Choir Notes

Contagious Happiness
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4149

A medical journal recently reported something that probably all of us have experienced: happiness is contagious. Tracking more than 4,700 people as part of a 20-year study, researchers found that people pass on their good cheer [to others,] even to total strangers.1 Happiness is like a stampede, a professor at Harvard and one of the study’s authors said. Whether you’re happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don’t even know.2

Indeed, happiness can be surprisingly easy to spread. When we’re feeling good about life, we naturally radiate cheerfulness. Our positive outlook rubs off on others. A smile, a nod, a simple word of greeting or gratitude to those around us can change both our outlook and theirs. In fact, it can change someone’s entire day.

Think of the amazing power we each have to share happiness and brighten someone’s life. Some days we’re more able to give good cheer, and other days we may be the recipients. Give and take—that’s what makes happiness so contagious and so powerful.

Of course, the opposite is probably also true. If we’re feeling down, if we’re negative about life, that must surely rub off on others. It takes courage and strength to choose to extend happiness and cordiality when we don’t much feel like it—and we all have days like that. At the same time, it takes simple, kindhearted openness to receive good cheer from others.

Walking down a street, sitting on a bus, waiting in line—they’re all opportunities to spread a little happiness. Anyone who has tried it knows that when you’re smiling, the whole world really does smile with you.

1 Maria Cheng, “Smile! Study Says Being Happy Can Be Contagious,” Deseret News, Dec. 5, 2008, A2.

2 Nicholas Christakis, in Deseret News, Dec. 5, 2008, A2.