Difference between revisions of "Happiness"
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'''Happiness''' is the quality or [[state]] of being happy, of wellbeing without [[Stress|distress]]. Exact definitions of happiness vary; for example, some contend that it is possible to ''think'' you are happy, but not in fact be happy. Happiness is essential to living a good life, and being fulfilled or [[complete]]. | '''Happiness''' is the quality or [[state]] of being happy, of wellbeing without [[Stress|distress]]. Exact definitions of happiness vary; for example, some contend that it is possible to ''think'' you are happy, but not in fact be happy. Happiness is essential to living a good life, and being fulfilled or [[complete]]. | ||
Revision as of 12:37, April 16, 2024
Happiness is the quality or state of being happy, of wellbeing without distress. Exact definitions of happiness vary; for example, some contend that it is possible to think you are happy, but not in fact be happy. Happiness is essential to living a good life, and being fulfilled or complete.
- Sun Myung Moon said, "God gives happiness to those who can give it to others. In spite of their sincerity, religious people so far have wanted to receive it only for themselves, thus not giving it to others." [1]
In the United States, the right of all citizens to "the pursuit of happiness" is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
In Bhutan, royal government makes a statement of Gross National Happiness, which is important to both our King and our Bhutanese people.
Contents
Happiness and health
See also: Happiness and health and Emotional intelligence and Self-regulation and Emotion
According to medical science, having an excessive amount of unhappiness in one's overall emotional life can have adverse effects on and individual.[2] See also: Happiness and health
Emotional intelligence (EI) "refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions."[3]
The five components of emotional intelligence are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.[4]
People with emotional intelligence can prevent an excessive amount/duration of negative emotional states such as unhappiness.
While it is not wise to have happiness/pleasure as an end goal (See: Hedonism and Paradox of Hedonism), for the sake of one's health, one should exercise emotional intelligence.
Concerning happiness, according to Torrence Memorial hospital:
| “ | Healthy Facts About Happiness
- Happiness improves your cardiac health. - Happy people are more likely to eat healthily and be more physically active. - Happiness strengthens your immune system. - Happy people are more productive and likely to succeed. - Being happy helps reduce your stress levels. - Happy people have fewer aches and pains. - Happiness helps combat disease and disability. - Happiness lengthens our lives.[5] |
” |
Articles on happiness and health
- How Happiness Impacts Health, Northwestern Medicine
- Happiness & health, Harvard School of Public Health
Friendship and growing loneliness, social isolation and unhappiness in the United States
See also: Friendship and Loneliness
David B. Brooks in his 2023 book entitled How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen wrote about loneliness:
| “ | I’ve been writing as if we live in a healthy cultural environment, in a society in which people are enmeshed in thick communities and webs of friendship, trust, and belonging. We don’t live in such a society. We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust. We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating.
The percentage of Americans who said they have no close friends quadrupled between 1990 and 2020. In one survey, 54 percent of Americans reported that no one knows them well. The number of American adults without a romantic partner increased by a third. More to the point, 36 percent of Americans reported that they felt lonely frequently or almost all of the time, including 61 percent of young adults and 51 percent of young mothers. People were spending much more time alone. In 2013, Americans spent an average of six and a half hours per week with friends. By 2019, they were spending only four hours per week with friends, a 38 percent drop. By 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic was easing, they were spending only two hours and forty-five minutes per week with friends, a 58 percent decline. The General Social Survey asks Americans to rate their happiness levels. Between 1990 and 2018, the share of Americans who put themselves in the lowest happiness category increased by more than 50 percent... The effects of this are ruinous and self-reinforcing. Social disconnection warps the mind. When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended. They become afraid of the very thing they need most, which is intimate contact with other humans. They are buffeted by waves of self-loathing and self-doubt. After all, it feels shameful to realize that you are apparently unworthy of other people’s attention. Many people harden into their solitude. They create self-delusional worlds. “Loneliness obfuscates,” the interdisciplinary scientist Giovanni Frazzetto writes in his book Together, Closer. “It becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world. It makes us more vulnerable to rejection, and it heightens our general level of vigilance and insecurity in social situations.” We see ourselves as others see us, and when we feel invisible, well, we have a tendency to fall to pieces... Sadness, lack of recognition, and loneliness turn into bitterness. When people believe that their identity is unrecognized, it feels like injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out, seek ways to humiliate those who they feel have humiliated them. Loneliness thus leads to meanness. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. The data I just cited about social isolation and sadness is, no surprise, accompanied by other sorts of data about rising hostility and callousness. In 2021, hate-crime reports surged to their highest levels in twelve years. In 2000, roughly two-thirds of Americans gave to charity; by 2021, fewer than half did. One restaurant owner recently told me that he has to ban somebody from his place for rude behavior almost every week these days. That didn’t use to happen. A friend of mine who is a nurse says her number one problem is retaining staff. Her nurses want to quit because the patients have become so abusive, even violent. As the columnist Peggy Noonan put it, “People are proud of their bitterness now.” The social breakdown manifests as a crisis of distrust. Two generations ago, roughly 60 percent of Americans said that “most people can be trusted.” By 2014, according the General Social Survey, only 30.3 percent did, and only 19 percent of millennials. High-trust societies have what Francis Fukuyama calls “spontaneous sociability,” meaning that people are quick to get together and work together. Low-trust societies do not have this. Low-trust societies fall apart. Distrust sows distrust. It creates a feeling that the only person you can count on is yourself. Distrustful people assume that others are out to get them, they exaggerate threats, they fall for conspiracy theories that explain the danger they feel.[7] |
” |
Happiness and labor productivity
See also: Labor productivity
According to the U.S. Labor Bureau of Statistics, labor productivity is a "measure of economic performance that compares the amount of output with the amount of labor used to produce that output."[8] The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states concerning labor productivity: "Labour productivity is a key precondition for high growth of output, employment and wages and central to long-term growth in living standards."[9]
Fast Company's article Research shows happiness is the new performance indicator. This is how managers can support it indicates: "The Saïd Business School study Does Happiness Improve Worker Productivity? found that happiness can have a significant impact on productivity. Results showed that happier workers were 12% more productive than their unhappy counterparts."[10]
The symbiotic relationship between creativity and happiness
See also: Creativity
There is a symbiotic relationship between creativity and happiness (In other words, being happier make you more creative. In addition, being more creative makes one happier.).[11][12][13][14][15]
World Happiness Index map of 2023
According to the World Happiness Index website:
| “ | World Happiness Report 2023 use data from the Gallup World Poll surveys from 2020 to 2022. They are based on answers to the main life evaluation question asked in the poll. This is called the Cantril ladder: it asks respondents to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale. The rankings are from nationally representative samples for the years 2020-2022. The number of people and countries surveyed varies year to year, but by and large more than 100,000 people in 130 countries participate in the Gallup World Poll each year. They are based entirely on the survey scores, using the Gallup weights to make the estimates representative. The sub-bars in the alternate version of Figure 2.1 show the estimated extent to which each of the six factors (levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption) is estimated to contribute to making life evaluations higher in each country than in Dystopia. Dystopia is a hypothetical country with values equal to the world’s lowest national averages for each of the six factors (see FAQs: What is Dystopia?). The sub-bars have no impact on the total score reported for each country but are just a way of explaining the implications of the model estimated in Table 2.1. People often ask why some countries rank higher than others—the sub-bars (including the residuals, which show what is not explained) attempt to answer that question.[16] | ” |
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The parodox of hedonism
See also: Hedonism
Hedonism is a philosophy which emphasizes the pursuit of personal pleasure above all other considerations, or as the sole consideration in life.
The paradox of hedonism is that focusing on pleasure seeking often has counterproductive results. For example, gluttony and obesity is a causal factor for many illnesses.
According to the Journal of Public Economics, "The “Hedonistic Paradox” states that homo economicus, or someone who seeks happiness for him- or herself, will not find it, but the person who helps others will.[19]
Unfortunately for hedonists, focusing on pleasure-seeking does not deliver the optimal pleasure and happiness in the long run or even in the short run and instead just delivers emptiness.[20]
See also
References
- ↑ Domains of Emotional Intelligence, MBA Knowledge Base
- ↑
- How Happiness Impacts Health, Northwestern Medicine
- Happiness & health, Harvard School of Public Health
- The Importance of Happiness
- ↑ Emotional intelligence
- ↑ Domains of Emotional Intelligence, MBA Knowledge Base
- ↑ The Importance of Happiness
- ↑ Multiple references:
- Gammon, Katherine (March 2, 2012). "Why loneliness can be deadly". Live Science website.
- Booth, Robert (October 12, 2014). "Number of severely lonely men over 50 set to rise to 1m in 15 years", The Guardian.
- ↑ Brooks, David. How to Know a Person (p. 97-101). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Productivity 101, U.S. Labor Bureau of Statistics
- ↑ How does Russia compare?, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
- ↑ Research shows happiness is the new performance indicator. This is how managers can support it
- ↑ The Symbiotic Relationship: Creativity and Happiness
- ↑ The Unexpected Link Between Creativity and Happiness, Ideascale website
- ↑ Does Happiness Affect Your Creativity?
- ↑ Being Creative Makes You Happier: The Positive Effect of Creativity on Subjective Well-Being, Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul; 18(14): 7244. Published online 2021 Jul 6. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18147244
- ↑ Studies Show Why Creativity and Happiness are Linked
- ↑ World Happiness Report 2023
- ↑ A color coded map of the world levels of happiness as measured by the World Happiness Index (2023)
- ↑ World Happiness Report 2023
- ↑ [The Hedonistic Paradox: Is Homo Economicus Happier?], Journal of Public Economics
- ↑ Clear Voices 2014 - Alister McGrath - C. S. Lewis’s Vision of the Christianity
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