Cornell University of the United States studied happiness among silver and bronze medalists in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Using TV relay broadcasts, the researchers measured the happiness of individual medalists on a scale of one to 10 when their final scores were announced. The average happiness index of a silver medalist was 4.8, while that of a bronze medalist was 7.1. This means third-place finishers were happier than runners-up. At the award ceremony, the happiness index of the bronze winner was 5.7 as opposed to 4.3 for the silver medalist. What explains this?

The answer lies in different standards. While a silver medalist aims for the gold, a bronze medalist has no such pressure. He or she tends to feel grateful and joy over getting a medal. Satisfaction based on achievement is relative, and can be called the relativity principle of happiness. Our ancestors seem familiar with this notion, with a saying that goes, “A person should know one’s place. Living not in accordance with one’s means only sows the seed of unhappiness.”

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I can totally empathize with being less satistfied at winning 2nd place than 3rd, 4th, or even 5th.  Almost succeeding at something sometimes feels, in my opinion, worse than obvious failure.

If I know I have a slim chance of succeeding at something, I can allow myself to relax and enjoy the experience, feeling pleasantly surprised at any resulting success.   I find myself far less able to appreciate a competition for its own sake when I can see perfection lying just beyond my grasp.  Then I can’t help but think, “If only I had done this, that, or the other, I could have come out on top at the end of all this.”  I try not to fall into this negative thought pattern, but it is difficult to avoid.

-MJ

Written by Tal Ben-Shahar and Geri Weis-Corbley

If happiness is the currency of life — the true measure of success, how hefty is your happiness account? How abundant is your contentment? How much happiness can you afford to give? Do you hoard or hide your true desires? Do you resent others for their happiness and curse their rose-colored glasses? Here are seven ways to boost your levels of happiness, and therefore, your success.

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More than fame, money, success and celebrity, we crave happiness. Happiness has become the holy grail of our society. But why, when we have so much, is it so elusive?

This week, a social trends study by the Office of National Statistics revealed that although we are healthier and twice as well off as we were in 1987, we are no happier.

Modern expectation is that we should be continuously happy, but if we can’t buy it, work for it or damn well conjure it up, how do we make ourselves happier?

Psychologist Dr Robert Holden believes that happiness is within everyone’s grasp.

Once a year, he runs a five-day happiness course, spread over eight weeks, which he devised for a BBC QED documentary, How To Be Happy.

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