Man Attempts to Live an Entire Year Without Unhappiness

From Twitter.

Today the Wall Street Journal reports on a man named Cathal Morrow who is trying to live an entire year without feeling unhappy. According to his website, he started this project because of his belief that happiness is a permanent state underpinning all other feelings, so if we can remind ourselves to be happy, we will be. He uses techniques like jumping up and down to stave off unhappiness.

This project comes hot on the heels of his last one:  living a whole year without lying. Morrow's honesty experiment was sponsored by Ten Large Capital, a private equity firm, and he will probably release a book about it. He is currently looking for someone to sponsor his happiness project. Unfortunately, his website apparently hasn't been updated since July, so we can't check in on his progress, but he still tweets regularly.

What do YOU think about projects like this? Would you be able to chase away unhappiness for a whole year? Is that even desirable? Drop us a line in the comments section.

Happiness Class Now Offered at Duke Law School

From Duke Law Map.

Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal reports that Duke Law is now offering a class entitled "Well-Being and the Practice of Law." This makes a lot of sense, given that lawyering is an incredibly stressful occupation--so much so that around 1/3 of lawyers say they would choose another profession if they could.

As for what's in the class itself, American Lawyer magazine's Dimitra Kessenides explains:

"Four weeks in, they’ve already tackled Aristotle (as part of a consideration of the philosophical roots of happiness) and renowned psychologist Albert Maslow, the founder of 'humanistic' psychology (in a review of pre-World War II scientific research on happiness)."

The class goes on to cover Martin Seligman and the like. So it sounds like an extremely comprehensive review of happiness through the ages, from ancient times to the present day. This is an interesting approach (different from other happiness classes I've heard of) that may or may not relieve stress. For students who are truly stressed out, a class like this may only act as a Band-Aid. The world needs lawyers, but law is not a profession for everyone, so I hope those who are troubled will put happiness ahead of status and money to find a career that suits them. In any case I wish Duke Law and its students all the best!

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Different Cities = Different Salaries for Happiness?

Hello world.

Source:  Wikipedia

For the inaugural post of this happy blog, we have an interesting story by Phil Izzo from The Wall Street Journal. Phil writes that a new study has found that overall happiness in America drops off after a salary of $75,000 a year. In other words, once you make $75,000 a year (on average), a raise won't make you any happier.

But as we all know, $75,000 can't buy as much in New York as it does in Wyoming, so the article goes on to compare the "happiness salaries" of several major American cities. According to the chart, New York City has the highest happiness cap at $163,500, while Fort Smith, AK, at $62,250 has the lowest.

Psychologists have long known that money doesn't buy happiness--as long as you're above the poverty line (read Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness for more information). This may be the first time a specific price has been put on happiness, though. Depending on how you look at it, this could be good news or bad news. On the one hand, people in Fort Smith apparently require less to be happy. On the other, it's probably a sign that they make less to begin with, so they may have less opportunity to reach the goal anyway.

What do YOU think?

Also, since this blog is just getting started, what would YOU like to see more of? It's lonely being a new blog, so leave us a comment or three. You can also email me specifically at ds@thehappymovie.com.