Happy people live longer and eat healthier, according to Norwegian researcher Ragnhild Bang Nes. In his book on happiness, he admits that 80% of the genes are responsible for long-term happiness - this does not mean that its achievement depends only on them. “Our environment, our choices also affect happiness,” he notes.
Psychologist and researcher Ragnhild Bang Nes has been researching happiness for over 16 years. She focused mainly on public health, and over time she published the book Kudoun’s Medicine. How to Be Happy in 31 Days, which takes a more personal perspective. In it, he shows how to use the experience of scientists to become happy. She writes that positive experiences benefit our health, strengthen friendships, and prolong life.
What is happiness?
What is happiness anyway? The ancient philosophers, speaking of happiness, emphasized that they give us small pleasures and this is the so-called happiness. hedonistic (hedon - pleasure, enjoyment) approach to life. “But that’s not all, because we also have eudaimonic happiness, which emphasizes the ethical values of our life experience,” said Ragnhild Bang Nes during the presentation “How to take care of your well-being every day? What does science offer?” during the 4th Psychological Book Festival, which took place in autumn in Sopot. “Modern psychology combines these two directions, i.e. focuses on both very hedonistic happiness and eudaimonic happiness,” the researcher notes.
She also pointed out that a lot of research is about “feeling good” and less attention is paid to how to function well, how to create living conditions that are filled with value, meaning, worth living. In her book, the Norwegian researcher gave a broad view of happiness, and in her research she wanted to draw attention to the aspect of good and happy functioning.
As she said in Sopot, “both researchers and policymakers are increasingly recognizing that the pursuit of happiness and well-being is associated with many positive effects, such as creativity, good neighbors, less loneliness.”
“People who have a good, happy life lead healthier lives. Well-being is about reducing the risk of mental health problems and improving the functioning of our immune system,” the researcher explained. She added that it has been proven that “feeling joyful, happy, has a positive effect on reducing the physical and biological effects of stress, which is the result of the magic of our sympathetic system, but also leads to an extension of our life.”
Research confirms that happy people live longer
One study on the effect of happiness on life expectancy in the United States found that a sense of well-being led to an increase in life expectancy of nearly five years, possibly due to reduced exposure to stress. “Some studies show that it could be up to 7-8 years,” said the Norwegian researcher.
In turn, studies of twins conducted in Norway have shown that indeed some people are more predisposed to feeling happy. As much as 80 percent of whether we will be happy depends on what is written in our genes. “However, this does not mean that other people cannot be happy,” notes the Norwegian researcher. “It proves that there are people who have it easier.”
“There is much that can be done to increase our level of happiness,” she said. “Studies done on mice fed different diets show that our environment, our choices also affect happiness.”
As she added, psychological research on happiness basically comes down to the fact that we are different: in character, in different factors. “It is difficult to expect that there will be one single drug that will work for everyone. It is important to adapt the path to happiness,” said the Norwegian researcher.
In her book, she offers a four-week “treatment” with daily exercises, ideas, topics on how to become happy. Each of the 31 chapters (including, for example, “Navigating the Future”, “Balance”, “Play and Making Memories”, “Values”, “Connection and Humility”) is a separate whole, so the order in which they are read is completely arbitrary.
Sources of Happiness
In the UK a few years ago, a large-scale study was conducted in which it was necessary to list 50 different sources of happiness. What was at the top of the list? It turns out that the largest number of respondents are happy when they go to bed in clean, ironed sheets. In second place was the feeling we get when the sun warms our face, and in third place was “the feeling of getting rid of something very uncomfortable”, for example, from too tight pants …
“Many of these items have been associated with a sense of pleasure, such as the smell and taste of freshly ground coffee in the morning, chocolate cake, which make us realize that life is worth living, but also have characteristics that wear out. For example, we know that eating a whole cake is no longer fun,” the researcher said. In her opinion, “these hedonistic pleasures are equally important because they have a healing power, they heal us.”
Therefore, it is worth looking for things that will make the day enjoyable. “A lot of attention in positive psychology is paid to what we focus on in life,” notes the Norwegian researcher.
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Source: Wprost
