Reitenbach-Kissinger Success Institute
Change Your Destiny
Happiness Coaching
Happiness is the most important thing we want for the people we love. We always want our loved ones to be happy, sometimes even at the cost of our own happiness. But why is happiness important for us?
What research in the field of positive psychology tells us about the A’s and B’s (advantages and benefits) of happiness?
Science says happier people are more successful and more productive. They are kinder, altruistic, physically healthier, and mentally stronger. Studies show they have better relationships and marriages.
Do you want to:
- Earn more…Get Rich more?
- More successful than others?
- More popular and more loved?
- Have better relationships than their peers?
- Have more friends and bigger social circles?
- Have pleasant and satisfying marriages?
- Better physical and mental health?
- Are stronger in mindset and calmer?
- Are kinder and go out to help others?
- Are better and more regarded leaders?
The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire was developed by psychologists Michael Argyle and Peter Hills at Oxford University.
Instructions: Below are a number of statements about happiness. Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each by entering a number in the blank after each statement, according to the following scale:
1 = strongly disagree
2 = moderately disagree
3 = slightly disagree
4 = slightly agree
5 = moderately agree
6 = strongly agree
Please read the statements carefully, some of the questions are phrased positively and others negatively. Don’t take too long over individual questions; there are no “right” or “wrong” answers (and no trick questions).
The first answer that comes into your head is probably the right one for you. If you find some of the questions difficult, please give the answer that is true for you in general or for most of the time.
The INTAKE Questionnaire
- I don’t feel particularly pleased with the way I am.
- I am intensely interested in other people.
- I feel that life is very rewarding.
- I have very warm feelings towards almost everyone.
- I rarely wake up feeling rested. (R)
- I am not particularly optimistic about the future.
- I find most things amusing.
- I am always committed and involved.
- Life is good.
- I do not think that the world is a good place.
- I laugh a lot.
- I am well satisfied about everything in my life.
- I don’t think I look attractive.
- There is a gap between what I would like to do and what I have done.
- I am very happy.
Happiness INTAKE Questionnaire 2
- I find beauty in some things.
- I always have a cheerful effect on others.
- I can fit in (find time for) everything I want to.
- I feel that I am not especially in control of my life.
- I feel able to take anything on.
- I feel fully mentally alert.
- I often experience joy and elation.
- I don’t find it easy to make decisions.
- I don’t have a particular sense of meaning and purpose in my life.
- I feel I have a great deal of energy.
- I usually have a good influence on events.
- I don’t have fun with other people.
- I don’t feel particularly healthy.
- I don’t have particularly happy memories of the past.
Benefits Of Being Happy: Advantages of the Happier People Using the Reitenbach-Kissinger Institute
We need happiness in our lives because happiness has many advantages. Being happy has numerous benefits. Happier people outperform others in many positive ways.
Let’s go over some of the A’s (Advantages) and B’s (Benefits) of the happier people:
1. Happy People Are Healthier
Happy people have better physical health and report fewer unpleasant physical symptoms. They have much fewer hospital and emergency room visits, call their doctor less frequently, use less medication, and have fewer work absences.
They also experience less pain and have a higher pain threshold.
Happy people have better mental health than their less happy social group members.
They have fewer symptoms of mental diseases, such as hypochondriasis, schizophrenia, social phobia, anxiety, or depression. Happy people are also less likely to report a history of drug abuse.
Jose de Jesus Garcia Vega, Professor of Economics and the Director of the Center for Well-being Studies at the University of Monterrey, Mexico, has famously written in the World Book of Happiness.
It is often said that people spend the best years of their life trying to make money and sacrificing their health and their family, only to spend the rest of their days paying that same money to recover their lost health and their estranged family!
Overall, happier people have less depression and suicide, and greater self-control and coping skills. They also live longer on average, up to 10 years more. [The Nun Study]
Heli Koivumaa-Honkanen, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital, Finland, whose research found dissatisfaction in life is linked to a higher risk of death from disease, says:
Healthy people are not happier. The reverse is true: happy people are healthier.
2. Happy People Have Better Relationships and Marriages
Relationships are of utmost importance for the creation of our happiness. When we stay socially connected to our community, friends, and family, we are happier, healthier, and live longer.
Happy people have more friends and better social support and are more satisfied with their friends and their activities together.
In one study, the researchers found the top 10 percent of the happiest college students had high-quality relationships. They were less jealous and had stronger contact with their family members.
Study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result — social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race.
In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge—most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3.
The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are. — Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage
Happy people also have more fulfilling marriages. Marriages are more likely to succeed when couples experience a 5:1 positive ratio. [The Gottman Institute]
They tend to have more satisfaction in their marriages. Researchers have found there is indeed a strong relationship between happiness and satisfaction with marriage and family.
Happy people who are either married or in committed relationships more often describe their partner as being their “great love” than their less happy friends.
3. Happy People Are More Successful
Success doesn’t make us happy; but being happy makes us successful, as many studies have proved. Happiness also makes you more productive.
Happy people are more satisfied with their jobs, are more productive, and earn more than their colleagues. They also make better and faster decisions.
In fact, the economists at Warwick University found that people primed to feel happy during an experiment were 11% more productive. Companies with happy employees perform better than the stock market index year after year.
Happiness improves your ability to problem-solve. Happy doctors make faster and more accurate diagnoses.
In a 2007 study that followed over 6,000 men and women aged 25 to 74 for 20 years, Laura Kubzansky, Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found emotional vitality — a sense of enthusiasm, hopefulness, and engagement in life — appears to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in both men and women.
Kubzansky found that optimism cuts the risk of coronary heart disease by half. She wrote in her paper:
Findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of emotional vitality had reduced risk of developing CHD during a 15-year follow-up period. Further analyses indicated that one mechanism underlying this relationship may be health behaviors.
Greater emotional vitality was significantly associated with less smoking, higher alcohol consumption, and more physical activity; after including these behaviors in the models, the relationship between emotional vitality and incident CHD was attenuated.
However, the association remained significant after controlling for these behaviors as well as a history of psychological problems, use of psychotropic medications, current depressive symptoms, and other covariates.
4. Happy People Are More Resilient
Now happiness is about being able to make the most of the good times—but it is also being able to cope effectively when times are inevitably bad. Positive experiences and positive emotions build our resilience.
Resilience is our ability to bounce back from hardships. Resilient people not only recover but also grow afterwards to build the best possible life
Resilient people face their fears head on, keep a positive mindset in the face of adversity and look for meaning in traumatic experiences. They are tenacious in their efforts to lift themselves out of misery, always eager to learn new ways to solve problems, and not hesitant to seek help when things become overwhelming.
A study found brief moments of positive emotions that occur on a day-to-day basis, such as laughing with friends or doing something you enjoy, help build resilience. Barbara Fredrickson found that repeating positive emotions leads to a “broaden-and-build” effect, which helps build up resilience in the face of life’s obstacles.
Researchers also found higher levels of resilience have links to lower levels of psychological distress.
Another study found psychological resilience may be a resource to increase life satisfaction and happiness and reduce psychological distress in chronically ill patients.
5. Happy People Are More Prosocial, Generous, And Helpful
Happy people are more prosocial and seem more inclined to help others. Prosocial behavior is defined as conduct driven by an intent to benefit others.
A large body of research indicates spending time helping others has emotional advantages for the helper, like greater life satisfaction, more positive affect, and reduced depression.
Volunteering is a generous behavior and is defined as helping others with no expectation of monetary compensation. Available data provides compelling evidence that there is a reliable link between volunteering and various measures of subjective well-being. And this effect is universal across various cultures.
Formal volunteering benefits older people more. People who score higher on depressive symptoms also report higher levels of well-being boosts from volunteering.
Prosocial spending or spending on others is related to higher levels of happiness, apparently via activating the reward centers in the brain. People who spent more money on others in a typical month—by giving gifts and donating to charity—reported greater happiness, as was found in a survey of 600 Americans (Dunn et al, 2008).
Activities that turn good deeds into happy feelings:
- People are more likely to enjoy helping others when they have the freedom to choose whether or not to help.
- When people feel connected to those they are helping, they are more likely to receive joy from their efforts.
- People are more likely to find satisfaction in helping others when they can see how their support is making a difference.
Why Is Being Happy Better?
Why should we prefer to be happy when we could be our everyday selves, or even unhappy?
Why do most people try to be happy?
It’s popular to say it’s because they want to enjoy their life, but the question still remains: why do they want to be happier?
After years of research, psychologists have found a happy person is more likely to succeed at work, make friends, and be more productive.
Not only that but being happy makes us feel better in general and even makes us more attractive to others. The benefits of happiness are often overlooked, but they can be profound.
The right attitude can be the key to lasting happiness.
Scientists have been studying happiness for a long time, and they have found many positive effects of happiness: less aggression, more compassion, higher self-esteem, less anxiety, lower blood pressure, and a longer lifespan.
When we are happy, we feel better about ourselves; we make others around us happier and are more productive.
A large-scale study of over 2,400 British adults found those who scored high on measures of life satisfaction and lived in areas with high levels of sun exposure, reported experiencing an average of 16% higher levels of life satisfaction.
In comparison, those who scored well on the same measures but lived in areas of low solar exposure.
Research studies on happiness consistently point to higher levels of happiness because of increased self-esteem and a sense of well-being, and lower levels of stress. But do these changes last?
The answer is yes—in the long term. According to the latest research, the benefits of happiness include a stronger immune system, higher self-esteem, and lower levels of anxiety.
A 2020 study found there is a growing class divide in happiness. While many of the “have nots” of the economy became increasingly unhappy, the happiness advantage favoring the “haves” has expanded between the 1970s and the 2010s.
According to the science of positive psychology, happiness is a choice. It is not the result of genetics or luck, but a choice you make to become a more satisfied and content person.
Positive psychology can help you overcome negative thoughts and automatically make a choice that will put you on the path to a happier, more productive life.
Positive psychology is the study of human strengths and virtues. This branch of psychology looks at what makes people happy. As a topic, positive psychology has exploded in recent years, and it’s become a hot topic for researchers, thinkers, and entrepreneurs alike. In the past few years, there have been many studies focusing on the positive effects of happiness, and they are increasing in number by the day.
Final Words
By the way, a skill is the ability to do something well. It is a capability you develop through practice or experience. And happiness is a skill that can be learned and honed.
And it should be learned because it can help you live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
FAQs
Does Happiness Coaching Increase Immunity?
Scientific evidence suggests being happy may boost our immune system. Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues (2003) found people who were happy, lively, calm, or exhibit other positive emotions like optimism, were less likely to become ill when exposed to a cold virus than those who reported fewer of these emotions. They also found that when happy people did come down with a cold, they had fewer symptoms.
A 2006 study by Cohen had the same result: people who reported positive emotions were less likely to catch colds and were also less likely to report symptoms when they did get sick.
Can A Person Learn to Be Happier with Coaching?
Yes, happiness is a learnable skill. You can learn to be happy. You can teach yourself and others to be happier. Research shows our happiness levels can change notably over our lifetimes, and that itself suggests happiness may be a skill that can be learned over the years.
Richard J. Davidson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found mindfulness training for even 2 weeks, for 30 minutes a day, can result in measurable changes in the brains of the participants. This ability of the brain to change its form and function is called neuroplasticity. He suggests, therefore, that we can raise our happiness levels by regular practice of mindfulness.
Davidson says, “Everything we’ve learned about the brain suggests that it’s (i.e., happiness is) no different than learning to play the violin or learning to engage in a complex sport. If you practice at it, you’ll get better at it.”
Matthieu Ricard, molecular geneticist, author, and a Buddhist monk, says, “Happiness is a skill, but it is a skill that has many components, and each of those components are constructive ways of being, like altruism or benevolence, compassion, inner peace, inner strength, inner freedom.”
Do you want to be happy?
- Earn more…Get Rich more?
- More successful than others?
- More popular and more loved?
- Have better relationships than their peers?
- Have more friends and bigger social circles?
- Have pleasant and satisfying marriages?
- Better physical and mental health?
- Are stronger in mindset and calmer?
- Are kinder and go out to help others?
- Are better and more regarded leaders?
If “yes”, Contact us.
Michael Kissinger
Sydney Reitenbach
Phone: 650-515-7545
Email: mjkkissinger@yahoo.com
Phone: 650-515-7545 — Email: mjkkissinger@mjkkissinger
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