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James Hong

Saturday, May 16, 2009

More on Happiness

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short blog post about happiness where I said that happiness = reality - expectations. My basic point was that as long as you have low expectations from things, you are more bound to be pleasantly surprised (and happy) than disappointed.

There's a fascinating piece in The Atlantic about a Harvard study that has been going for 72 years now, following the lives of 200+ men. The paper talks a bit about what variables made for happier people. Below is a short clip of the current leader of the study (for 42 years). I highly recommend people watch it and read the article!

3 Comments:

Blogger renemy said...

That is really nice. I love the sense of peace and knowing this man has.

12:56 PM  
Anonymous Jonha said...

Our frustration when things go wrong relies deeply on our expectations. However, if we tend to expect less, we could be bound to do less. What should we do then?

9:30 PM  
Blogger james said...

What does it matter if you are happier?

11:04 PM  

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