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There’s a simple hack for creating happiness in your life, especially during times of chaos and anxiety, and it starts with what you do in other people’s lives.
In January, the number of Americans who felt “very satisfied” with their personal lives hit a 24-year low. according to a gallup poll released at the time, 44 percent of Americans said they were “very satisfied” with the way things were going in their personal lives.
“After several challenging years, including the COVID-19 pandemic and persistently high prices, Americans’ overall satisfaction with their personal lives has fallen to the lowest level in a quarter century,” Gallup wrote in an analysis. “Political dissatisfaction appears to have further reduced satisfaction, especially among Republicans.”
So what can we do in these difficult times? One psychologist turned to Gen Z, generally considered to be people born between 1997 and 2012, for answers.
Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrows and his researchers at the university’s Motive and Identity Process Laboratory have conducted a six-year project asking the question, “If someone gave you $400 to make a change in your community, what would you do with it?”
Over the years, Burrows and his team have selected more than 1,000 high school and college students to receive $400 and use it to add value to themselves and their communities. contribution project,
Preliminary results of the project, which were shared in an article Washington Post On Friday, show that at the beginning of the experiment, people who received the money and those who did not had similar scores on psychological measures, including latent well-being, sense of purpose, sense of belonging, feeling needed and useful, and emotional balance, which is the balance between positive and negative emotions.
But eight weeks later, the deadline recipients have to make their contributions, those who received the funds scored significantly higher than others.
Recipients used the funds to pay for hundreds of laundry loads for community members, donate books to their former high school, plant a tree on campus, and create a mental health resource website.
“I think a lot of people in my generation are like me,” recipient Eric Kohut is quoted as saying Washington Post“Naturally, everyone wants to love and be loved. And I think that comes up often.”
The results of the project have not yet been peer-reviewed and published, but Burrows believes the principle of his experiment could make a difference to people’s lives.
“Invite people to think about the contribution they want to make and help them [to] Make that contribution, and that person may walk away with even greater purpose than if he or she had not,” he said in the Washington Post article.