Category: Happiness

The benefits of travel might begin long before the journey itself starts.

Regular travel makes people happier overall, with people who frequently travel more than 75 miles from home being around 7 percent happier overall.

Dr Chun-Chu Chen, the study’s first author, said:

“While things like work, family life and friends play a bigger role in overall reports of well-being, the accumulation of travel experiences does appear to have a small yet noticeable effect on self-reported life satisfaction.

It really illustrates the importance of being able to get out of your routine and experience new things.”

The findings are based on a survey of 500 Taiwanese adults about their travel experiences over the previous year.

They were asked how much time they spent planning, how many times they went away and how satisfied they were with their lives in general.

Just over half reported going on at least four pleasure trips per year.

The results showed that people who frequently discussed their travel plans were more likely to go on regular trips.

People who travelled more frequently reported greater overall satisfaction with their lives.

Dr Chen said:

“This research shows the more people talk about and plan vacations the more likely they are to take them.

If you are like me and chomping at the bit to get out of dodge and see someplace new, this research will hopefully be some additional good motivation to start planning your next vacation.”

Of course, not everyone travels for pleasure.

Many are required to travel for work and this can be considerably less enjoyable.

Frequent, long-distance travel has been linked to high levels of stress and loneliness and long-term health problems by research.

This helps to show that travel is more than just moving from one place to another: the pleasure comes from the meaning we ascribe to it.

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The study was published in the journal Tourism Analysis (Chen et al., 2020).

Noticing these sources of happiness makes people more optimistic and increases their wellbeing.

People who experience more moments of ‘felt love’ during the day have better mental wellbeing.

This type of love does not need to be romantic — it can come from all sorts of sources.

These moments can include a friend asking after your health, receiving a compliment or getting heartfelt thanks from a colleague.

Brief everyday experiences of connection and love like these are also linked to greater optimism and a stronger sense of purpose.

The study suggests that paying closer attention to small moments of everyday connection could improve happiness and optimism.

Dr Zita Oravecz, the study’s first author, said:

“We took a very broad approach when we looked at love.

Everyday felt love is conceptually much broader than romantic love.

It’s those micro-moments in your life when you experience resonance with someone.

For example, if you’re talking to a neighbor and they express concern for your well-being, then you might resonate with that and experience it as a feeling of love, and that might improve your well-being.”

The conclusions come from a study of 212 people who used smartphone prompts to report their feelings of love and wellbeing six times a day over four weeks.

The results showed that as the study went on, people noticed more examples of love and connection in their own lives.

It could be that being asked to notice these moments increased people’s awareness.

Dr Oravecz said:

“It’s something that we’ve seen in the literature on mindfulness, when people are reminded to focus attention on positive things, their overall awareness of those positive things begins to rise.

Similarly, just by paying attention to those everyday moments of felt love, we may also increase our awareness of the overall positive aspects of love in our daily lives.

This effect replicates in both studies, implying that raising awareness of felt love in day-to-day life may itself be an intervention that raises levels of felt love over a longer period of time.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Oravecz et al., 2020).

Satisfaction with life refers to the overall way in which people evaluate their own lives: including their relationships, career, achieved goals and ability to cope with daily life.

Higher satisfaction with life is linked to markedly improved psychological and physical health.

Satisfaction with life refers to the overall way in which people evaluate their own lives: including their relationships, career, achieved goals and ability to cope with daily life.

It is often contrasted with moment-by-moment happiness.

People who are highly satisfied with their lives tend to agree strongly with statements like:

1. “In most ways my life is close to my ideal.”
2. “The conditions of my life are excellent.”
3. “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.”
4. “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.”

The study found that people who were highly satisfied with their lives were also:

• 46 percent less likely to be depressed.
• 26 percent less likely to die.
• 25 percent less likely to have a physical disability.

They were also more hopeful, optimistic, felt a greater sense of mastery and were less lonely.

Improve satisfaction with life

Money and how people rate their appearance have a considerable effect on how satisfied people are with life.

However, many factors that are easier to change affect life satisfaction.

Relationships clearly have a large effect on life satisfaction, along with jobs, hobbies, learning to savour life, setting goals, being in nature and even analysing negative events in life.

In the end, accepting and adapting to circumstances that cannot be changed makes people feel more content.

Governments should look past money

The conclusions of the current study come from almost 13,000 people over 50 years old surveyed in the US.

Each was asked to evaluate their health and well-being and followed up four years later.

Dr Eric Kim, the study’s first author, said:

“Life satisfaction is a person’s evaluation of his or her own life based on factors that they deem most relevant.

While life satisfaction is shaped by genetics, social factors and changing life circumstances, it can also be improved on both the individual level as well as collectively on the national level.”

The results showed that people whose life satisfaction improved also experienced considerable boosts in psychological and physical health.

The research is part of an effort to persuade governments to think about more than just money when making policy decisions.

Dr Kim said:

“The results of this study suggest that life satisfaction is a valuable target for policymakers to consider when enhancing physical, psychological and behavioural health outcomes at the policy level.”

He continued:

“As our nations pause and reevaluate our priorities in light of the widespread change caused by COVID-19, our policymakers have a rare and excellent opportunity to pursue well-being for all in the post-pandemic world.”

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The study was published in the journal The Milbank Quarterly (Kim et al., 2021).