Love is the condition in
which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
John Helliwell, a University of British Columbia economist who co-edited the report, told The Washington Post that the most surprising finding researchers came across was «the extent to
which happiness of immigrants matches the locally born population.»
Not exact matches
Which isn't to say,
of course, you shouldn't make the bigger changes that will bring you greater life satisfaction, it just means that you're not powerless to start working on your
happiness right this instant.
But as any social scientist worth their salt will tell you,
happiness is a state, not a trait,
which means the confluence
of conditions necessary to sustain it are ever - changing.
Chopra, fresh off
of unveiling a new stress - relieving virtual reality meditation experience,
which he partnered with VR content studio Wevr to create, says the key to
happiness lies in how we cope and calm down.
In a new analysis
of 1 million U.S. teens, my co-authors and I looked at how teens were spending their free time and
which activities correlated with
happiness, and
which didn't.
That was the message
of a talk by Dr. Miriam Tatzel at the American Psychological Association's 122nd annual convention,
which was held recently in Washington, D.C. Presenting her research to the assembled psychologists, Tatzel stressed the importance
of playing down consumerism as a route to fulfillment and boiled down the research on the subject into a handful
of scientifically validated principles to follow for greater
happiness.
Lessons from the longest study on
happiness — the Harvard Study
of Adult Development —
which tracked annually the lives
of 724 men
of varying economic statuses show that «Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.
Which should probably be enough
of a reason for you to give this basic
happiness practice a try, but in case you were looking for more reasons to be grateful, new research recently uncovered one.
I'm curious: For your long - term
happiness,
which of those three would you be most willing to give up?
Some early behavioral economics studies found that a salary
of roughly $ 75,000 a year was the point at
which happiness began to plateau.
Gretchen Rubin, the bestselling author
of The
Happiness Project, Better Than Before and The Four Tendencies, offers advice about how to be happy in her popular podcast
which she co-hosts with her younger sister, Elizabeth Craft.
It might seem elementary, but it gives you a sense
of control,
which psychologists have identified as the number - one contributor to
happiness.
In other words, learning to be thankful can help us cultivate a spirit
of appreciation,
which leads to
happiness.
Ursula Adams, director
of employee engagement at United Way for Southeastern Michigan, says using the daily - engagement app Niko Niko —
which tracks employees» mood data with its mobile «
happiness meter» — has helped her avoid sinking money into fixing the wrong cultural problems.
That's according to U.S. News & World Report,
which on Monday released its 2018 ranking
of the best places to retire, based on data related to
happiness, housing affordability, healthcare, taxes, job markets, and desirability
of a locale.
Not at all, according to University
of California at Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center,
which studies
happiness and well - being.
What you invest in helps determine whom you become,
which in turn determines the quality
of spouse, parent, or worker you are and even the level
of happiness you'll have.
Seldom does a month passes in
which there's not a major conference somewhere on the subject, usually featuring a panel
of prominent Perrier - sipping economists prattling on about whether money really can buy
happiness.
He never stood in an airport bookstore and wondered
which of its seemingly interchangeable business titles would truly revolutionize his company and unlock the secret to
happiness, and he never tried to make sense
of the bizarre spectacle
of a Jim Cramer rant.
«Even though extant research has identified numerous predictors
of people's
happiness and well being, most
of these factors represent relatively stable aspects
of an individual's life, such as the cultural environment in
which one is raised or resides and demographics such as age, education, social class, marital status, and religion,» write the researchers.
However, in Sweden, since many things are provided, you don't necessarily need high incomes to get the same level
of freedom,
which equates to
happiness.
Within five years, Zappos would hit $ 1 billion in revenue and Hsieh would author Delivering
Happiness, a # 1 New York Times Bestseller,
which would catapult him into being one
of the most influential business persons in the world.
In Delivering
Happiness,
which Hsieh finished writing just before closing with Amazon, he hints at rave culture contributing to his early fascination with self - managed systems, likening the synchronicity
of crowds moving to a single beat.
In his book, Delivering
Happiness, Hsieh says that he never wanted to sell Zappos but that the company's board — and, in particular, investor Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm
which kept it afloat with $ 48 million in the mid-2000s — was getting tired
of his «social experiments» and wanted the company to improve profitability.
It comes with an awkward manifesto that nonetheless manages to gather an armful
of social and economic trends and philosophies, including
happiness research, the booming field
of collaborative consumption (
which uses new technology to share resources like cars, toys and books, on the Zipcar model) and data on the proven efficiencies
of cities.
And whereas some psychologists find that high scores on certain cognitive tests correlate in older people with the ability to keep their spirits up, other researchers hypothesize that
happiness in later life is an effect
of cognitive losses —
which force older people to concentrate on simpler, happier thoughts.
And I believe understanding this element
of human nature —
which I'll discuss in the next section — is key to building a life that: a) involves ambitious striving toward goals and having impact in the world,
which contributes to a sense
of meaning, and b) gives you a shot at realizing true
happiness by avoiding a soul - sucking competitive rat race.
These same ideas should foster feelings
of happiness and satisfaction among your remote workers,
which in turn will lead to higher productivity and better quality
of work.
Coke just entered the third year
of its soda - focused «Taste the Feeling» campaign,
which moved away from the more ideals - based «Open
Happiness» ads.
Twenge and Campbell are drawing here on research from the so - called positive psychology movement,
which recently has attempted to shift the focus
of psychological research away from disease and disorder to a study
of the character strengths that make for
happiness and human flourishing.
To defy them will be to be frustrated and incomplete, to fail to achieve that good
of rational
happiness which it is peculiarly ours as a species to pursue.»
For them, at last, there would be some kind
of future; some older faces to apply to their unfolding lives, some language in
which their identity could be properly discussed, some rubric by
which it could be explained - not in terms
of sex, or sexual practices, or bars, or subterranean activity, but in terms
of their future life stories, their potential loves, their eventual chance at some kind
of constructive
happiness.»
Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos,
which is a piece
of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object... Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings
happiness to human life.
Of course, human history has not been confined to this enterprise of doing and making, of using the resources of the world in order to achieve that sort of human happiness which comes from satisfying its inexhaustible want
Of course, human history has not been confined to this enterprise
of doing and making, of using the resources of the world in order to achieve that sort of human happiness which comes from satisfying its inexhaustible want
of doing and making,
of using the resources of the world in order to achieve that sort of human happiness which comes from satisfying its inexhaustible want
of using the resources
of the world in order to achieve that sort of human happiness which comes from satisfying its inexhaustible want
of the world in order to achieve that sort
of human happiness which comes from satisfying its inexhaustible want
of human
happiness which comes from satisfying its inexhaustible wants.
And then I realized that many spiritually - minded persons were actually demonstrating a degree
of stability,
happiness and usefulness
which I should have sought myself.
What is comparatively new is the faith and fervor with
which it is pursued and the manner in
which all else tends to be regarded as subordinate to the
happiness that comes from the satisfaction
of wants.
If Tocqueville called us practical Cartesians, there's a manner in
which we're practical Hobbesians about the folly
of felicity — and this despite our recognition that, in the land
of equal freedom, the pursuit
of happiness is the only game in town.
I believe that man is, by nature, an exile and will never be self - sufficient or complete on this earth; that his chances
of happiness and virtue, here, remain more or less constant through the centuries and, generally speaking, are not much affected by the political and economic conditions in
which he lives; that the balance
of good and ill tends to revert to a norm; that sudden changes
of physical condition are usually ill, and are advocated by the wrong people for the wrong reasons; that the intellectual communists
of today have personal, irrelevant grounds for their antagonism to society,
which they are trying to exploit.
Until a few years ago, thankfulness was simply a product
of happiness; when we were pleased with how things were going (
which we usually were), we thanked God for them, but it wasn't a very intentional process.
Consequently, a theory
of politics requires an ordering principle
of final causation, i.e., a principle
of value,
which alone allows one to describe the relations among choices.6 Perhaps enough has been said, then, to indicate a line
of argument through
which the liberal view
of happiness may be challenged and attention to an alternative provoked.
Consequently it may be questioned whether a theory such as Easton's,
which clearly affirms the preferential character
of happiness, necessarily affirms the private character
of happiness.
On its way to a view
of happiness, the last section outlined a perspective in
which reality as such can not be fully understood independently
of its importance.
Some liberals have held that there are certain private needs, notably biological ones, the fulfillment
of which is essential to
happiness.
Thus, to say that the maximally virtuous person is the maximally happy person is not to deny that this person could have enjoyed greater
happiness if the circumstances
of his or her life had been different, e.g., if some
of the people to
which he or she related had been more virtuous.
After all, one or more individuals may prefer political participation, in
which case human community becomes constitutive
of happiness, until those preferences change.
Moreover, the suffering that can be inflicted through disturbance within the human body indicates the extent to
which general biological health and «material» security constitute
happiness, although the fact that these ends dominate the lives
of most people in the contemporary world indicates how far short
of its possibilities the human race remains.
Thus, because the ultimate objective, the totality to
which my nature is attuned has been made manifest to me, the powers
of my being begin spontaneously to vibrate in accord with a single note
of incredible richness wherein I can distinguish the most discordant tendencies effortlessly resolved: the excitement
of action and the delight
of passivity: the joy
of possessing and the thrill
of reaching out beyond what one possesses; the pride in growing and the
happiness of being lost in what is greater than oneself.
Thus the «incarnational» counter to contemporary Gnosticism and its ideology
of «you are what you say you are» (irrespective, for example,
of biology) will be less an argument than a demonstration: living in concord with the moral truths built into the world and into us,
which lead to beatitude or
happiness.
Within the Islamic framework the individual and the community have defined for them the rights and obligations
which ensure life and
happiness through cooperation and equity in assigning privileges and tasks without encroaching upon the rights
of the individual or the community.