Life if exactly how you think it is going to be. If you are scared, then scary things will happen. If you think you are happy, then happy things will happen. If you are already happy, than there must be a way to make you happier by passing happiness.
Please Pass the Happiness By Laura Allen
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2 ... -happiness
A smile is infectious, as the saying goes, and now scientists have proven it. In spades. A study published today in British Medical Journal shows that happiness acts like a blessed disease: it can spread from person to person through social channels. On average, the study finds, every happy friend increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent.In this social network from 2000, clusters of happy (yellow) and unhappy (blue) souls are obvious. : Green are somewhere in between. Circles are female and squares are male James Fowler, UC San Diego
James Fowler of UC–San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School were curious how emotions and other health factors might ripple through social networks, a burgeoning field of research. So they mapped the well-being of a group of nearly 5,000 interconnected people, whether it be as blood relations, friends, neighbors, or coworkers. They pulled 20 years of the happiness data from the Framingham Heart Study, which has been tracking health stats on a group of Framingham, Massachusetts residents and two generations of offspring since 1948.
Scientifically, what defines such a subjective emotion as this? For the study participants, it was whether they checked “yes” on these four survey questions: "I felt hopeful about the future"; "I was happy"; "I enjoyed life"; and "I felt that I was just as good as other people."
The researchers found that, like the flu, happiness thrives in close quarters. A happy friend who lives less than half a mile away is 20 percent more influential than one two miles away. But surprisingly, you don’t need direct contact to catch this disease—it can actually sprawl over three degrees of separation. That means that the happiness level of even your friend’s friend’s friend can influence your own.
The authors hold that their conclusions aren’t an artifact of the tendency of people to cluster with similar folks. If at a party, for example, the brooding person in the corner cheers up during a good conversation, it’s not that he suddenly joins the in-crowd laughing loudly in the center of the room. Even staying where he is, his actions have a ripple effect. "Changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals,” say Fowler and Christakis.
So, on the flip side, does misery indeed love company? Thankfully, not as much as happiness. Unhappiness spreads less in social networks—probably because it’s such a solitary pursuit.
Reference:
1.快樂的15個習慣
http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/ ... 1dumj.html
2. Key to Happiness is Gratitude
http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsroom/745/
3.Is Happiness Contagious?
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... ontagious/
4.Detecting implausible social network effects in acne, height, and headaches: longitudinal analysis
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec04_2/a2533
Questions for discussion :
Session One:
Q1. Were you happy? Did you enjoy your life? If yes, please share your view of life to us. If not, what was it that kept you away from happiness?
Q2.There are lots of ways to be happy. Please provide five ways of them. Do those ways have anything in common elements or are related to something?
Q3. Did you detect any social network effect? Please share what you find and try to explain how it works.
Session Two:
Last month, we discussed a topic about jokes. Everyone shared lots of jokes on that day. Today let us resume the talk.
Q1. Someone is good in telling jokes. Do you know the tips of telling jokes/stories? Please share some jokes/stories and discuss how to make it funnier.
Q2. What kinds of a person are you as a friend? Please define who you are in your life circle. Are you somebody who want to talk your friends when they are down? Are you the one who passes happiness?
Q3. Is there a friend who always passes happiness in your life circle? Do you remember how you met each other? Is he/she one of your best friends? Is he/she the one you want to talk to when you are sad or down? Why or why not?
Agenda
Session I:
2:00 ~ 2:30 Greeting / Ordering Beverage or Meal
2:30 ~ 2:40 Opening Remarks / New comers' Self-introduction / Grouping
2:40 ~ 3:20 First Group Discussion
3:20 ~ 3:40 First Summarization
3:40 ~ 3:50 Regrouping /Break
Session II:
3:50 ~ 3:55 introduction
3:55 ~ 4:35 Second Group Discussion
4:35 ~ 4:55 2nd Summarization
4:55 ~ 5:00 Concluding Remarks / Announcements
聚會日期時間：聚會日期列於該貼文主題內 聚會2:00 pm 到 ~ 約 5:00 pm 左右結束。
聚會地點：合歡咖啡Acacia Cafe
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