Do You Care? You Will if You Want Happiness! - Jim Merhaut

Well, it’s true and Harvard proved it! The happiest people are the people in love. People in love are deeply and broadly connected with others and their relationships are characterized by expressions of care. Harvard recently completed a 75-year study on a group of men that began when they were in college. These men are now in their 90’s. The study focused on determining what made them happy in their lives. Here are the five major findings:

1. Love is the strongest key to happiness. Without loving relationships, nothing else has the power to make a person happy. Work on healthy relationship skills and express your care for others openly, appropriately and often.
   
2. Loving your career is more important than the money you make or the power you have. Find a career that makes you happy, then figure out how you will make money at it.
3. Don’t give up on your pursuit of happiness. Even if you aren’t happy, you can become happy if you work at building caring relationships. Some of the people in the study who started life in terrible circumstances ended up being among the happiest because they never gave up on searching for love.
4. Connection is a key to happiness. Develop connections with your family members, your classmates, your teachers, your employers, your church members, etc. The more connected you are in caring relationships, the more love you will experience, and the happier you’ll be.
5. Overcoming challenges builds happiness. You’ve heard it before… when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Don’t complain about your problems; rather, find ways to successfully overcome problems in mature ways that prioritize building and sustaining caring relationships.

Follow this link for more information: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/how-this-harvard-psycholo_n_3727229.html.