Cheerful is as cheerful does

Scoutmaster minute October 13, 2014 

I believe in the 12 points of the scout law. Having said that, there are some points of the scout law that are more important to me, personally, than others. The scout spirit section of the law is really important to me. I believe that the lack of kindness and cheerfulness in the world makes for ugliness. I saw a video recently about happiness. The video claimed that in the world happiness study, Denmark has been the happiest country in the world for nearly 40 years. Finally somebody wanted to know why. The people of Denmark don’t have a higher income than all the countries surveyed, or more stuff. One survey showed that the people of Denmark laughed more than people of other countries. An average of 10 times a day.  

So, some other researcher decided to do a "laughing study" to see if laughing can make you happier. They broke their subjects into two groups: control and contrived. Both groups were surveyed morning and evening every day for over a month. They rated their happiness on a scale of one to ten.  The control group did nothing different except for the survey. The contrived group were asked to laugh for three minutes a day, even if they didn’t feel like it. Fake it for three minutes. And here is the interesting thing, the group that fake laughed for three minutes a day reported higher happiness scores at the end of the day, and they got even higher over the course of the month. 

So, what can we take away from this? Trying to be cheerful will make you cheerful.