[Ailist] A worldwide appreciative inquiry into happiness?

[Nick Heap]

Here are some rough notes for an Ai project on happiness. I would appreciate
any
thoughts or experiences you may have that might show whether these ideas
are sound and could work, and what might be the first practical steps.

Vision - Initiate a worldwide appreciative inquiry into happiness

Why? Systems move in the direction of what they inquire into. So, an
appreciative inquiry into happiness will help the world be a happier place.

Why "happiness"?

I think most people are interested in being happy and enjoy making other
people happy so it has a very wide appeal. The US declaration of
independence states: - "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness." The Dalai Lama, Aristotle and William James all agree that the
purpose of our existence is to seek happiness. There is widespread support
from these different directions that happiness is interesting to most
people.

Here is the idea

In spite of many people being stressed and miserable, some people are happy
and some people make other people happy too. Perhaps they know the secrets
of happiness.

People love to tell stories about their experiences. So I think it would be
nice to find two or three friends and listen to their stories about
their happy times. When you have listened, you could ask one of them to hear
your stories too. Just doing this will be lovely.

Ask your friends:-
· Tell me about a time in your life when you were happy? Why was that? What
was it like?
· Tell me about a time when you made someone else happy? What was that like?
· If you had three wishes to make the, or your, world a happier place what
would you use them for?
· What are two practical things you will do in the next week to make you and
someone else happy?

Then
· Talk together about what you learned from this experience and what it was
like to talk about happiness and hear about it.
· What were the themes or key ideas that underpinned the happy times or made
people happy? What were your secrets of happiness?
· How could you use these in your lives?

A story

I tried this with my wife and another couple. We spent about half an hour
going round the table answering the questions. It was very easy and
enjoyable. The most difficult bit was deciding which of many happy
experiences to share. This makes you realise you have had lots of them,
which is great. It was interesting to learn what made other people happy.
For instance, Barry became deaf quite young and spends time, and gets much
pleasure, helping elderly people use their deaf aids. This was a lovely way
to get happiness from something problematic. We all agreed that making other
people happy was a great source of personal happiness. I heard one of my
wife’s happy times again of being utterly overwhelmed by a sunset, but I
also heard her describe it to our friends and this gave me a new and vivid
perspective on her and her experience. I talked about a time I was reading
passages from a very funny book with a group of friends and my
uncontrollable laughter caused a shared explosion of helpless laughter from
all of us. We were laughing with each other like a group of very small
children. It was lovely.

We all felt the conversation had been a most enjoyable and different way to
spend time together. We felt both happier and closer afterwards.

In the context, the first two questions worked best.

The stories might be shared on a website and people would use it to
1. Find interesting and stimulating stories
2. Get ideas about how they could create more happiness
3. Stimulate a happiness epidemic
4. And, perhaps, discover the secrets of happiness - which might be very
simple.

The website could –
1. Inspire people to become happy
2. Attract and contribute to research
3. Help people contact each other
4. Catalyse projects
5. Attract advertising

Business and financial reasons for organisations to support this initiative
1. Happy people will relate better and this will help create better
businesses.
2. Happy people are healthier, thus there will be less demand on health and
other support services.
3. Happy people learn faster and better so educating them is easier and
cheaper.
4. Happy people tend to be law-abiding.
5. Happy people want to spread happiness so will work to create peace and
harmony.

What do you think of this? Could it work to make the world a happier place?

Best wishes
Nick