The Key To Happpiness

Have you ever wondered what leads to happiness? I related a story recently about a very wealthy man who was on his death bed and received a visit from an old friend. The sick man lay quietly in the bed with tubes in and out of his face and monitors showing every breath and heart beat.

When the visitor sat down beside the bed, the wealthy man looked up and noted he was sad because he had recently lost several million dollars in the stock market. Money made him happy, or so it seems. Recent research indicates a different story. Things do no satisfy. Not for long anyway.

The key to happiness

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 05/05/2010

Reporter: Tracy Bowden

A comprehensive study has offered an insight into what makes for a good life and a good old age. The director of the Grant study George Vaillant speaks with Tracy Bowden about his results.

Transcript

TRACY BOWDEN, PRESENTER: Just what is the key to happiness? One person in a good position to know is Dr George Vaillant, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. For more than 40 years he's directed one of the most comprehensive long-term studies in history. The grant study has documented the lives of a group of 268 men from youth through to old age with regular questionnaires, medical exams and interviews. Dr Vaillant is in Sydney for the fifth annual Happiness and its Causes conference and I spoke to him earlier today.

George Vaillant, you've been immersed in this study and these lives for more than 40 years now. Are you saying that the key to a good life is in the relationships you have in your life?

GEORGE VAILLANT, PSYCHIATRY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Absolutely. This is the only study in the world where you can take 18 year olds and compare them to themselves at 90 so that to answer the question, "Is love the most important thing in the world?", this study was uniquely set up to do that.

Some kids came from families where their parents were multimillionaires and some people came from families where their father worked in a garage and they were on full scholarship. Social class of your parents 40 years on made no difference at all. So that it isn't the class system that governs how we turned out in life, but it matters tremendously whether we are loved and whether we're able to give love.

And if I feel sick to my stomach, if I feel hungry, if I've got the hots for someone, it's all about me. Whereas if I have compassion, if I feel forgiveness, if I trust someone, it's all about them. And it's that distinction that makes the difference in well-being.

TRACY BOWDEN: Now let's talk a bit about ageing. I guess a lot of people aren't too happy about ageing, but has your attitude changed since you've been looking at the grant study men?

GEORGE VAILLANT: Oh, tremendously. When I was 50, I thought ageing was about the most terrible thing in the world, but I needed to study it to support the grant study. So I wrote this grant that I was going to follow these men's decay, of sort of how they, you know, gradually wound their way to their grave. Dying is terrible whether you do it at 10 or whether you do it at 90, but living is a whole lot of fun and the average person who's going to live to 95 at 90 is still in reasonably good health, and if you just hang out with them, which is what I did in running a grant study - the grant study.

My men were healthy at 80, and I interviewed them and they made it clear that they were happier then than they had been earlier on and the careful research shows that people over the age of 70 - and here I'm using happy not in the sense of excited, "Oh, this is my lucky day" happy, but happy in the sense of not being depressed, seeing glasses as half full and basically being glad you got up that morning and enjoying life.

TRACY BOWDEN: So in the end is the message that you, I guess, would like people to take away, is it that it's all about love? A good life is all about love?

GEORGE VAILLANT: Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. But it's all about positive emotions that are genetically created for survival purposes. So I mean we've evolved to be increasingly altruistic and caring about each other. You do a lot better going to a positive church than you do reading (the atheist) Richard Dawkins.

(As) a psychiatrist... I think it's terribly important that my profession spend more time with positive emotion and more time regarding people's spiritual involvement as a virtue rather than something that if they just read enough Freud they could give up.

TRACY BOWDEN: George Vaillant, thanks for speaking to us.

George Vaillant: I am happy to be here.

Our tag line says, "Building a lifetime of great relationships"(R) That means with God, self and others. In this I want to include pets. I have see the addition of a pet bring harmony and happiness to quarreling families. Try it.

I Need Peace

A Prayer for Courage and Serenity

Rev Reinhold Niebuhr

God, grant me the serenity to accept

The things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time:

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace:

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it:

Trusting that you will make all things right

If I surrender to your will:

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

And supremely happy with you in the next

Pastoral Care

Who is Knocking on Your Kid's Door?

A story about many young people leaving the church has been widely reported and written on. I am appalled by the results of the research the Barna group did with youth. The kids told Barna that the church was not a safe place to raise serious questions about God, sex, friends, heaven, hell and so on.

If Christian kids cannot ask those questions at church or home, where do they ask them? Why not send them to a nice secular college where they can take a "Sex Education Class" and learn all the important things about sex without guilt or shame.

When I was Associate Dean at the University of Cincinnati, the sex ed classes were notorious for attracting upper class men who attended the first few classes where freshman and sophomore girls were being quickly cleansed of any sexual inhibitions. Those very nice older guys always made themselves available to help the young girls learn all about real sex without love.

World Magazine has an excellent article on the research about why young people are fed up with uncaring and intellectually sloppy Christian leaders. I posted it on my Face Book Page as well.

In our research on how churches are ministering to families with a special needs child we found the same inattention and lack of support. Our moms and dads said no one ever visited them or prayed for their child or them. One Dad told us his church was recruiting members to go overseas but had never visited his daughter to pray and never asked about the family.

Why are the children ignored at the place Jesus established to care for them?

Facing eternity

PS. I heard a very sad story yesterday from a friend I sometimes meet for coffee at McDonald's. (They have senior coffee for 50 cents) He went to the hospital to visit a very sick friend who was dying. He was determined to offer hims some words of comfort at this final hour. The fellow greeted my friend and added, "It is a very sad time." My buddy agreed and started to offer something more but the guy said, "The stock market went down over 300 points yesterday and I lost 4 million dollars. It really upsets me."

He died that night. That is sad because he obviously worshiped his money at the final hour. At the funeral there was no U'HAUL connected to the hearse. One of the man's kids joked that he thought about putting a big check in the coffin.

What are you worshiping? Anything or anybody you can take with you to the great beyond?

Famous Resolutions for the Coming Year

This list was penned by the great Woody Guthrie in 1942 at the tender-but-just-wise-enough age of 30, is an absolute gem of humor, earnestness, and pure humanity. He was a professional poet and singing of the poems he wrote. So, why would I try to compete against him?

1. Work more and better

2. Work by a schedule

3. Wash teeth if any

4. Shave

5. Take bath

6. Eat good – fruit – vegetables – milk

7. Drink very scant if any 8. Write a song a day

9. Wear clean clothes – look good

10. Shine shoes

11. Change socks

12. Change bed cloths often

13. Read lots good books

14. Listen to radio a lot

15. Learn people better

16. Keep rancho clean

17. Don't get lonesome

18. Stay glad

19. Keep hoping machine running

20. Dream good

21. Bank all extra money

22. Save dough

23. Have company but don't waste time

24. Send Mary and kids money

25. Play and sing good

26. Dance better

27. Help win war – beat fascism

28. Love mama

29. Love papa

30. Love Pete

31. Love everybody

32. Make up your mind

33. Wake up and fight

Commentary by an Internet Guy. (ANONYMOUS)

What's interesting is that the list doesn't map onto the Maslow hierarchy of needs in order, but does contain shuffled elements of its five tiers, perhaps validation for the universality of Maslow's insight into human psychology and aspiration – there is the physiological ("Wash teeth," "Shave," "Eat good"), the safety and security ("Bank all extra money," "Keep rancho clean"), the love and belonging ("Don't get lonesome", "Love mama," Love papa,", Love Pete [Seeger]", "Love everybody"), the esteem ("Wear clean clothes – look good", "Dance better"), and the self-actualization ("Work more and better", "Keep hoping machine running," "Play and sing good," "Make up your mind," "Wake up and fight").

Thank you, Woody, for a timeless list that still speaks to us all – yes, by all means, let's read lots of good books, keep hoping and dreaming, make up our minds, and love everybody. And, you know, bathe.

I would add:

34. Pray more

35. Play more

36. Find warm weather

37. Hug more

38. Talk slowly to friends

39. Love family as much as possible

40. Tell people I appreciate them

Gabe Sweeten wishing you all will be able to wash the teeth you have grown, bought and paid for or found somewhere.

Predictions Anyone

Here we are on the cusp of 2012 wondering what will happen this year. My family gathers each year at Christmas and New Year to celebrate Christ's birth and celebrate family.

One of our traditions is to write a list of ten or so Predictions about the coming year. Then we gather around the table after dinner and read our predictions and count who has done the best job of seeing into the future. This year Grandma and eldest Daughter tied. If we were judged on prophesy the same way the Prophets of old were we would be facing the guillotine.

With elections coming up we had to choose a Republican and then choose the winner between him and Obama. We also have to predict the Bengals record and the DOW Jones Level. Below are some big predictions by famous people that were dead wrong. It shows you why the USSR was such a terrible economy: the Communist Party tried to predict what would be best to produce and they failed miserably. It is also why the people in DC who predicted that the public really needed gasoline made from corn cost us billions of dollars. And don't get me started on Solyndra.

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."

                -- Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."

                - - Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."

                -- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

                -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march 

of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

               -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that 

won't last out the year."

               -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what is it good for?"

               -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, 

commenting on the microchip.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."-- Bill Gates, 1981

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as 

a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us,"

               -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would 

pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

                -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his 

urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better 

than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible,"

                -- A Yale University management professor in response 

to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. 

(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not 

Gary Cooper,"--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone 

With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say 

America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make,"

                -- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. 

Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out," -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible,"-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The 

literature was full of examples that said you can't do this,"

                -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique 

adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy,"-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill 

for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

               -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University , 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value,"

              -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de 

Guerre ,France.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of 

Patents, 1899.

"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of 

the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by 

the number of vacuum tubes required."

               -- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make 

copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself."

               -- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to 

found Xerox.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."

                -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the 

intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,"

               -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed 

Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

                And last but not least...

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

               -- Ken Olson, president founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977