5 friends are all you need in life

5 friends are all you need in life - One just needs five trusted people in their lives, to cope with modern life, a new study has revealed.

To deal with the stress of our fast paced life we want an agony aunt, an emotional support, someone good with money, a practically minded person and a colleague we can ask for work advice.

5 friends are all you need in life

The research demonstrates that a minimum of five friends and colleagues are now required to share out our problems and get useful advice from.

An agony aunt figure with whom we can share our problems, tops the list.

Secondly, we need some loved one who would put an arm around us and provide the quintessential emotional support.

The third most important friend is someone who can help us out with financial matters and advise us how to save money.

And fourth is a knowledgeable friend or family member we can turn to for advice on life's practical matters.

The fifth most important person one should have is a colleague we can look to for help and advice in the workplace, according to the study by Nationwide Building Society.

However, the research revealed that despite the average Facebook user having 190 friends, 32 percent of Britain population still doesn't feel they really have anyone on their side.

Men are twice as likely to feel they have no one to turn to (42 per cent) in their daily lives as compared to women (23 per cent).

And it proved the notion wrong that those in the north are friendlier, people (73 per cent) in the South East of England feel more supported than any other region.

Those over the age of 55 felt they had fewer trusted friends (40 per cent) than any other age group.

The research highlighted the needs for someone to listen to our problems (23 percent), to provide emotional support (18 per cent) and to ease the pressures of everyday life (18 per cent).

The current economic climate has also affected people's minds, with money issues now one of the main reasons they feel the need for a support network.

One in six (16 percent) say they need someone to help them save money or get rid of debt, according to the study of 1,047 UK adults.

Meanwhile, 15 percent of the Britain's population confides in work colleagues and one in 20 (5 percent) look to their boss for help and advice.

The research shows support at work is more important to men, with 11 percent looking for advice in this area compared to just five percent of women.

In contrast, 15 percent of women say they need someone they can turn to help them manage family relationships.

"No matter how strong and independent people are, we all need someone to lean on at key stages in life," the Daily Mail quoted Susan Quilliam, relationship psychologist, as saying.

"It could be an ear to listen, a wise head to provide some advice, a shoulder to cry on or someone who is completely removed from the situation you are in.

"Strong support networks are essential to help alleviate the pressures of life, decision-making and ultimately, stop people from feeling like they are on their own," she said.

Quilliam said that talking to different people and seeking advice may provide fresh perspective and impartial points-of-view helps one think and decide in a clearer manner.

"No-one should or can make decisions for you but the knowledge that someone else is on your side can make all the difference when it comes to your wellbeing," she added. ( .indiatimes.com )

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What’s It Take to Be Happy? Not Much

What’s It Take to Be Happy? Not Much — Tiny feel-good moments add up to overall happiness — If you think your satisfaction with life boosts your positivity, you’ve got it backwards. A 2009 study published in the journal Emotion implies that life satisfaction trickles up from tiny, positive events that occur every day—not down from what you have or what you think you need.

THE DETAILS:

Researchers wanted to test a few theories on why people with more positive emotions consider themselves more content with life, and whether their levels of negative emotion had any impact on that. They surveyed 86 college students, who filled out online emotion diaries at the end of every day. At the beginning and end of the study, the students also filled out questionnaires based on life satisfaction and “ego resilience,” a measure of how easily people bounce back from life’s challenges and curveballs.

The researchers found that experiencing a greater number of positive emotions was a much better predictor of life satisfaction and resilience than having fewer negative emotions. People who were more content weren’t content just because they had fewer bad days. Their satisfaction with life came from being better able to deal with challenges, which itself was influenced by experiencing more positive emotion.

WHAT IT MEANS:

Ultimately, the researchers found, positive emotions predict your satisfaction with life, not the other way around. “People have assumed in the past that your feelings of one day are just a reflection of your overall satisfaction with life,” says Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and lead author of the study. “But positive emotions actually build resources that account for life satisfaction,” she says.

Unlike negative emotions, which narrow your thinking and cause you to focus on the immediate problems you’re facing, positive emotions, Fredrickson says, allow you to broaden your horizons, which in turn allows you to discover new resources and connections with people. And the benefit shows up in the long term, as positive moments build on resilience and end up helping people deal with life challenges. All that, she adds, makes for a better life.

So rather than focus on the things you think should improve your quality of life, cultivate the tiniest of moments that make you feel good, says Fredrickson, who is also author of the book Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive (Crown, 2009). “Think of it like eating nutrients. One carrot won’t make you healthy,” she says. “It’s eating five to eight servings a day for a long time that does the trick.”

Below are a few ways to start on a more positive path. And tomorrow, check out Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen for some examples of happy “micro-moments,” and to add your own positives to the list.

Forget about winning the lottery. It's the little sweet spots in an ordinary day that add up to true happiness.

• Be gracious.

“The easiest positive emotion to generate is gratitude,” says Fredrickson. Take a look at your surroundings and try to find one thing in your life that’s a gift, she suggests.


• Be open to the present.

“People tend to get preoccupied with how things should be, their expectations of what the future should be, and ruminating about the past,” Fredrickson notes. But being open to what’s going on in the here and now allows you to appreciate the small things, such as enjoying natural beauty, or those random acts of kindness that bumper stickers always advertise. We’re often blinded to those because we’re so focused on why life isn’t going the way we think it should, she adds.


• Don’t force it.

“Thinking that ‘I need to be positive’ creates a toxic insincerity,” she advises. You can’t force positive emotions, she says, because it goes against how the brain interprets feelings. “People feel certain things because they interpret their current circumstances in a certain way,” adds Fredrickson. It’s easier to change your circumstances so they’ll lead to positive emotions, rather than trying to force yourself into being positive with slogans or goofy T-shirts. Besides, she adds, “yellow smiley faces just annoy people.” Instead of forcing fake positivity, think about the small things that make you a little bit happy, and build those into your day.


• Do a gut check.

How can you be sure you’re getting those daily bits of positive emotion? You’ll feel them in your body as well as your mind; they’re literally gut feelings. Or maybe chest feelings. As much as greeting cards have appropriated the word, Fredrickson says, “heartfelt” is a good description. “Positive emotions are accompanied by feeling like your heart is opening or swelling or expanding in some way,” she says. That’s the signal—emotions should come with bodily sensations.”


• Test your positivity.

Fredrickson has made the test used on the students in her study available online at positivityratio.com. Fill it out and see how positive you are (or could become). ( rodale.com )

READ MORE - What’s It Take to Be Happy? Not Much

You Can Buy Happiness, but Not with Money

You Can Buy Happiness, but Not with Money — An investment in gratitude pays valuable dividends, especially when times are tough — Many people today are struggling to make do with less. What’s the secret to finding happiness when you’re coping with loss? If we observe people who know how to be happy, we find that they make a point of being grateful for whatever they have. And it’s not related to how much material wealth you may or may not possess. A growing body of research has demonstrated that grateful people are happier than their less-grateful counterparts, regardless of their income level.

THE DETAILS:

Gratitude has also been found to be a powerful antidote to depression. Martin Seligman, PhD, a pioneer in the positive psychology movement, and colleagues at University of Pennsylvania delivered gratitude instructions to 50 severely depressed visitors to a self-help website. They recommended that individuals take time each day to write down three things that went well that day, and why they thought so. Fifteen days later, 94 percent of the 50 individuals reported feeling significantly less depressed. Their scores on a widely used depression inventory dropped by 50 percent—equivalent to improvement seen with medication treatment or psychotherapy, although the latter interventions generally take longer to work. Individuals in a placebo-controlled group who wrote down three childhood memories each day did not experience an improvement in their depressive symptoms. More important, the effects for the group practicing gratitude lasted for a full 6 months. The researchers repeated the same study several months later with a different group of depressed Web users and obtained substantially the same results. Seligman’s group also found that writing in a gratitude journal had a mood-boosting effect for depressed patients in a 12-week therapy group, as well as for patients in individual therapy.

WHAT IT MEANS:

Cultivating gratitude is a powerful way to overcome adversity and depression. By choosing to focus on your blessings, rather than ruminating on your disappointments and deficits, you nourish positive feelings about yourself, your life, and others. As an ongoing attitude, gratitude will help you cultivate happiness throughout your life. It is no accident that the individuals in Seligman’s study maintained their gains long after they completed the online intervention. Gratitude is habit-forming. The number of things you can be grateful for is infinite. As a happiness resource, gratitude is free and inexhaustible.

There are many ways you can weave gratitude into the fabric of your life:

Never underestimate the power of gratitude.

• Keep a gratitude journal. At the end of each day, write down three things you experienced that you feel grateful for. They could be as varied as the buds appearing on the trees in your yard and appreciation for the kindness extended to you by a stranger. As you chronicle the things you feel grateful for, make a point of not repeating any of the prior entries in your journal.

• Write and deliver a gratitude letter to someone in your life whom you have not properly thanked for what they have given to you. You can deliver the letter in person or read it over the telephone. It’s a powerful experience, for you as well as for the person you’re thanking.

• Say grace before each meal to express your thanks for the food you are about to eat.
Use whatever language you’re comfortable with, whether religious, spiritual, or just an informal expression of gratitude for the meal.

• Make a point of thanking anyone who serves you in any way — the cashier at the checkout counter, your child for clearing the dinner table, the tech-support person who helped you fix your computer.

• Take gratitude breaks during the course of each day to simply appreciate the myriad blessings, large and small, that are present in your life. ( rodale.com )

READ MORE - You Can Buy Happiness, but Not with Money