“It seems obvious that your closest friends might influence your mood,
but the study found that…the happiness of a friend of a friend of a friend boosts your chance of being happy…”
––From “New Reason to Be Happy” by Carolyn Y. Johnson
Boston Globe, December 5, 2008 [read article]
Well, it’s official. It’s been scientifically proven and is now the basis of a new study published in the prominent British Medical Journal:
Happiness is contagious.
So if you suddenly wake up feeling inexplicably joyous, it could be something in the air, or the water. Your neighbors’ neighbors’ neighbor’s happiness just might wind and waft its way over to you and catch you off guard, lift you up, and slap a smile on your face for no apparent reason.
And if you’re one of those eternally optimistic, upbeat, happy-go-lucky types, it’s possible that you’re doing more good for the planet than you even know.
Truth is, the ripple effect of happiness––or any human emotion for that matter––is not new, at least not to me. It’s a dynamic I’m very familiar with in my line of work. Using a technique called dowsing I can tune into and follow the emotional trails that people generate in their lives (and unwittingly leave behind in their houses).
When I’m space clearing a home that has experienced stressful events such as a sudden or violent death, a painful divorce, a long illness, severe depression, financial troubles, for example, or, is influenced by stresses originating in neighboring homes or buildings, I can “read” (by feeling, smelling, tasting…) the energetic “stickiness” or “unpleasantness” of what went on there. Even if the events took place centuries before! Similarly, if there’s been a lot of love and the home is a happy one, I can feel the distinct yumminess of those patterns too. There’s a clean-burning coherence to energies that feel good.
Good or bad, these energies affect us all the time no matter where they originate, even (and especially) when we’re not aware of them. They affect us to the degree that we react to, and personalize the “yucky” or “yummy” information that arises.
As for the happiness study, I’m not sure we really need one to measure or prove that there is this invisible connective tissue of thoughts and feelings that binds us humans to each other. If you’re aware and awake in your human body and open in your heart, you will know.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Conduct your own study in the weeks and months to come: Notice if your sense of ease, peace, or joy has any effect on a friend or a loved one living on some other part of the world. Notice how your state of being affects the world around you, and how the world, in turn, mirrors you back to you.
With my very best wishes for a peaceful and HAPPY NEW YOU, I leave you with this very funny 2-minute YouTube video spoof of happy people: “FDA-approved drug cure for the 20 million Americans who are insufferably cheerful…” Enjoy!
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