Bryan Nash | May 11, 2012 | Comments 0
If you find that things that should make you happy — like a new job or a new relationship — don’t produce lasting contentment, a new perspective on your circumstances may pull you out of the doldrums. You have to continually seek out new experiences with the ones you love and appreciate the worth of what you have.
According to researcher Kennon Sheldon, professor of psychological sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Missouri University, folks often get quickly bored with new lovers, jobs, cars, etc.
“The majority (of people we studied) got used to the change that had made them happy in the first place,” Sheldon says. “They stopped being happy because they kept wanting more and raising their standards, or because they stopped having fresh positive experiences of the change, for example they stopped doing fun things with their new boyfriend and started wishing he was better looking. A few were able to appreciate what they had and to keep having new experiences. In the long term, those people tended to maintain their boost, rather than falling back where they started.
“All these findings support the notion that variety and surprise spice up life in ways that sustain well-being and that appreciation and gratitude preserve happiness by preventing people from taking the good stuff for granted,” Sheldon observes.
“Although the Declaration of Independence upholds the right to pursue happiness, that search can be a never-ending quest,” he says.
“Previous research shows that an individual’s happiness can increase after major life changes, such as starting a new romantic relationship, but over time happiness tends to return to a previous level,” Sheldon adds. “Through our research, we developed a model to help people maintain higher levels of happiness derived from beneficial changes. The model consists of two major components: the need to keep having new and positive life-changing experiences and the need to keep appreciating what you already have and not want more too soon.”
http://www.easyhealthoptions.com/alternative-medicine/the-happiness-secret-keep-having-new-experiences/
