Habits That Lead To Happiness

Psalm 1 – “Habits That Lead To Happiness”

Peace In The Pandemic...

The McDonalds “Happy Meal” might be the most famous meal in all the world.

It's a meal for a kid ... that promises to make them happy – at least for a few fleeting minutes!

In the mid-1970s, a MacDonald’s restaurant in Guatemala offered a hamburger, small fries and a small sundae specifically for kids.

The idea was eventually brought to the attention of McDonald's head office who then asked advertising consultant, Bob Bernstein, to develop the idea further. Bernstein thought marketing a meal for kids would make everyone happier. Kids could now get a packaged meal all their own instead of just picking at their parent's food.

Bernstein branded it “the happy meal” - meals designed especially for kids and featuring a toy. Happy kids meant happy parents too!

Who hasn’t gone to MacDonald’s looking for that elusive thing called happiness? If only finding happiness was that easy!

We live in a culture awash in talk about happiness. In one three-month period last year, more than 1,000 books were released on Amazon on that subject.

... a man took a journey throughout the United States, polling different people, asking them what was the one thing they wanted out of life, more than anything else. What would you guess the majority of responses were? Money? Fame? Power?

Well the one response he got far and away above more than anything else was happiness.

Everywhere he went, and he asked people, "What is it that you want more than anything else in life?"

almost everyone without exception said, "Happiness."

And then he asked about those other things, about money and fame and power.

And they said, "Well, those things are means to that greater end. What we really want is happiness in life."

I think that most human beings throughout the world want happiness in their lives. For example, in the US, the Declaration of Independence states that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are human rights.

. And this culture, especially in the last thirty or forty years, has made the pursuit of happiness a national pastime.

watch television and you see this in commercials...

• They say that if you buy that new car/truck/QUAD... you will be happy.

• If you take that vacation to Mexico, you will be happy!!!

• If you lose those extra ten pounds, you will be happy.

advertisers know that the one thing we want is to be happy...

Yale's Most Popular Class Ever: Happiness

Jeffrey Arthurs, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary; source: David Shimer, "Yale's Most Popular Class Ever: Happiness," The New York Times (1-26-18). Reported in "Church and Culture" blog, 14/24.

The most popular course in the history of Yale University was offered in the fall of 2017—PSYCH 157: Psychology and the Good Life. Nearly one-fourth of Yale undergraduates registered for it. Laurie Santos, the psychology professor who teaches the course, says that she "tries to teach students how to lead a happier, more satisfying life." No wonder the course has caught on—a 2013 report by the Yale College Council found that "more than half of undergraduates sought mental health care from the university" while enrolled.

One of Santos' principle lessons is that the things Yale undergraduates most associate with achieving happiness—a high grade, a prestigious internship, a good-paying job—do not increase happiness at all. "Scientists didn't realize this in the same way 10 or so years ago," Santos says. "Our intuitions about what will make us happy, like winning the lottery and getting a good grade, are totally wrong."

Youth Feel Pressured to Maintain Happiness Façade

Laura Vanderkam, "A Generation Living for Likes," The Wall Street Journal (2-14-17)

Donna Freitas in her thought-provoking book The Happiness Effect, argues that the real downside of social media is that it demands fake happiness. She writes:

Because young people feel so pressured to post happy things on social media, most of what everyone sees on social media from their peers are happy things; as a result, they often feel inferior because they aren't actually happy all the time … . students are becoming masters of appearing happy, at significant cost …. Many students have begun to see what they post (on Facebook, especially) as a chore—a homework assignment to build a happy façade.

A full 73 percent of the students she surveyed agreed this this statement: "I try always to appear positive/happy with anything attached to my real name."

Only 19 percent of respondents agreed that "I am open about my emotions on social media."

But the question is—how do we go about finding that happiness?

Read psalm 1...

Blessed = happy!

There are a variety of words in the Old Testament which mean "blessed" but this one means "happy."

It means to be completely happy. - Hebrew- 'esher (835)