AMMAN — Happiness is an often used term that is seldom
understood. A person may be happy in the moment, such as when he/she sees friends, but when reflecting
on life as a whole, that person may feel unhappy.
اضافة اعلان
Happiness and life satisfaction in a sense go hand in hand. To
have happiness means to be happy with one’s life
as a whole, not just at one single moment. Owing to the fact that the term happiness is
overused and not well understood by most, psychologists and social scientists
have developed the term subjective well-being.
Subjective well-being is used to describe the overall
personal feelings and attitudes of an individual’s life in the present. There
are two main principles that govern subjective well-being:
a healthy balance of emotions and life satisfaction.
What is happiness?
Happiness in its simplest form is an emotional state associated with feelings of joy, satisfaction,
contentment and fulfillment. However, in
psychology, there is debate on how happiness
should be defined scientifically.
According to some, there are
three main ways to look at happiness: a global
assessment of life and all its facets, a recollection of past emotional
experiences, and an aggregation of multiple emotional reactions across time.
Regardless of how assessing happiness is approached, in
order to find happiness, two key components of well-being should be focused on. In terms of having
a balance of emotions, being happy does not mean never experiencing negative
emotions such as anger or sadness. Instead, it should be looked at holistically
and the amount of positive emotions should outweigh the negative emotions.
When it comes to life satisfaction, again, it does not mean
that one has to be satisfied with every aspect
of one’s life. It simply means that aspects of life that one
considers important, such as career or
relationships, are generally going well and
happiness can be derived from them.
Types of happiness
How we derive happiness is just as important as happiness
itself. Greek philosopher Aristotle made a clear
distinction between two types of happiness. One is
hedonia. Hedonic happiness is happiness derived from pleasure and can result from
many things. Experiences or actions that make one feel
good, such as self-care, fulfilling desires, experiencing enjoyment and a feeling of satisfaction are all aspects
associated with hedonia.
The other is eudaimonia.
Eudaimonic happiness is derived from seeking virtue and meaning. This includes
feeling that your life has meaning, value and purpose. As a whole, eudaimonia
is more introspective and long term. Some
research suggests that those who have high eudaimonic life satisfaction and above
average hedonic life satisfaction are truly happy.
How can one tell if one is happy?
Being happy does not mean you never feel other emotions, especially
negative ones. You can very well be happy and still get angry, sad, bored or even lonely. Happiness and subjective well-being
is the summation of one’s feelings and attitudes, and assessing whether positive
or negative emotions are greater.
People who are happy generally have a strong will to live
and feel that their lives are good. Happiness is
also associated with the feeling of accomplishment, that one has, or is about to accomplish things one
wants in life.
How to derive happiness?
There are different ways to
find happiness in life, and happiness may mean
different things for different people. Still, there are some general
ideas on how happiness can be derived. Primarily, working on eudaimonic
happiness/life satisfaction is the most important way to obtain happiness. This
takes the form of pursuing an intrinsic goal. Intrinsic goals are those one sets for oneself and that help self-improvement. Emphasis should be placed on personal growth and
community. Intrinsic goals help promote overall happiness far more than
extrinsic goals such as making money.
People should focus on living in the moment. Many studies
have found that people focus on amassing wealth instead of actually enjoying
themselves. As a result, people end up mindlessly over-earning and do not live
their lives to the fullest extent. In order to avoid this, one should show gratitude and invest wealth in oneself, enjoy the things that make one happy in order to improve one’s hedonic happiness.
Finally, and arguably most importantly, one should reframe negative thoughts and emotions. No
matter how hard one tries, bad things happen. Life,
more often than not, is unfair and this can elicit negative
emotions. Having these negative emotions is not
harmful, but constantly having a negative perception of life is.
Avoiding negative perceptions does not mean ignoring
problems, it means challenging oneself to find the good in the bad and reassuring oneself that the bad
things do not define one’s life.
Read more Health
Sources:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-happiness-4869755
https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-happiness/
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