from an unlikely place: the old diaries of Catholic nuns.  These 180 nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame, all born before 1917, were asked to write down their thoughts in autobiographical journal entries.  The nuns whose journal entries had more overtly joyful content lives nearly ten years longer than the nuns whose entries were more negative or neutral.  By age 85, 90 percent of the happiest quartile of nuns were still alive, compared to only 34 percent of the least happy quartile;

2308.  Happiness can improve our physical health, which in turn keeps us working faster and longer and therefore makes us more likely to succeed;

2309.  Research shows that unhappy employees take more sick days, staying home an average of 1.25 more days per month, or 15 extra sick days a year;

2310.  Studies have determined that happiness functions as the cause, not just the result, of good health.  In one study, researchers gave subjects a survey designed to measure levels of happiness – then injected them with a strain of the cold virus.  A week later, the individuals who were happier before the start of the study had fought off the virus much better than the less happy individuals.  They didn’t just feel better, either; they actually had fewer objective symptoms of illness as measured by doctors – less sneezing, coughing, inflammation, and congestion;

2311.  Extensive research has found that happiness actually has a very important evolutionary purpose, something Barbara Fredrickson has termed the “Broaden and Build Theory.”  Instead of narrowing our actions down to fight or flight as negative emotions do, positive ones broaden the amount of possibilities we process, making us more thoughtful, creative, and open to new ideas;

2312.  Individuals who are “primed” – meaning scientists help evoke a certain mindset or emotion before doing an experiment – to feel either amusement or contentment can think of a larger and wider array of thoughts and ideas than individuals who have been primed to feel either anxiety or anger.  And when positive emotions broaden our scope of cognition and behavior in this way, they not only make us more creative, they help us build more intellectual, social, and physical resources we can rely upon in the future;

2313.  Positive emotions flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that not only make us feel good, but dial up the learning centers of our brains to higher levels.  They help us organize new information, keep that information in the brain longer, and retrieve it faster later on.  And they enable us to think more quickly and creatively, become more skilled at complex analysis and problem solving, and see and invent new ways of doing things;

2314.  A recent University of Toronto study found that our mood can actually change how our visual cortex – the part of the brain responsible for sight – processes information.  In this experiment, people were primed for either positivity or negativity, then asked to look at a series of pictures.  Those who were put in a negative mood didn’t process all the images in the pictures – missing substantial parts of the background – while those in a good mood saw everything.  Eye-tracking experiments have shown the same thing: Positive emotions actually expand our peripheral line of vision;

2315.  Positive emotions can begin to open our eyes and minds to new solutions and ideas even at a very young age.  In one interesting study, researchers asked four-year-old children to complete a series of learning tasks, such as putting together blocks of different shapes.  The first group was given neutral instructions: Please put these blocks together as quickly as you can.  The researchers gave the second group the same set of instructions, and then asked them first to briefly think about something that makes them happy.  The children who were primed to be happy significantly outperformed the others, completing the task both more quickly and with fewer errors;

2316.  Students who were told to think about the happiest day of their lives right before taking a standardized math test outperformed their peers;

2317.  People who expressed more positive emotions while negotiating business deals did so more efficiently and successfully than those who were more neutral or negative;

2318.  Veal tongue can be very tender;

2319.  Even the smallest shots of positivity can give someone a serious competitive advantage;

2320.  In addition to broadening our intellectual and creative capacities, positive emotions also provide a swift antidote to physical stress and anxiety, what psychologists call “the undoing effect;”

2321.  A quick burst of positive emotions doesn’t just broaden our cognitive capacity; it also provides a quick and powerful antidote to stress and anxiety, which in turn improves our focus and our ability to function at our best level;

2322.  Just a short humorous video clip, a quick conversation with a friend, or even a small gift of candy can produce significant and immediate boosts in cognitive power and job performance;

2323.  Neuroscientists have found that monks who spend years meditating actually grow their left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most responsible for feeling happy;

2324.  You don’t have to spend years in sequestered, celibate silence to experience a boost from meditation.  Take just five minutes each day to watch your breath go in and out.  While you do so, try to remain patient.  If you find your mind drifting, just slowly bring it back to focus.  Meditation takes practice, but it’s one of the most powerful happiness interventions;

2325.  Studies show that in the minutes right after meditating, we experience feelings of calm and contentment, as well as heightened awareness and empathy;

2326.  Research even shows that regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of happiness, lower stress, even improve immune function;

2327.  One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent;

2328.  Often, the most enjoyable part of an activity is the anticipation;

2329.  Anticipating future rewards can actually light up the pleasure centers in your brain much as the actual reward will;

2330.  A long line of empirical research, including one study of over 2,000 people, has shown that acts of altruism – giving to friends and strangers alike – decrease stress and strongly contribute to enhanced mental health;

2331.  Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leading researcher and author of The How of Happiness, has found that individuals told to complete five acts of kindness over the course of a day report feeling much happier than control groups and that the feeling lasts for many subsequent days, far after the exercise is over.  But if you want to reap the psychological benefit, make sure you do these things deliberately and consciously – you can’t just look back over the last 24 hours and declare your acts post hoc.  And they need not be grand gestures, either;

2332.  Our physical environment can have an enormous impact on our mindset and sense of well-being;

2333.  Making time to go outside on a nice day also delivers a huge advantage; one study found that spending 20 minutes outside in good weather not only boosted positive mood, but broadened thinking and improved working memory;

2334.  Studies have shown that the less negative TV we watch, specifically violent media, the happier we are;

2335.  Psychologists have found that people who watch less TV are actually more accurate judges of life’s risks and rewards than those who subject themselves to the tales of crime, tragedy, and death that appear night after night on the ten o’clock news.  That’s because these people are less likely to see sensationalized or one-sided sources of information, and thus see reality more clearly;

2336.  Supposedly, there’s a pool of about 50 pilots that fly “Marine One” (i.e., the presidential helicopter);

2337.  The truth is that you cannot have what you want unless you do something.  It’s impossible.  Maybe it’s success, wealth, or health.  In order to accomplish any one of those goals requires that you do something.  Success requires accomplishments.  Wealth requires delivering a product or service that someone is willing to buy.  Health requires eating well and exercising;

2338.  Whatever you have is a result of what you do;

2339.  There are three types of doing that are necessary to reach a goal: aspire, acquire, and apply;

2340.  True knowledge comes from putting what you’ve learned into real-world practice;

2341.  To know and not do, is to not yet know;

2342.  What do you get for rushing up an escalator (at a Metrorail station) to try and catch a train?  The answer is: A scraped up, bloody knee and a trip to the doctor(‘s office);

2343.  If it’s been over six hours since you were cut, your wound has started to heal and you can’t get stitches anymore;

2344.  Setting your vacuum cleaner to the correct height makes a big difference in its effectiveness;

2345.  I think some people just aren’t wired to be married or in a monogamous relationship;

2346.  The most common and worst mistake job seekers make: Spending all their time answering ads, or sending out their résumé to blind contacts, instead of making meaningful connections and doing face-to-face networking.  It’s the number one, catastrophic job search mistake.  It fools people into thinking they are doing a pro-active search when in fact it’s very passive;

2347.  More than 50% of jobs are never posted;

2348.  Eighty percent of jobs are found through networking or direct contact;

2349.  Dream as if you’ll live forever.  Live as if you’ll die today;

2350.  It’s $13.00 (i.e., one-way) to take the water taxi (PotomacRiverBoatCo.com) from (Old Town) Alexandria to Georgetown;