Happiness.....

 

One thing that all crave in life. Once it was a spiritual exercise. Today, it is an industry. It is a choice. Happily everafter. 

It is a biproduct. 

Permanent happiness - is a life long process. Tranquillity is in the highest level - after Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, and for that you need liberation. 

According to Islam, Happiness is a life long process: It includes peace of mind, tranquillity of heart,  contentment in the world and everlasting bliss here after.

According to Judaism, follower of Moses, it is the ultimate goal of man. Pursuit of happiness is a moral duty. 

It is in the US declaration of Independence. 

It is least understood term. It is simple but complicated. 

Finland is the happiest countries. - Education and govt. policy do play a role. Well being takes a clear policy presidency. 

For one it is survival, for other it is - contentment, peace, laughter,  - It is subject. 

Japan: Good Luck and social harmony

America: Freedom and Personal achievement

China: Aversion to happiness too. They belive that too much happiness can bring unhappiness. 

New Zealand : Happiness and well being budget. 

Butan : Gross national Happiness is more important than Gross domestic product. 

Nordic countries have social support, lack of corruption. 

Danish :  Happiness Research institute. - UAE too. 

What is too much happiness? Can we compare it?

Who is responsible for ensuring happiness? Is it a personal choice or do Govt. have a role to play in it?

Horn your hobbies, do things you love. Money becomes a means only if you are struggling to end meets. Cost Rica - Low in GDP but 16th happiest country. 

Happiness Index - world happiness report - 139 of 149 - Duty of govt. - 6 Key ingredients, Income, Life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and Generosity, 

Happiness is linked to the wellbeing of the society. Even terrorist are traced back to sad families. 

Happy worker is better worker and more productive. 

Priorities happiness.

It is one of the strongest emotion. Finding. Learning. Finishing. 

It is personal, It is unique and out there for everyone. 

Happiness is spending time in nature: watching the clouds pass by, smelling the trees, admiring the flowers, enjoying a bird's song. Happiness is beech sand under your feet and water around your relaxing body. Happiness is having a good hospital around when you need one. Happiness is a cat purring and a dog playing. Happiness is something nice to eat and drink. Happiness is writing a solid, good paper. Happiness is watching a friend enjoy good fortune.

Unhappiness is getting ill and in pain and not finding the right help. Unhappiness is doing boring things over and over again, without escape. Unhappiness is being mobbed and misunderstood or mislabeled: basically not being respected. Unhappiness is the pain of hunger, especially in your loved ones. Unhappiness is living under constant threat and stress. Happiness is finding the silver lining of the cloud. Happiness is enjoying the little things, when the bigger things can't be achieved (yet). Happiness is finding purpose that is bigger than you.

Two key components of happiness (or subjective well-being) are:

The balance of emotions: Everyone experiences both positive and negative emotions, feelings, and moods. Happiness is generally linked to experiencing more positive feelings than negative.

Life satisfaction: This relates to how satisfied you feel with different areas of your life including your relationships, work, achievements, and other things that you consider important.

We feel we will be happy, when we get a job - but are we happy when we get a job or be stressed and busy? We do not know what we want, and wait for the right moment to be happy, when time is preparing for our funeral. 

Understand just this, essentially My Life is a combination of time and energy. Time is rolling away for all of us. We cannot roll it back. What is ticking away is not our time, but our life. It rolls at the same pace for everyone. Do whatever you want. Energy called life, you can pitch at different level - different expression. How about your expression being that of joy? 

Life is a certain amount of energy, it is not limitless, but it can be enhanced. Impact and profoundness of experience, depend on how you use your energy. 

Life is time and energy. Question is making something out of it. Not in society. But how profoundly you experience life? 

Don't go behind what lowers your faculties. It will not enhance your life. You have to super enhance your faculties. Greatest chemical factory is within. We have a sophisticated machine. Have you read the users manual. Make your faculties super bright. The way you see, the way you feel, the way you hear, the way you taste, the way you touch and other dimensions of human faculties. 

If you have everything you want, what would you want? Gautham Buddha. 

Mortal means you have a limited amount of time and energy.  You decide how you want to live. 

You can be happy volunteering in a hospital ward, and seeing people die, knowing all of us have limited time and energy. Life is an existential reality. There is a psychological reality running in our head. Greatest evil on the planet is ignorance. 

Don't be fearful or in pain. Know and be happy. There are five levels of happiness. 

Some key signs of happiness include:

• Feeling like you are living the life you wanted
• Feeling that the conditions of your life are good
• Feeing that you have accomplished (or will accomplish) what you want in life
• Feeling satisfied with your life
• Feeling positive more than negative

One important thing to remember is that happiness isn't a state of constant euphoria. Instead, happiness is an overall sense of experiencing more positive emotions than negative ones.

Happy people still feel the whole range of human emotions—anger, frustrastion, boredom, loneliness, and even sadness—from time to time. But even when faced with discomfort, they have an underlying sense of optimism that things will get better, that they can deal with what is happening, and that they will be able to feel happy again.

Types of Happiness

There are many different ways of thinking about happiness. For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle made a distinction between two different kinds of happiness: hedonia and eudaimonia.

Hedonia: Hedonic happiness is derived from pleasure. It is most often associated with doing what feels good, self-care, fulfilling desires, experiencing enjoyment, and feeling a sense of satisfaction.

Eudaimonia: This type of happiness is derived from seeking virtue and meaning. Important components of eudaimonic well-being including feeling that your life has meaning, value, and purpose. It is associated more with fulfilling responsibilities, investing in long-term goals, concern for the welfare of other people, and living up to personal ideals.

Hedonia and eudemonia are more commonly known today in psychology as pleasure and meaning, respectively. More recently, psychologists have suggested the addition of the third component that relates to engagement.

Some types of happiness that may fall under these three main categories include:

Joy: A often relatively brief feeling that is felt in the present moment

Excitement: A happy feeling that involves looking forward to something with positive anticipation

Gratitude: A positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative

Pride: A feeling of satisfaction in something that you have accomplished

Optimism: This is a way of looking at life with a positive, upbeat outlook

Contentment: This type of happiness involves a sense of satisfaction

Happiness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment. While happiness has many different definitions, it is often described as involving positive emotions and life satisfaction. 

When most people talk about happiness, they might be talking about how they feel in the present moment, or they might be referring to a more general sense of how they feel about life overall.

Because happiness tends to be such a broadly defined term, psychologists and other social scientists typically use the term 'subjective well-being' when they talk about this emotional state. Just as it sounds, subjective well-being tends to focus on an individual's overall personal feelings about their life in the present. 

Five levels of happiness ranging from very basic happiness to a false sense of happiness to happy feelings to true and lasting happiness.

Instinctual Happiness

The most basic form of happiness is what I call “instinctual happiness.” This elementary type of happiness can be best described by the old saying, “I’m just happy to be alive!” Instinctual happiness is less real happiness than simply the appreciation for having survived another day.  Instinctual happiness was less about feelings of elation, joy, and serenity than about the absence of hunger, thirst, and cold, very much akin to the lowest rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Defended Happiness 

Happiness may not be the presence, but rather the absence, of certain feelings. For example, we experience what we call happiness when we are not experiencing psychological obstacles such as doubt, worry, ruminations, or hypervigilance. We also experience what we call happiness when we are not experiencing aversive emotions such as fear, frustration, anger, or despair. Lastly, we experience what we call happiness when there are no physical barriers including stress, exhaustion, illness, and injury.

Unfortunately, we aren’t often able to just relieve ourselves of these truly unpleasant experiences because they are either deeply ingrained, beyond our control, or must be endured due to our life circumstances. Psychotherapy or other forms of interventions can help, but they are definitely not fool proof.

In these situations, we engage in what I call “defended happiness,” in which we develop habits and patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and interacting with the world that protect us from the pain sufficiently to feel some mild semblance of happiness (again, more the absence of ill feelings rather than the presence of good feelings). Perfectionism, fear of failure, need for control, need to please, and social isolation (and, in extreme cases, severe mental illness) are all ways in which we attempt to feel less unhappy. In this defended form of happiness, we are, in a way, choosing the lesser of the two evils. Unfortunately, as you look at this list of ways to reduce our pain, you will see little opportunity for real happiness. But, for many people, that is as happy as they are going to get (at least in the short term). Apologies for sounding so fatalistic, but life can be that way.

Medicated Happiness

Sadly, despite our best efforts, some of us are unable to readily defend ourselves against unhappiness through internal action (i.e., changing the way we think, feel, or behave). In this situation, we turn to external means, which brings me to my third level of happiness, “medicated happiness.” As I noted above, we all experience thoughts and emotions that detract from our happiness. In response, we engage in activities that “medicate” us against those experiences.

Most of us do things that aren’t really harmful, yet temporarily dull the emotional pain we may feel that prevents our experiencing some modicum of happiness. Moreover, our “medications” can help us to experience a psychological and emotional state that resembles happiness as we know it, at least in short bursts. We surround ourselves with people who make us feel loved, valued, supported, and encouraged. We exercise which takes our minds off of our troubles, makes us feel good physically, and releases endorphins (which reduces stress and can produce a brief bursts of euphoria). We immerse ourselves in work, hobbies, and other activities (e.g., charitable work, art, cooking, movie watching, reading, the list is endless) that distract us from and temporarily dull our pain. Though less common, some people go to extreme lengths to medicate themselves in ways that not only cause more unhappiness, but also have significant health implications including drinking alcohol, taking drugs, and gambling.

Contented Happiness

The levels of happiness that I’ve described so far hardly fit into our culturally defined understanding of what happiness should be. At the same time, the reality is that one of the above three levels of happiness may be as good as it’s going to get for some people whether due to genes or unfortunate life circumstances.

Contentment is the feeling that we get when we engage in pleasurable activities such as walking our dogs, having dinner with friends, hanging out with our children, pursuing an enjoyable hobby, the list goes on. They make us feel “happy” for a little while. We choose our activities that align with our personalities, values, and interests. Such activities will, they suggest, produce the greatest amount of good feelings possible which can give the experience of, though, not the depth and breadth of so-called real happiness.

Existential Happiness

At the top of my happiness hierarchy lies what I call “existential happiness.” I would characterize this as the only “real” happiness, the most deep, true, and lasting form of happiness. Existential happiness comes from living our lives in a way that is infused with meaning, satisfaction, and joy. It comes from living an authentic life based on our values; having a passion for and caring deeply about something; setting, striving for, and achieving deeply held goals; engaging in activities that are fulfilling; and being deeply connected to others.

As you can imagine, this is no small feat given that the reality of much of life is often mundane, routine, and rote. Moreover, so much of our  thoughts and routine pushes us to pursue happiness in the wrong direction, telling us it is about wealth, power, status, consumption, and beauty.

Happiness seem both out of our control and beyond our capabilities. 

Happiness is worth pursuing and how we can actually find happiness, though it may not be the  happiness that we have been brainwashed to believe in.

  Consider four paths forward. 

First, initially focus on the obstacles that have prevented your experiencing happiness to this point. In other words, look for ways to let go of whatever has caused you to settle for defended or medicated happiness. 

Second, figure out what your values are and what gives meaning to your life. 

Third, within the confines of the busy, stressful, and humdrum lives we often lead, build experiences that given you purpose, fulfillment, and joy into your daily lives on a regular basis, thus making those routine days a little less routine. 

Finally, free yourself of the shackles of a belief about happiness (“I can find nirvana!”) that probably doesn’t exist and embrace an understanding of happiness that you can actually attain.

When survival is settled we have n number of problems, when survival is unsettled, that is the only problem.