change your life in bigger ways

7/29/2019 Change Your Life in Bigger Ways

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Change your life in bigger ways

This article is fantastic. Read it, READ IT, and

change how you look at life NOW! I get somany submissions on tumblr from unhappy

women who want to be successful, this article

might get you thinking a little differently and

help you make your drive, health and success

better.

Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness

People who are happy but have little-to-no

sense of meaning in their lives have the same

gene expression patterns as people who are

enduring chronic adversity.

EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH

AUG 1 2013, 8:00 AM ET

For at least the last decade, the happiness

craze has been building. In the last three

months alone, over 1,000 books on happinesswere released on Amazon, including Happy

Money, Happy-People-Pills For All, and, for

those just starting out, Happiness for

Beginners.
http://ilovewildfox.com/iloveyouwildfox/2013/9/8/change-your-life-in-bigger-wayshttp://www.theatlantic.com/emily-esfahani-smith/http://www.theatlantic.com/emily-esfahani-smith/http://ilovewildfox.com/iloveyouwildfox/2013/9/8/change-your-life-in-bigger-ways


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One of the consistent claims of books like

these is that happiness is associated with all

sorts of good life outcomes, includingmost

promisinglygood health. Many studies have

noted the connection between a happy mind

and a healthy bodythe happier you are, the

better health outcomes we seem to have. In a

meta-analysis (overview) of 150 studies on this

topic, researchers put it like this: Inductions

of well-being lead to healthy functioning, and

inductions of ill-being lead to compromised

health.

Being happy is about feeling good. Meaning is

derived from contributing to others or to

society in a bigger way.

But a new study, just published in

the Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences(PNAS) challenges the rosy picture.

Happiness may not be as good for the body as

researchers thought. It might even be bad.

Of course, its important to first

define happiness. A few months ago, I wrote

a piece called Theres More to Life Than Being
http://www.cnbc.pt/jpmatos/03.%20Howel.pdfhttp://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/25/1305419110.shorthttp://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/25/1305419110.shorthttp://www.cnbc.pt/jpmatos/03.%20Howel.pdf


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Happy about a psychology study that dug into

what happiness really means to people. It

specifically explored the difference between a

meaningful life and a happy life.

It seems strange that there would be a

difference at all. But the researchers, who

looked at a large sample of people over a

month-long period, found that happiness is

associated with selfish taking behavior andthat having a sense of meaning in life is

associated with selfless giving behavior.

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a

relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even

selfish life, in which things go well, needs and

desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or

taxing entanglements are avoided," the

authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure

happiness is linked to not helping others in

need. While being happy is about feeling good,

meaning is derived from contributing to others

or to society in a bigger way. As Roy

Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me,

"Partly what we do as human beings is to take

care of others and contribute to others. This
http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/aaker/pages/documents/SomeKeyDifferencesHappyLifeMeaningfulLife_2012.pdfhttp://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/aaker/pages/documents/SomeKeyDifferencesHappyLifeMeaningfulLife_2012.pdf


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makes life meaningful but it does not

necessarily make us happy.

The new PNAS study also sheds light on thedifference between meaning and happiness,

but on the biological level. Barbara

Fredrickson, a psychological researcher who

specializes in positive emotions at the

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and

Steve Cole, a genetics and psychiatricresearcher at UCLA, examined the self-

reported levels of happiness and meaning in 80

research subjects.

Meaning was defined as an orientation to

something bigger than the self.

Happiness was defined, as in the earlier study,

byfeeling good. The researchers measured

happiness by asking subjects questions like

How often did you feel happy? How often did

you feel interested in life? and How often did

you feel satisfied? The more strongly peopleendorsed these measures of hedonic well-

being, or pleasure, the higher they scored on

happiness.


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Meaning was defined as an orientation to

something bigger than the self. They measured

meaning by asking questions like How often

did you feel that your life has a sense of

direction or meaning to it?, How often did

you feel that you had something to contribute

to society?, and How often did you feel that

you belonged to a community/social group?

The more people endorsed these measures of

eudaimonic well-beingor, simply put,

virtuethe more meaning they felt in life.

After noting the sense of meaning and

happiness that each subject had, Fredrickson

and Cole, with their research colleagues,

looked at the ways certain genes expressedthemselves in each of the participants. Like

neuroscientists who use fMRI scanning to

determine how regions in the brain respond to

different stimuli, Cole and Fredrickson are

interested in how the body, at the genetic

level, responds to feelings of happiness andmeaning.

Coles past work has linked various kinds of

chronic adversity to a particular gene


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expression pattern. When people feel lonely,

are grieving the loss of a loved one, or are

struggling to make ends meet, their bodies go

into threat mode. This triggers the

activation of a stress-related gene pattern that

has two features: an increase in the activity of

proinflammatory genes and a decrease in the

activity of genes involved in anti-viral

responses.

You have a forward-looking immune system,

Fredrickson told me, If you have a long track

record of adversity, it prepares you for

bacterial infections. For our ancestors,

loneliness and adversity were associated with

bacterial infections from wounds withpredators and fights with conspecifics. On the

other hand, if you are doing well and having a

lot of healthy social connections, your immune

system shifts forward to prepare you for

viruses, which youre more likely to contract if

you're interacting with a lot of people.

What does this have to do with happiness?


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Cole and Fredrickson found that people who

are happy but have little to no sense of

meaning in their livesproverbially, simply

here for the partyhave the same gene

expression patterns as people who are

responding to and enduring chronic adversity.

That is, the bodies of these happy people are

preparing them for bacterial threats by

activating the pro-inflammatory response.

Chronic inflammation is, of course, associated

with major illnesses like heart disease and

various cancers.

Empty positive emotionslike the kind

people experience during manic episodes or

artificially induced euphoria from alcohol anddrugsare about as good for you for as

adversity, says Fredrickson.

Its important to understand that for many

people, a sense of meaning and happiness in

life overlap; many people score jointly high (or

jointly low) on the happiness and meaning

measures in the study. But for many others,

there is a dissonancethey feel that they are

low on happiness and high on meaning or that


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their lives are very high in happiness, but low

in meaning. This last group, which has the

gene expression pattern associated with

adversity, formed a whopping 75 percent of

study participants. Only one quarter of the

study participants had what the researchers

call eudaimonic predominancethat is,

their sense of meaning outpaced their feelings

of happiness.

This is too bad given the more beneficial gene

expression pattern associated with

meaningfulness. People whose levels of

happiness and meaning line up, and people

who have a strong sense of meaning but are

not necessarily happy, showed a deactivationof the adversity stress response. Their bodies

were not preparing them for the bacterial

infections that we get when we are alone or in

trouble, but for the viral infections we get

when surrounded by a lot of other people.

Fredricksons past research, described in her

two books, Positivityand Love 2.0, has

mapped the benefits of positive emotions in

individuals. She has found that positive
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-everlasting-love-according-to-science/267199/http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-everlasting-love-according-to-science/267199/


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emotions broaden a persons perspective

and buffers people against adversity. So it was

surprising to her that hedonistic well-being,

which is associated with positive emotions and

pleasure, did so badly in this study compared

with eudaimonic well-being.

Its not the amount of hedonic happiness

thats a problem, Fredrickson tells me, Its

that its not matched by eudaimonic well-being. Its great when both are in step. But if

you have more hedonic well-being than would

be expected, thats when this [gene] pattern

thats akin to adversity emerged.

The terms hedonism and eudaimonism bring to

mind the great philosophical debate, which has

shaped Western civilization for over 2,000

years, about the nature of the good life. Does

happiness lie in feeling good, as hedonists

think, or in doing and being good, as Aristotle

and his intellectual descendants, the virtue

ethicists, think? From the evidence of this

study, it seems that feeling good is not

enough. People need meaning to thrive. In the

words of Carl Jung, The least of things with a
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/the-benefits-of-optimism-are-real/273306/http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/the-benefits-of-optimism-are-real/273306/


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meaning is worth more in life than the greatest

of things without it. Jungs wisdom certainly

seems to apply to our bodies, if not also to

ourhearts and our minds.

And another amazing one from the Economist

THE Greek founders of philosophy constantly

debated how best to live the good life. Some

contended that personal pleasure is the key.

Others pointed out that serving society and

finding purpose is vital. Socrates was in the

latter camp, fiercely arguing that an unvirtuous

person could not be happy, and that a virtuous

person could not fail to be happy. These days,

psychologists tend to regard that point as

moot, since self-serving hedonic pleasures

generate the same sorts of good feelings as

those generated by serving some greater

eudaimonic purpose. However, a study just

published in the Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences, by Barbara Fredrickson,

a psychologist at the University of North
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/


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Carolina, Chapel Hill, and her colleagues

suggests Socrates had a point. Though both

hedonic and eudaimonic behaviour bring

pleasure, the eudaimonic sort also brings

health.

Dr Fredrickson, an expert on positive

emotions, has long known that happiness

benefits health and leads to longer lives.

Similarly, she knows that both hedonic andeudaimonic pleasures generate feelings that

people describe as happiness. A simple

syllogism, therefore, suggests happiness does

indeed bring health and longevity. But,

because of the overlap between the happiness-

generating properties of both hedonic andeudaimonic pleasures, she had until she

conducted this study found it impossible to

determine whether both are able improve

physical health and longevity, or whether only

one of them can.

To solve the puzzle, she and a team of

genomics researchers led by Steven Cole of

the University of California, Los Angeles,

recruited 84 volunteers for an experiment that


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examined genes associated with health while

simultaneously probing happiness in a way

that would tease apart hedonic and

eudaimonic well-being. The team interviewed

participants over the phone to make sure none

suffered from any chronic illness or disability

(four were eliminated this way). The rest were

given online questionnaires in which they were

asked questions that probed their happiness.

These included, In the past week how often

did you feel happy? and, How often did you

feel satisfied? both of which were intended to

assess hedonic well being. To assess

eudaimonic well being they asked questions

like, In the past week how often did you feel

that your life had a sense of direction or

meaning to it? and How often did you feel

that you had something to contribute to

society? The answers to these questions

could score from nought to five points. Nought

indicated never. Five indicated every day.

The questionnaires also collected information

on participants age, sex, race, smoking,

alcohol consumption and recent symptoms of


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minor illness, like headaches and upset

stomachs.

In addition to the answers to the questions,participants provided the team with a 20cc

sample of blood. These samples were

centrifuged to isolate the immune-system cells

in them, and those cells were then analysed to

see which genes were active.

At this, genetic, level, Dr Fredrickson and Dr

Cole report, the two forms of happiness could

hardly be more different. In volunteers who

scored strongly for hedonic well-being and

weakly for eudaimonic well-being

inflammation-causing genes were 20% more

active than average, and genes associated

with the production of virus-attacking

antibodies 20% less active. In contrast, in

those who were the other way round, genes

associated with the production of interferons

(proteins that support communication during

immune-system responses) were 10% more

active and antibody genes 30% more active.

Eudaimonic pleasure thus looks as though it is


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good for the health, while hedonic pleasure is

bad.

Of course, these are extreme cases. In thosewho indulge in both forms of pleasure seeking

the one effect cancels out the other. And it is

possilbe, at least in theory, that causation runs

in the opposite direction: people with

particular patterns of gene expression could

be healthier and thus, perhaps, take a longerview of life, which might in turn be conducive

to eudaimonia. But differences of this sort in

expression patterns within a single cell type

are usually the result of signals to the cell,

rather than being endogenouswhich they

would have to be if they were the underlyingcause. That said, eudaimonia and health-giving

expression patterns could be independent

outcomes of some third, unidentified factor.

Nevertheless, if these molecular results do

translate into bodily health in the way that

might be predicted, it suggest Socrates was

right, and that selfless, public-spirited

individuals and selfish pleasure-seekers alike

will receive their rewards and punishments


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here on Earth, without the need for the threat

or promise of an afterlife.

Thanks Sam Y of LA's "All Out Effort" for the

tip!

change your life in bigger ways

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