Can happiness be taught and learned? YES, says Dr. Celestino Fernández, who has served as Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona since 1976.
Although now retired, he teaches occasionally, including an innovative lecture on “The Art of Happiness: What the Research Tells Us.”
He recently spoke in a class at OLLI, the University of Arizona’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Tucson. Designed for adults 50 and better, OLLI-UA offers hundreds of classes each year, and it’s a vibrant community to fuel your mind and have some fun.
Dr. Fernández has published approximately 50 articles and book chapters. He has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Arizona Humanities Council, Tucson Meet Yourself, and the Tucson International Mariachi Conference. He currently serves on five boards.
So he knows what he’s talking about. Here are his top 30 tips:
Build and protect relationships.
1. Invest in a few close relationships. He says the most important dimension of well-being is relational. Aim for a handful (two to five) of people you can trust and talk to about anything, not hundreds of online followers.
2. Choose your company carefully. Spending time with negative people pulls you down. Get out of those situations when you can.
3. Stay socially active. Socially engaged people are consistently happier. He notes that the benefit of frequent religious attendance seems to come mostly from regular connections with a small community, not just the spiritual side.
4. Assignment: Pick a day and smile naturally at people. Not a grin nor a smirk. Watch how you feel and how others respond. His students reported new conversations and even hugs. If you’re shy, try a small opener. Say “hi” to the cashier, or compliment something you notice, like a shirt with a little dog on it. Just once. People respond favorably.
Smile and laugh more.
5. Ask yourself how often you smiled or laughed yesterday. Prof. Fernández calls it one of the two best quick indicators of whether someone is happy. The other is how many close friends or family members you have.
6. Look up and make eye contact. Walking around with your head down and headphones on makes you unlikely to smile or engage.
7. Consider laughter yoga. Laughing, even without a reason, is physically and psychologically beneficial. He describes it as working like a painkiller.
Train your mind
8. Assignment: Name three things you’re grateful for every night before you fall asleep, for two weeks. He says it takes about two weeks for brain patterns to start shifting. Even “I can see” or “I’m alive” counts.
9. Remember that about 40% of your happiness is under your control. Prof. Fernández cites research: about 50% of happiness is biological, and only about 10% comes from life circumstances. Change is not always easy, but neuroscience says we can build new thinking patterns, as people do when they quit smoking.
10. Let go of grudges. Fernández quotes the saying that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. You don’t have to forgive and forget everything, but carrying it around isn’t healthy.
11. Practice hope, and pair it with action. Hope can be built like a skill. Don’t just sit and hope. Take steps toward what you hope for.
12. Choose optimism. Look at the rose, not only the thorns. Optimists tend to do better in work and in life.
13. Live in the present. Plan ahead, but if you spend most of your attention on the future or the past, you’re missing life.
14. Exercise: Do something for someone without expecting anything in return. Prof. Fernández gave the example of a student helping an elderly woman reach items in a grocery store. It usually costs nothing, and both people feel good.
Work and purpose
15. Live your own life, not the one others expect. The top regret hospice nurse Bronnie Ware heard from dying patients was not having the courage to live a life true to themselves. Family, culture, friends, and government will all tell you how to live, and figuring out who you are is one of life’s big challenges.
16. Find work you love, or work that lets you get lost in a project. Fernández He says happiness leads to success, not the other way around. Happy people tend to be more creative, productive, and collaborative.
17. Don’t wait for success to be happy. The Runner’s World athlete he quotes found more success when she chased happiness instead of success.
18. It’s okay to leave a job that makes you miserable. One of his students did, and she thrived.
19. Avoid the deathbed regrets. Don’t work so hard that you miss your kids growing up. Express your feelings. Stay in touch with friends. Let yourself be happy now, not later.
Spend money wisely
20. Don’t count on money or possessions. Prof. Fernández says that beyond meeting basic needs, extra income adds comfort but not happiness. In the US, he cites about $75,000 a year as the point past which more income doesn’t add much to happiness.
21. Spend on experiences and on other people. Small discretionary amounts spent on others or on experiences help. Memories last longer than a new phone or car, which quickly becomes ordinary.
22. Put something on your calendar to look forward to. Happiness peaks in anticipation and levels off once you have the thing. Fernández and his wife planned their Camino de Santiago walk in Spain a year in advance and were happy anticipating the trip the whole year.
Take care of your body and your environment.
23. Move your body. Prof. Fernández cites exercise (which creates endorphins) as a happiness booster.
24. Consider climate. Fernández half-jokingly notes that people in sunny climates tend to be happier than those who shovel snow all the time. Going outdoors, particularly in nature, is healthy.
25. Get help for chronic pain. He names it the main factor that reduces happiness in later life.
Not to forget!
26. Limit social media comparison. Constantly comparing yourself to others online makes you feel worse.
27. Take heart about aging. Happiness follows a U-shape over life, bottoming out in midlife (roughly the mid-40s to 50s) and rising after that as people gain wisdom.
28. Remember that happiness is your responsibility. As Fernández puts it, you shouldn’t wait for someone else to make you happy.
29. Don’t judge other people’s paths. “Happiness is the path,” and people on different roads aren’t lost, as the Dalai Lama says.
30. Be patient with hard times. Everyone faces sadness, illness, and heartache. Happier people tend to recover faster and avoid getting stuck in “woe is me.”
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It’s only 7am and I’m definitly starting this day happier thank you! Have you written any books?