Are You Happy?
Wednesday afternoon, I had some administrative work to catch up on, and it was snowing (luckily, I stayed put-- based on what happened in our region later), so I plunked down on the couch and caught Oprah. She was interviewing Goldie Hawn and the topic was Happiness. Hmmmm, what can I learn from Oprah and Goldie about Happiness?
It was actually quite interesting. Some of the things that I learned:
- Knowing your neighbors makes you happier (check! I live in a very social neighborhood)
- Belonging to a club that meets once a month increases your happiness as much as a $40,000 pay raise would (check! Book Club meets once a month, but not sure about the money relative to the meetings...they are fun, but worth $40,000?)
- San Luis Obispo, CA is the happiest town in the country (no check...but I would like to check it out!)
- $75,000 is the salary at which most people claim to be happy (I bet they don't live in the Washington D.C. metro area--my personal guess would put it about $100,000-$125,000 here, accounting for higher cost of living)
- The happiest employees are those who work in jobs where they are needed. Examples included, travel agent, clergy, special education teacher and fire fighter. Not sure where Realtor falls in that grouping....
- The happiness from the purchase of a material item wears off after 9 months, in most cases. The happiness from an experience does not wear off. (I totally agree!)
If you want to see how you stack up against other people who took Oprah's Happiness Poll, answer all the questions and then you will get a chance to see the results.
All I know, I consider myself to be very happy--and even more so after avoiding the traffic disaster that hit the Washington D.C. area while I was enjoying Oprah in front of my fireplace (not having an 8 hour commute makes me very happy)!
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