10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy!

(While this post may not be related to the Plumbing World, it is related to all of us Human Beings, and... couldn't we all use a big helping of Happiness?)

By Jen Angel, YES! Magazine

In the last few years, psychologists and researchers have been digging up hard data on a question previously left to philosophers: What makes us happy? Researchers like the father-son team Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, Stanford psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, and ethicist Stephen Post have studied people all over the world to find out how things like money, attitude, culture, memory, health, altruism, and our day-to-day habits affect our well-being. The emerging field of positive psychology is bursting with new findings that suggest your actions can have a significant effect on your happiness and satisfaction with life. Here are 10 scientifically proven strategies for getting happy. 1. Savor Everyday Moments

1. Pause now and then to smell a rose or watch children at play. Study participants who took time to “savor” ordinary events that they normally hurried through, or to think back on pleasant moments from their day, “showed significant increases in happiness and reductions in depression,” says psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky.

2. Avoid Comparisons
While keeping up with the Joneses is part of American culture, comparing ourselves with others can be damaging to happiness and self-esteem. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, focusing on our own personal achievement leads to greater satisfaction, according to Lyubomirsky.

3. Put Money Low on the List
People who put money high on their priority list are more at risk for depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, according to researchers Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan. Their findings hold true across nations and cultures. “The more we seek satisfactions in material goods, the less we find them there,” Ryan says. “The satisfaction has a short half-life -- it’s very fleeting.” Money-seekers also score lower on tests of vitality and self-actualization.

4. Have Meaningful Goals
“People who strive for something significant, whether it’s learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations,” say Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener. “As humans, we actually require a sense of meaning to thrive.” Harvard’s resident happiness professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, agrees, “Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable.”

5. Take Initiative at Work
How happy you are at work depends in part on how much initiative you take. Researcher Amy Wrzesniewski says that when we express creativity, help others, suggest improvements, or do additional tasks on the job, we make our work more rewarding and feel more in control.

6. Make Friends, Treasure Family
Happier people tend to have good families, friends, and supportive relationships, say Diener and Biswas-Diener. But it’s not enough to be the life of the party if you’re surrounded by shallow acquaintances. “We don’t just need relationships, we need close ones” that involve understanding and caring.

7. Smile Even When You Don’t Feel Like It
It sounds simple, but it works. “Happy people…see possibilities, opportunities, and success. When they think of the future, they are optimistic, and when they review the past, they tend to savor the high points,” say Diener and Biswas-Diener. Even if you weren’t born looking at the glass as half-full, with practice, a positive outlook can become a habit.

8. Say Thank You Like You Mean It
People who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis are healthier, more optimistic, and more likely to make progress toward achieving personal goals, according to author Robert Emmons. Research by Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology, revealed that people who write “gratitude letters” to someone who made a difference in their lives score higher on happiness, and lower on depression -- and the effect lasts for weeks.

9. Get Out and Exercise
A Duke University study shows that exercise may be just as effective as drugs in treating depression, without all the side effects and expense. Other research shows that in addition to health benefits, regular exercise offers a sense of accomplishment and opportunity for social interaction, releases feel-good endorphins, and boosts self-esteem.

10. Give It Away, Give It Away Now!Make altruism and giving part of your life, and be purposeful about it. Researcher Stephen Post says helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a “helper’s high,” and you get more health benefits than you would from exercise or quitting smoking. Listening to a friend, passing on your skills, celebrating others’ successes, and forgiveness also contribute to happiness, he says. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn found that those who spend money on others reported much greater happiness than those who spend it on themselves.

Fun and Unique Bathrooms

(a light-hearted post!)

The following picture is of a public restroom in Houston, Texas:

Now that you've seen the outside, take a look at the inside:

It's made entirely out of one-way glass!

This next bathroom is located on the tenth floor of a hi-rise building.

Imagine walking into it and seeing this:

This unique floor may not be suitable for the faint of heart!

What if everybody in the United States flushed the toilet at the same time?

What if everybody in the United States flushed the toilet at the same time?
by Josh Clark (from http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/plumbing/everybody-flushes-toilets.htm)

Nov. 19 is World Toilet Day, a time to reflect upon how far modern sanitation has come. In the United States in 2005, less than half of one percent of the country's more than 124 million households didn't have a flushing toilet [source: U.S. Census Bureau]. In comparison, 71 percent of India's total population of more than one billion people had no access to a toilet that same year. There were an estimated 350 million public and private toilets in the United States by the mid-1990s [source: Flushmate] -- a lot of toilets by anyone's measure. So what would happen if everyone in the United States decided to flush their toilets at the same time in celebration of World Toilet Day?
Since as far as we could find out -- no one's ever tried it before -- we can't say for certain exactly what would happen. But we can take a pretty good guess: "It would be ugly," says Steve Cox, one wastewater treatment facility operator we interviewed.
If everyone in the United States flushed the toilet at the same time, sewer systems across the country would be overwhelmed with wastewater.
The average home in America is outfitted with sewer pipes around four inches in diameter. The pipes from your home are connected to subdivision systems, which connect together at street systems. Street systems tie into road systems, which go to main road systems, and, ultimately, waste treatment plants. Underneath your town is a wastewater system as complex as a spider's web. The closer you get to the treatment plant, the larger the inside diameter of the pipes becomes. So a four-inch pipe from your house connects to a 12-inch pipe and so on, until -- in larger cities -- pipes may be almost 10 feet in diameter. A pipe this size can hold a lot of water, but can it hold enough for everyone to flush at once?
­If everyone in each of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's 330,584 households all flushed just one toilet at the same time, and each of those toilets expelled 3.5 gallons per flush, then Milwaukee's sewer system would suddenly be inundated with 1,157,044 gallons of wastewater [source: NexTag]. Even with the city's new 108-inch pipes, this could be a problem, and we're not even counting all of the public toilets in the city.
Of course, the earth isn't level underneath many cities, and to overcome changes in elevation, sewer systems use lift stations, wastewater plants that push sewage uphill toward its final treatment destination. These stations would be the first overwhelmed by unanimous flushing. There would simply be too much wastewater trying to pass through the pipes at the same time -- kind of like trying to force an orange through a drinking straw -- and the flow of sewage would stop. Sewage already past the lift stations would return downhill, and as the lift stations flooded, the lines leading to them would back up.
Eventu­ally this sewage would find its way to the place where this whole debacle originated -- your home. Backflow valves probably wouldn't help. Not only would your toilet overflow, but so, too, would every wastewater line in your home, including your shower, kitchen and bathroom sinks, and even your dishwasher and washing machine.
Outside, the manhole covers dotting the street would also flood and overflow, leaving people in sewage possibly more than ankle deep. Depending on how many people live in your city and how large the sewer pipes are, it could be even worse.
But with low-flow toilets, this scenario wouldn't be quite so bad.


To learn about low-flow toilets, give Lunt Marymor a call at 510 985-2889.