06 Sep What makes us happy?
In June of this year, Joshua Wolf Shenk published the fascinating essay _ã–What Makes Us Happy?_ã in The Atlantic.
It was riveting.
Joshua spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development hoping to learn the secret of happiness. The project is one of the longest-running and probably the most exhaustive longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Basically, for 72 years researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s_ã_following them through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age.
A brilliant man named George Vaillant has directed the study for 40-plus years, compiling and processing all the information.
So what did Joshua learn? What makes for happiness??
Let me just pluck out a few of the most intriguing concepts presented in the article.
To read more about this fascinating happiness and positive psychology research – click here