On the Way to the Courthouse Wisdom about Moving On

On the Way to the Courthouse Wisdom

Here is a brief conclusion of empirical data about an important moving part of this mystical thing we call happiness. Hopefully, it will provide another sight line to this place where happiness resides.

As most of you reading this know, I write a regular piece I call “What I’ve Learned about Life on the Way to the Courthouse”.  I send it to several   hundred friends and clients.  It is also published in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and I record them for WFDD FM radio station, Wake Forest University’s local National Public Radio affiliate.

I have been encouraged to send a weekly message, so here goes.

The question of what it is, exactly, that makes people happy has been around since Man first told a story on the wall of a cave.  But science itself has learned to define it more precisely now.

Life with a view. Do happy people have better things which happen to them and have less failure?  Actually, they do not.  Happy and unhappy people have had similar life experiences.  But the unhappy person spends more than twice as much time thinking about unpleasant events in their lives.  Happy people look for information that brightens their personal outlook.  Lyubomirsky, S., Ph.D., 1994.

Life has its share of kicks in the pants.  Just don’t let them keep kicking.  Rerunning that bad experience in our mind’s eye never changes the result, does it?  Move on.  And the moving on part gets easier with a little practice.

Mike Wells