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 21 Ways to Become Happier

12 Ways to a Happier World


This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Michael W. Fordyce, 12/14/44 - 01/24/11, whose pioneering work created the happiness movement we enjoy today.  Heaven and Earth are happier places because of you.  Thanks, Dr. Fordyce, and stay happy forever and ever!  Dr. Fordyce's site at the Internet Archive
 

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Who We Are
My most recent 216-episode TV Series - Exploring the Illusion of Free Will
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What is Happiness?

   Why is Happiness so Important?

World's Happiest Countries

Happiness Facts

Happiness Benefits

The APACHE Method (Positive Adjectives Technique and List)

The Ortega Happiness Method

Other Ways of Becoming Happier

Happiness Increase Experiments

Top Happiness Researchers and Promoters

Dr. M. Fordyce

George Ortega's Happiness Skills Theory (2 drafts)

Happiness Books, Papers and Articles

Start a Happiness Show

Happiness-Increase Research and the Artifacts Dilemma

Happiness Research Still Needed

Proposals for Further Refuting Hedonic Adaptation Predictions

The Hey Bill Gates, Start an International Happiness Corporation Campaign

Happiness Increase International

George's Happy World Songs

Humankind's Age of Happiness

Happiness Quotes

100 Happiness Self-Statements

Outlines to Early The Happiness Show Episodes

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Key Happiness Facts
 

World's Happiest Countries (2004):
 
1. Nigeria
 2. Mexico
 3. Venezuela
 4. El Salvador
 5. Puerto Rico
 (U.S. ranks 16th)

Countries with Highest Levels of Subjective Well-Being (2004):
 
1. Puerto Rico
 2. Mexico
 3. Denmark
 4. Columbia
 5. Ireland

Click here for the complete ranking and more information

Americans consider happiness more important to them than money, moral goodness, and even going to Heaven.

Americans are, on average, only 69 percent happy.

The world population is, on average, less than 65 percent happy.

37 percent of the people on Forbes list of Wealthiest Americans are less happy than the average American.

At any given time, one forth of Americans are mildly depressed

14 percent of the nations on Earth are less than 50 percent happy.

Happiness Increase Experiments published in peer review journal have empirically demonstrated that individuals can be trained to be 25 percent happier through various training programs in from two to ten weeks.

All demographic variables combined, including age, sex, income, race, and education, are responsible for only 15 percent of the difference in happiness levels between individuals.

American Children feel happy 52 percent of the time, neutral 29 percent of the time, and unhappy 19 percent of the time.

Americans' personal income has increased more than 2 1/2 times over the last 50 years, but their happiness level has remained the same.

Americans earning more that $10 million annually are only slightly happier than average Americans.

(Click here for Citations and a Brief Paper on How our World Can Become Much Happier)



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THE MEDIA-DRIVEN

 "HEY, BILL GATES; START A HAPPINESS CORPORATION!"

CAMPAIGN

 The "Hey, Bill Gates; Start a Happiness Corporation" Campaign is a project with one purpose.  It exists to enlist our mass media  (print, television, radio, and internet) in  encouraging our world's richest and most generous philanthropist, Bill Gates, to found and run a for-profit corporation with the sole purpose of training people to become happier

PROPOSAL LETTER

             Dear Mass Media Professional;

 I'm writing to offer you a great story.  What almost all of us want most in life is happiness, but very few of us are very happy.  Here in the U.S., the average person scores 69 on their happiness level , and is only happy 54 percent of the time.  In fact, on any given day, one quarter of us are actually mildly depressed.  Why is this?  40 years of research on happiness (subjective well-being) has shown that our "get happier" strategies, (including our number one strategy of having more money) hardly work at all.

          Not only are 37 percent of the people on Forbes' list of wealthiest Americans less happy than the average person, according to the latest poll (1999-2001) by World Values Surveys (based at Michigan State University), the happiest country in the world is now Nigeria, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico.  We Americans come in 16th place on the list.

           While the average person knows very little about happiness, twenty-five years ago, psychologists began learning through experimentation how to help people become much happier.  In fact the first of these happiness-increase experiments made its subjects about 25 percent happier after just six weeks of training.

           Here's the story:  Almost no one is using this powerful research to help people become happier.  Since the Spring of 2003, former American Psychological Association president, Martin E. P. Seligman has been personally training hundreds of "happiness coaches," but getting coached in happiness is expensive, and no happiness market has yet been created!  (who's ever heard of a happiness coach?).

           What we Americans need is for "Big Business" to sell us happiness.  People pay Berlitz language schools to teach them English, French, and Italian; they pay Kaplan to teach them how to increase their standardized test scores, they would pay a happiness training company to teach them happiness.

            I've contacted you because, as a mass media professional, you can make big things happen with what you write about.  What do you think would happen if reporters from all over the world began to write about the need for happiness training businesses?   What if the media launched a campaign to encourage our world's richest and most generous philanthropist, Bill Gates, to take on the cause of happiness, not as a charity but as a business?  Bill Gates is rich enough to easily set up an international chain of happiness training centers.  He is also rich enough to saturate the media with advertisements promoting this new happiness training business.

           My estimate is that Gates could offer classes to about twenty people at a time, and charge them each $300 for six weeks of happiness training.  The result would be that his customers would become about 25 percent happier, and Mr. Gates would gross $6,000 for each class. 

           This Gates angle is admittedly quirky, but as a story, that would be appealing to many readers.  Happiness is HOT now; just check out Oprah's "O" April, 2004 cover story.  Also,  review  the happiness facts,  increase experiments, and documented benefits pages on The Happiness Show website.  To help you get started, I've included a "Story Angles and Themes" section that presents captions and press releases.

  It's pitiful that so many of us are so much less happy than we could be simply because we've never been taught how to become happier.  So many of us could be taught to become much happier if businesses realized that many of us would eagerly pay for this instruction.  I hope you'll review the information I've presented, and then write a story that will inspire Bill Gates to create a happiness training business. 

                                                                Sincerely,
                                                                            George Ortega

 

Happiness Benefits

By Bill Gates selling happiness as a product, he would be selling consumers much more than success in achieving their strongest desire and goal in life - happiness.   Extensive research shows that as individuals become happier, they reap physical, emotional, financial, social, ethical, and societal rewards.  Click here for a fully referenced list of published studies demonstrating how becoming happier helps people to become physically and emotionally healthier, more economically productive, more pro-social, and more charitable, etc..  

 

STORY IDEAS AND ANGLES

Captions   Themes

Happiness is Hot, but Who's Selling it?

    Happiness is now everywhere the media.  It's on the cover of Oprah's "O," It was recently presented before Britain's Royal Society.  Martin Seligman is training hundreds of happiness coaches every few months.   But where does the average person go to get happier?  A huge market is being created, and no major corporation is offering the product.

Will Making Our World Happier Make our World Better?

    Study after study shows that as people become happier they become more charitable, more cooperative, healthier, more pro-social, etc.  Happy people don't seem to be the troublemakers of the world.  Will the success of a global initiative to help people become substantially, and lastingly, happier bring about a much more ethical and compassionate world?  

They Sell Everything Else, Why Not Happiness?

    Whether it's food, merchandise, convenience, or a dream, corporations throughout the world meet consumers' ever changing demands with a vast array of products and services.  Of course the only reason anyone buys anything is to either hold on to, or increase, their pleasure and happiness.  So, with most people succeeding so marginally at their most cherished desire, happiness, why isn't anyone selling it to them directly as a product?

Creating a market through a Happiness Documentary

    All of us want happiness, but few of us really understand it.  The result is a world filled with many unhappy people, and an average global happiness level of under 65 percent.  Michael Moore created the successful documentary, Bowling for Columbine, that addressed the profound conundrum of America's epidemic of violence.  Researchers have been studying happiness for four decades, and have accumulated a mountain of valuable information uncovering its secrets.  The time is ripe for a motion picture mogul to take on the question of happiness, and present to the international public a knowledgeable and optimistic documentary explaining happiness and how it is best achieved.   

 

Captions Themes

Will the Media Champion Happiness?

Selling Happiness

Will Gates Found Happiness Inc.?

The Happiness Business

Happiness Beckons Gates

Can Gates Sell Happiness?

Making Money Making People Happy

Happiness at Corporate America's Door

Happiness: A new Industry?

The Media Champions Happiness

Who Will Pay to Become Happier?

Birth of a Happy New Industry?

The Happiness Trade

Bill Gates: Global Happiness Source?

Making Consumers Happier

The Media's Happy Message for Bill Gates

A Happy Route to a Better World

Will Gates Be the King of Happiness?

When Happiness Comes a Calling

The Happy Campaign

Will Happiness Reach Bill Gates Through the Media?

Can Happiness be Bought and Sold?

If it Feels Good, Sell it!

Happy Days are Now for Sale

Bill Gates' New Calling?

Happiness, Inc.

Happiness for Sale

The Media as Happiness Messenger?

Buying our Heart's Desire

Bill Gates as Mr. Feelgood?

The Other Campaign

Will the Media Run with Happiness? 

Can Gates Sell Happiness?

Buying our Greatest Desire

Will Consumers Buy Happiness?

The Happiest Product

Creating a  Happiness Market

Why Sell Happiness?

Finding Happiness at the Mall

The Most Philanthropic Campaign

Happiness Maverick Gates?

Sell Me Your Finest Happiness

A Happy Campaign to Change the World

Will Happiness Sell?

Is Bill Gates the Way to Happiness?

Smiling all the way to the Bank

Buying our way to Heaven

A New Gates Venture?

Happiness, Get Your Happiness!

Selling the Happy Cure

The Gates of Happiness?

Can happiness Change the World?

 

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