Happiness, rather than working hard, is the key to success, according to research published by a team from the University of California Riverside, led by Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky. Cheerful people are more likely to try new things and challenge themselves, which reinforces positive emotion and leads to success in work, good relationships and strong health, say psychologists.

The findings suggest that happiness is not a "feel good" luxury, but is essential to people's wellbeing.

"For example, they show that happy people tend to earn higher incomes," said Prof Lyubomirsky. Having established the link, they wanted to discover the cause.

"Almost always it has been assumed that things that correlate with happiness are the causes of happiness, but it could be just the opposite - that those things tend to be caused by happiness," said Professor Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, another author on the paper.

Other studies revealed that having a sunny outlook on life appeared to precede good fortune.



Some of my clients have reported feeling better about their games without instantly seeing their results improve. They then leave the coaching principles behind and go back to trying hard to get better and a more stressed way of trying to improve.

Living and working with the idea that happiness follows success means that we are stressed most of the time and when success does come the happiness is short lived.

If we realise that success follows happiness then we would all enjoy ourselves more and worry less.



Put this into your golf practice and play and see how you get on.

Planning on a happy golfing weekend !!