The Ripple Effect of Happiness
Happiness has the same ripple effect as dropping a pebble in a pond. Its effect radiates outward in ever-greater rings, affecting everyone it touches, brightening each person’s life in turn.
Products To Support You
Everyday Mental Wellness Gift Card
Growth Calendar with Stickers
Surrounding yourself with happy people, just being near a happy person, even knowing someone who knows a happy person, makes you happier. Happiness is contagious, says Harvard University physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis.
Building Resiliency: APA Tips Guide
Using study data that tracked 5,000 people over 20 years, Christakis tracked the path of happiness. He found that being around happy people makes us happier but that contact didn’t need to be direct for happiness to be transferred. The model worked both with social ties, such being around family and friends who were happy, and with simple physical proximity. Just being in the same room or check-out line with a happy person or passing a smiling person on the street allowed enough contact to “catch” happiness.
It’s easy to understand how the happiness of family and close friends can make us happier. The surprise in Christakis’ analysis came in finding that happiness is able to transcend direct links. We become happier not only when our friends are happy; but when the friend of a friend is happy, even if we don’t know or have any direct contact with that person. The bottom line is that surrounding ourselves with happy people makes us happy, makes the people we love happy, and makes the people they love happy.
In addition to spending time with happy people, what can you do to become happier? Try some of these ideas to brighten your day:
Happiness is all around if we just look for it. Grab some and pass it along.
