The Happiness-Money Connection: Halo Effect of Happy Mood? Part 1 outlined studies by Nobel Prize winner and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, with Angus Deaton and by British researchers Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Andrew Oswald, documenting the long-term positive impact of subjective positive emotions on life outcomes including academic attainment, employment status, and income over time.Michael Norton’s research added the insight that money can buy happiness – if it’s used for other people.

Taken together, these findings point to the value of cultivating positive emotional states.

Distinguished psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman was one of the first researchers to empirically investigate correlates of happiness and well-being, and his recent book,

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being recasts his

earlier emphasis on Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.
He opined that “well-being” is a more accurate concept, defined by the acronym PERMA:

• Positive Emotion
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment

Though this is largely a conceptual model, he offers several exercises like considering one’s “signature strengths” and “three blessings” or things that have gone well during a day.

Sonja Lyubomirsky of UC Riverside synthesized happiness-enhancing recommendations from self-help books in The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want,  and provided familiar happiness-enhancing strategies:

• Cultivate optimism, consciously stop negative thoughts
• Avoid “overthinking“, social comparison
• Practice kindness
• Invest time in social relationships, family
• Develop coping strategies
• Forgive self, others
• Increase “flow” experiences, do enjoyable things
• Savor life’s joyful experiences
• Live in the present
• Commit to goals
• Organize space, work, life
• Participate in religious or meditative practice
• Keep self-reflection Journals

Gretchen Rubin combined some of these recommendations with erudite references to great philosophers’ and thinkers’ guidance, health recommendations, and time-tested common sense in The Happiness Project.

Daniel Gilbert of Harvard’s bestseller, Stumbling on Happiness , synthesized social science research about imagined expected future outcomes and control over them in relation to the experience of happiness.

He noted that human imagination and prediction are inaccurate, so he suggested using “surrogates” of future events to more accurately test future satisfaction with real-life choices like having children, moving to a new home, or working in a new job.

Other ways to cultivate the Emotional Intelligence capabilities of positive emotional experience are highlighted in related Posts:

• Cooperative Instinct, Reflective Self-Interest
• Developing a SMARTER Mindset to increase Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 1
• Developing a SMARTER Mindset for Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 2
• “Contemplative Neuroscience”: Transform your Mind, Change your Brain
• 10 Ways to Build Resilience
• Career Resilience in Managing Job Loss, Unexpected Changes 
• Action Trumps Visualization to Improve Performance: “Do Something!”
• “Nudging” Compassion, Resilience to Reduce Conflict, Stress
• Kept Up at Night by Intrusive Thoughts of Work: Elusive Sleep
• Reduce Stress by Resetting Expectations about Life’s Five “Givens”
• Oxytocin Increases Empathic Work Relationships, Workplace Trust, Generosity
• Two Approaches to Following-Through on Plans, Adapting to Changes

-*How have you cultivated happiness?
-*How have happiness and money been related in your experience?

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