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The only happiness in this life is to love and be loved by everyone!
What is happiness?
People have asked the question for centuries but only recently has science begun to weigh in on the debate. Nowadays, happiness seems to be readily embraced by the majority of people and appears to be more valued than the pursuit of money, moral goodness or going to heaven. However, before I get into what the science has concluded, let me start by giving some answers to a somewhat easier question: what is not happiness?
Happiness is not: Feeling Good All the Time
Interviewers have often asked whether using cocaine every day actually make people “happy”. If feeling good all the time were our only condition, then the answer would be “yes.” However, recent researches suggest that a moderate mood is healthier than a mood in which a person feels elevated all the time after all, what goes up must come down. Furthermore, when you ask individuals what makes their lives worth living; they are more likely to talk about things, which are more meaningful to them such as their relationships, family, jobs etc. Recent research even suggests that if you focus more on feeling good not all the time, then you might lose the ability to feel satisfied since sometimes our expectations are physically possible for most people.
Happiness is not: Being Rich or Affording Everything You Want
While it’s hard for people who are below the poverty line to be happy, money does not seem to be mean to buy happiness. Let’s take an example that you get 1 million rupees to raise per year. While the raise will make you feel excited but for a short period because once the expectation changes, the raise won’t even matter. Before you know it, you are just as happy as you were before the raise! This holds true for all of the material goods that people spend so much time yearning for. The money will only worth if it is spent on experiences with other people and spent it on some weekend getaways to new and exciting places with your friends or family, then you might get happier.
Happiness is not: A Final Destination
The old adage, “Are we there yet?” is often applied to thoughts of happiness, as if a person works towards happiness and one day “arrives”. It takes a lot of effort to maintain happiness unless you are one of the few lucky people who either won the genetic lottery or are naturally happy. Most predictable techniques for becoming happier, for example, are habits, not one-time events, and most life events that make us happy in the short-term, like getting married or being promoted, fade over time as we adapt to them.
So, What IS Happiness?
The research suggests that happiness is a mixture of how much satisfied a person is with his or her life and how good they feel on daily basis. Both of these are somewhat synonymous that is, our life changes, and our mood fluctuates, but our general happiness is more genetically determined than anything else is. However, with consistent effort, this can be offset. Think of it as you think about weight: if a consistent diet and exercise become a part of our healthy lifestyle then our body will adjust itself accordingly and we will stay healthy.
However, if you eat less than you would like or exercise more, your weight will adjust accordingly. If that new diet or exercise regimen becomes part of your everyday life, then you will stay at this new weight. If you go back to eating and exercising the way you used to, your weight will return to where it started. Therefore, it goes, too, with happiness.
In other words, you have the power to control how you feel and with regular practice, you can form life-long habits for a more satisfying and fulfilling life.
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