03 Jun How you think about happiness will determine how happy you really are
It might surprise some of you to learn (or maybe it won’t) that there are many different ways one can think about and define happiness.
Happiness, in what might be considered its simplest form, is feeling good; it’s one of many forms of positive emotion and as such, is important for the living of a positive life.
Happiness can also be used to refer to thriving and flourishing, or living our best lives, which refers to a deeper and more enduring form of positivity that includes positive emotions, like happiness, but also positive relationships and positive meaning and much, much more.
But happiness can also mean something more than feeling good or even living good; happiness can be used to refer to doing good, to being generous and altruistic and taking the definition(s) way beyond what it means just for us as individuals and thinking more about what it means for us as families, communities, societies and the world at large.
And I could go on and on and provide even more definitions but …
Not surprisingly, the version of happiness you choose will affect how much happiness you enjoy, and also how you live your life.
Everyone’s different and so different definitions will be more or less relevant for different people; and even different definitions will be more or less relevant to different people at different stages of their lives.
But taking this all into account, my reading of the research and my understanding based on decades of study and practice as a psychologist in various contexts is … that the more selfless versions of happiness are more meaningful and less susceptible to daily ebbs and flows. Caring more for and being more considerate of others might mean some personal sacrifices in the short term, but is more likely to lead to more enduring benefits in the long term.
Consistent with this, other research has suggested that as we’ve become more individualistic and possibly narcissistic in recent decades, we’ve also become less happy.
Think about that; and think about how you’d like to think about your happiness.