Peace As The Lord Giveth

[Carborendum]

This is a graph from Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage.  Please note the black dot.

The Y-axis is self-reported happiness levels as analyzed in interviews.  The X-axis is the criterion for happiness based on the common things that people tend to believe bring them happiness.

Mr. Achor recognized that it is obvious that the common wisdom seems to be fairly predictive of the state of being happy.  Those common things do indeed bring some level of happiness.  But what he was curious about was that black dot instead of the gray dots.  What's up with that guy?

Most of the time statisticians would simply ignore the black dot as an outlier.  It obviously is an outlier based on statistical analysis techniques.  It could simply be that this person has a naturally high level of endorphins in his body.  Could be anything.

But instead of simply dismissing the outlier, Achor wanted to know WHY?  Why is that guy so much happier when others are fairly miserable with the same criteria that the world tends to value and seems to be fairly predictive?

He looked into it and found many criteria that we all kinda know is linked to happiness, but we tend to ignore.  Often, it is "just too much work."

This got me to thinking about:

Quote

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

  -- John 14:27

The peace the Lord gives us is more enduring.  It is beyond the ups and downs of the human experience.  It is constant.  It is eternal.

I'm fairly comfortable as far as the worldly things.  But I know that it isn't a long fall from my height of 5'-7" to being homeless and sleeping on the sidewalk.  Job was the perfect example of how we can still have some "happiness" when we really should be miserable.

It is easy to be "happy" when you're on the far right of the graph.  It is another thing to be happy when you're near the left end of the graph.