Happiness is Contagious (Scientifically Proven!)

The Boston Globe reported on December 5th in the article A new reason to be happy: it may go a long way that a study found that our happiness may have extended effects not only to our friends and family, but to people we don’t even know.

Researchers from Harvard University collected data from 4,739 over the course of 2 decades to look at the extent of happiness and their conclusion is that happiness is passed on to more than just your immediate social network. The effect ripples through your extended social network to people who may even be strangers. Just to put some numbers behind this, they say that a happy friend who lives within a mile of you boosts your chance of being happy by 25%, and a sibling by 14%.

Now for many this research is somewhat controversial while for others who look at the way the world works, this falls more under the category of “duh”! If you look at religious or spiritual movements, you’ll see this understanding in place. I had a boss a few years back that talked about our work with developing students and how we were creating a “ripple effect”.

If you want to know more about the ripple effect, you can read about it on Wikipedia. The basic concept is that your intentions and actions you put out into the world spread. They spread outwardly like the ripples in a pond when you thrown in a pebble. At some point, you don’t see the ripples anymore, but they are still there, moving and traveling, to places you may never go and see. Thanks Dave for getting me to understand it!

Even Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a coauthor of the study and a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, understands the concept:

Your happiness is not just about your own choices and actions and behaviors and thoughts. It’s like there are emotional stampedes that ripple across this infinite fabric of humanity.

While, as most of you who know me really will know, I am not trying to get all “touchy-feely”, but during this holiday season maybe the gift we can give to ours kids …our friends …and the world is a better place in which to live. The first way to start is by clarifying what we are giving to it. To see a little movie on this, you can go to this YouTube video, The Ripple Effect:The Heartbeat to Eternity and give it a watch.

The second step … CLICK HERE!!! You had to know that was coming!

My wish for all of you this holiday season is a life full of joy and happiness!

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