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Category: Happiness
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4 Signs That You Are Happy With Your Life
Satisfaction with life refers to the overall way in which people evaluate their own lives: including their relationships, career, achieved goals and ability to cope with daily life.
Satisfaction with life refers to the overall way in which people evaluate their own lives: including their relationships, career, achieved goals and ability to cope with daily life.
Higher satisfaction with life is linked to markedly improved psychological and physical health.
Satisfaction with life refers to the overall way in which people evaluate their own lives: including their relationships, career, achieved goals and ability to cope with daily life.
It is often contrasted with moment-by-moment happiness.
People who are highly satisfied with their lives tend to agree strongly with statements like:
- “In most ways my life is close to my ideal.”
- “The conditions of my life are excellent.”
- “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.”
- “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.”
The study found that people who were highly satisfied with their lives were also:
- 46 percent less likely to be depressed.
- 26 percent less likely to die.
- 25 percent less likely to have a physical disability.
They were also more hopeful, optimistic, felt a greater sense of mastery and were less lonely.
Improve satisfaction with life
Money and how people rate their appearance have a considerable effect on how satisfied people are with life.
However, many factors that are easier to change affect life satisfaction.
Relationships clearly have a large effect on life satisfaction, along with jobs, hobbies, learning to savour life, setting goals, being in nature and even analysing negative events in life.
In the end, accepting and adapting to circumstances that cannot be changed makes people feel more content.
Governments should look past money
The conclusions of the current study come from almost 13,000 people over 50 years old surveyed in the US.
Each was asked to evaluate their health and well-being and followed up four years later.
Dr Eric Kim, the study’s first author, said:
“Life satisfaction is a person’s evaluation of his or her own life based on factors that they deem most relevant.
While life satisfaction is shaped by genetics, social factors and changing life circumstances, it can also be improved on both the individual level as well as collectively on the national level.”
The results showed that people whose life satisfaction improved also experienced considerable boosts in psychological and physical health.
The research is part of an effort to persuade governments to think about more than just money when making policy decisions.
Dr Kim said:
“The results of this study suggest that life satisfaction is a valuable target for policymakers to consider when enhancing physical, psychological and behavioural health outcomes at the policy level.”
He continued:
“As our nations pause and reevaluate our priorities in light of the widespread change caused by COVID-19, our policymakers have a rare and excellent opportunity to pursue well-being for all in the post-pandemic world.”
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The study was published in the journal The Milbank Quarterly (Kim et al., 2021).
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The 2 Biggest Predictors Of Life Satisfaction
It’s a little depressing, but it probably confirms what many people have long suspected.
It’s a little depressing, but it probably confirms what many people have long suspected.
A survey reveals that appearance and money strongly influence how satisfied people feel with their lives.
Among women, appearance was the third strongest predictor of overall life satisfaction.
The top two predictors were money and satisfaction with their partner.
For men, their appearance came second in predicting how satisfied they were with life — it was second only to how happy they were with their financial situation.
Dr David Frederick, the study’s first author, said:
“Our study shows that men’s and women’s feelings about their weight and appearance play a major role in how satisfied they are with their lives overall.”
The survey asked over 12,000 US adults about their personality, relationships, self-esteem and more.
Dr Frederick said:
“Few men (24 percent) and women (20 percent) felt very or extremely satisfied with their weight, and only half felt somewhat to extremely satisfied.
These findings are consistent with the emphasis placed on the importance of being slender for women and for appearing athletic and/or lean for men.
It would seem therefore, that we still have a long way to go before we achieve the goal of Americans being truly happy with their bodies.”
Other key findings from the study included:
- People who watched more television each week tended to be less satisfied with their appearance and weight.
- People who were more satisfied with their physical appearance and weight reported more secure attachment styles, versus fearful and dismissive attachment styles.
- People who were more satisfied with their appearance reported greater self-esteem, greater satisfaction with life, sex life, friends, romantic partners, family, and financial situation.
- Body Mass Index (BMI) was strongly related to dissatisfaction with appearance and weight.
Dr Frederick said:
“…body dissatisfaction and anxious attachment styles can lead to an out of control spiral and fuel each other.
People who are less confident in their appearance become more fearful that their partner will leave, which further fuels their worries about their appearance.”
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The study was published in the journal Body Image (Frederick et al., 2016).
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2 Personality Traits That Predict Happiness
Two personality traits that lead to a happier and more satisfying life.
Two personality traits that lead to a happier and more satisfying life.
Psychologists have discovered that young adults who are more outgoing and emotionally stable go on to lead happier lives.
The study looked at data from 2,529 people born in 1946.
They first answered a series of questions about their personalities at 16 and 26 years of age.
Forty years later, in their early sixties, they were asked about their well-being and satisfaction with life.
Dr Catharine Gale, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“We found that extroversion in youth had direct, positive effects on wellbeing and life satisfaction in later life.
Neuroticism, in contrast, had a negative impact, largely because it tends to make people more susceptible to feelings of anxiety and depression and to physical health problems.”
High extroversion is linked to being more sociable, having more energy and preferring to stay active.
High neuroticism is linked to being distractible, moody and having low emotional stability.
Increased extroversion was directly linked to more happiness.
Greater neuroticism, meanwhile, was linked to less happiness through a greater susceptibility to psychological distress.
Dr Gale said:
“Understanding what determines how happy people feel in later life is of particular interest because there is good evidence that happier people tend to live longer.
In this study we found that levels of neuroticism and extroversion measured over 40 years earlier were strongly predictive of well-being and life satisfaction in older men and women.
Personality in youth appears to have an enduring influence on happiness decades later.”
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The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Gale et al., 2013).
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