Whole Living Daily

A few months ago, when our editorial team was brainstorming ideas for the Happiness Issue, we started ticking off  shared characteristics of the seemingly happiest people we know.

These included implacable optimism, energy, curiosity, equilibrium in the face of annoyances large and small, and an infectious laugh. A contagiously happy  personality, really.

Who knows whether that happiness is intrinsic or a refraction of a person’s positive affect onto  others? They’re clearly related. As the compulsively aphoristic Mark Twain put it, “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”

Twain (who, alas, was skilled at masking his own misery) might as well have been describing my pal Sally Preston, head of sales and marketing here at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and the closest thing to human Prozac I have ever encountered. (Positivity is an asset in the sales field, but Sally brings it even when  she’s not selling.)

Is Happiness Contagious?
During that brainstorming meeting, Sally strolled past, so I roped her into a little experiment.  Indeed, after just three minutes of lively chatter—it hardly matters what we all talked about; Sally speaks at auctioneer speed through a gleaming grin (on display in the photo above) and punctuates her points with a high-pitched  “ha-haaa!”—our executive editor, Amy Maclin, exclaimed, “I feel better already!”

Sally’s bubbles can’t be bottled (I’d certainly buy a magnum), but she admits they’re more than accidental by-products.

“I came to the conclusion at an early age that we only get one pass at this life,” she says. “So I’ve been committed to having fun, enjoying the ride, and being appreciative of all that I have received every day.”

For the rest of us, there are proven ways we can shift our outlook and behavior through daily rigor, coaxing positivity into a habit.

Where Do You Find Happiness?
That’s the goal of our March issue, on newsstands now: to help you find  your happy place by jumping, skipping, and punching out the psychological effects of stress in the gym, eating mood-boosting comfort foods, and singing your heart out.

We also asked some of our favorite writers and photographers to let us in on how they’ve found happiness at unexpected moments. Which, we noticed, is when the deepest happiness seems to happen—when you’re waiting for it to sit on your shoulder rather than stalking it as if it were a rare beast.

Now one bit of unhappy news: Our beloved Amy Maclin, herself in possession of an uplifting, Tennessee-twinged cackle, has struck out on a new adventure. Over the past year, Amy has truly become the voice of Whole Living (just see December’s “The Case for Chaos”).

We’ll miss her witty-wise contributions, but we’ll do our best to take our own advice: Keep calm and carry on!

Alex Postman is the editor in chief of Whole Living; this blog post is excerpted from her March 2011 editor's letter. Can't find us on newsstands? Get a subscription here. As always, we love to hear your feedback.