The Happiness Epidemic

Happiness can be caught like the flu. Yesss!

We are social animals. We share the flu, and we share our behavior too. Just like being fit is "in" and smoking is "out," other social behavior, like happiness, can catch on. We can catch a case of Happy. Or, conversely, happiness propagates... like kindness.

Time magazine reported in a terrific article last Christmas that Harvard social scientist Dr. Nicholas Christakis and UC San Diego's James Fowler announced last year the results of a 20-year study of 5,000 people showing that emotions can pass among a network of people. Your happiness may be determined by your friends' friends. Or your happiness can infect your friends and, in turn, their friends. What a nice flu to catch!

This might explain why we like happy people and like to hang around them. Birds of a feather flock together.

How the hub (me!) becomes happy to begin with is based upon a positive attitude... and a decision. But the point is that it goes both ways... I can draw happiness as well as generate it.

Everything matters... everything you do and say has positive (or negative) repercussions. Want to make your world better? Be happy, be kind, and be a good example.


- © 2009 by Willy