'Happiness Formulas': Summer of Happiness 2010 Celebrated in Free Book

VANCOUVER, July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The Institute of Subjective Well-Being (http://www.iswb.org) releases today a free eBook titled "Happiness Formulas: How to assess our subjective well-being? How to live joyfully in the 21st century?" This guide to measure and improve happiness offers an intuitive way to assess SWB using Positive Psychology questionnaires. It also reviews benchmarks of social happiness, like the Facebook Happiness Index, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and the Gross National Happiness (Buthan).

The eBook also reviews AmAre Way (http://www.amareway.org), a formula to measure happiness, and a way of living joyfully. AmAre is an acronym which stands for: Aware (being), Meditating, Active (being), Respectful (being), Eating properly. AmAre is an Italian word which means "to love", and in English it sounds like interconnectedness: (I) Am (we) Are.

"Happiness Formulas" summarizes some of the main findings in recent research about subjective well-being, and raises additional points, including:

• being happy is a choice we make right here and now, by living joyfully. It is not a place to reach in the future.

• there are ways to measure subjective well-being.

• understanding happiness requires a paradigm shift: from a digital (right or wrong, true or false) way of thinking which belonged to analogical times, to an analogical (degrees of appropriateness) way of thinking which belongs to our digital times.

• SWB has strong implications for public policy and diplomacy.

• SWB agents, objects and actions can be classified as hot, mild and cool.

• there are several "fringe" benefits to living joyfully: happier people are more sociable and energetic, more caring and cooperative, more likely to get married and stay married, to have wider social networks and receive support from friends, show more flexibility and creativity in their thinking, are more productive at work, and earn accordingly. They are more tenacious when times are not pleasant, have stronger immune systems, etc.

About the ISWB

The Institute of Subjective Well-Being (http://www.iswb.org) is a non-sectarian, non-political institute devoted to sharing both established and pioneering research in the field of subjective well-being, more commonly known as happiness. SWB is a suitable way to refer to happiness: subjective, because it is in the eyes of the beholder; well-being, because it is always in progress and not a place to reach and hold for good. ISWB publishes free pamphlets and white papers; it also edits a newsletter for media experts who want to receive updates about developments in the SWB field.

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SOURCE Institute of Subjective Well-Being