Great news! Happiness is contagious, and you can catch it from the people near you. In fact, the nearer they are to you, the greater your chances of catching the happy bug yourself.
Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have been using data from 4,700 children of volunteers in the Framingham Heart Study, a giant health study begun in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1948 to trace the spread of happiness (among other things).
In a nutshell, Christakis and Fowler found that your happiness increases or decreases with the number of happy (or unhappy) people around you. Not only that, they also found that happiness is not only influenced by your immediate connections, but by your friends’ friends’ friends’ happiness. Kinda like a chain reaction of happiness. If you want the full nitty gritty on the story, you can find it here and here.
So what does this mean to you? Personally, it means that you can increase your own happiness by surrounding yourself with happy people. It also means that you can impact the lives of others by connecting with them when you’re happy.
A lot of people reach out and share bad news with friends and family, whether it’s to get some support or simply to keep their social network informed. But many of the very same people will forget to call and share happy news. They don’t want to feel like they’re bragging, or rubbing it in, so they celebrate silently.
Well, if you’re one of those people who keep victories to yourself for fear of tooting your own horn – stop it. Pick up the phone and celebrate! Make it a double celebration by thanking the person on the other end of the line (or better yet across the table) for any contributions they made to your success. The happiness you share will ripple out through your friend’s social network.
So get out there and mix and mingle with happy people. You’ll be doing yourself, and the world, a favor!
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