How Happiness Improves Your Quality of Life

You might be thinking, wait, isn't happiness the same thing as quality of life? No. Quality of life is an attempt to describe material comforts and subjective ones as well, which includes happiness.

When looked at this way, it seems that happiness is the cornerstone of quality of life, the foundation that everything else builds from, because happiness drives the other measures of quality of life.

Happiness and Health

If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything, right? Well, if you've got happiness, you're more likely to have your health. Researchers have shown that people who are happier (have positive affect in psychobabble), are more likely to live longer. One study looked at autobiographical statements of nuns before they went into a convent in their 20s and counted all the references to positive or negative emotions. Two-thirds of the nuns who entered the convent having experienced negative emotions died before their 85th birthday, but 90% of those with happy thoughts were still alive at the time of the study, when they were at least 75 years old. On average, the happiest nuns lived nine years longer than the unhappiest nuns.

More recent studies have shown that, on average, happy people are less likely to die at any given time. A British study looked at how people scored on a happiness quiz and its correlation to mortality five years later. The happiest people had about half the mortality rate of the people with the least happiness. A Stanford study looked at a smaller group of people for about twice as long and came up with similar results.rnSpecifically, happiness reduces your risk of strokes--by up to 25%--and heart attack--by up to 50%. Be happy, and be healthy!

Happiness and Money

We all know that money can't buy happiness, but can happiness bring money? Yes! Happiness, it turns out, tends to lead to increased earnings.

Happy people are more likely to graduate from college, secure job interviews, and land jobs than unhappy peers. Once in a job, they are more likely to get positive reviews from bosses than less-happy peers. General happiness seems to be a better predictor of performance reviews than even job satisfaction.

And happy people earn more than unhappy people. Studies in Germany, Russia, and Malaysia correlate with US findings that people who are happier are more likely to earn more. Happiness is even a stronger predictor of income than education!

Happiness and Love

It turns out that happiness can help you find love.

We all know that married people are happier than single, divorced, or widowed people, but it turns out it's not marriage that makes people happy, it's happiness that makes people marry. People who are happy are not only more likely to rate their current relationship as being higher quality, they are also more likely to get married in the future, even if they are not currently in a relationship.

And if you analyze data from people who got divorced, it turns out they were less happy before they got married and during marriage than their still-married peers. In other words, your pre-marriage state of happiness predicts how you will be during marriage and whether you'll be able to stay married.

Positive Reinforcement

And what happens if you are healthier, have more money, and greater love? Of course you get happier! Happiness is a self-reinforcing phenomenon that can help anyone and everyone to get a better quality of life.