Posted 1/30/2009

HAPPINESS IS CONTAGIOUS

Happiness, like the common cold, is highly contagious, according to some recent academic research. It means that a happy person in a circle of acquaintances will increase the happiness level of the whole group.

Is this really news?

And who is funding this stupidly redundant research?

My grandmother always said, "Laughter is infectious." And she didn't need some fancy-shmancy government grant to prove something that everybody in Erie County, Pennsylvania, knew in 1895 or so.

Actually, you can do the research right here.

Look at Baby Number One. How does this make you feel?

Now look at Baby Number Two. How does this make you feel?

Congratulations, you know probably know more about happiness than all the researchers in the world know. Because you just observed a second theorem: "Unhappiness is also highly contagious."

You can repeat the same experiment using pictures of teens or adults. And you will get the same answer. A happy 70-year-old makes you happy, whereas a complaining old septuagenarian can be very upsetting.

The secret to happiness is to surround yourself with as many happy people as you can.

How can you identify truly happy people at a first meeting?

Simple. There is an inverse relationship between happiness and the use of the personal pronoun.

If you meet someone who constantly uses the words "I" and "me," you are dealing with an inherently unhappy person. A person, intensively self-focused, who has spent his life exploring the world's smallest and most boring of universes – self. Beyond boredom, such auto-involvement becomes overly concerned with frailties and shortcomings. After a time, the self-involved person becomes extremely unhappy with himself and loses his ability to like other people.

By projecting his frailties and weaknesses onto others, he soon makes himself unpopular. The gossip will accuse others of gossiping. The petty thief will accuse others of stealing his ideas. The fibber will accuse others of lying. As he projects his problems onto others, he destroys his ability to like or love anyone. He soon becomes isolated in society and his unhappiness increases.

You can see the unhappy glitterati parading each evening before Jay Leno and Dave Letterman. Watch and listen carefully. All you hear is "I" – over and over again. All the stars can talk about are themselves and their careers. They know nothing, and seek to know nothing, beyond themselves and their stage or movie roles.

Why are marriages so transient in Hollywood?

Because the stars are so full of themselves, they have no room for anyone else.

If you are looking for the love of your life, watch out for those personal pronouns.

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