My Little Happiness
Every single human being is different from each others. Their personality, likes and dislikes differ. However, despite these differences, we all crave the same thing: Happiness. We do everything to be happier, we make our decisions based on this. This is why we will talk about happiness in this short article.
In order to answer the question “How can we become happier individuals?”, first we need to clarify what we mean by happiness.
Most of us define happiness as a destination point. We believe that a good income, a beautiful house, a brand new car or a good marriage will make us happy for good. This is our first mistake about happiness. Happiness is not a destination point, on the contrary, it is the process (journey) itself. It consists of our positive emotions, life satisfaction, experiences and attitudes throughout our life span.
Our tendency to view happiness as a destination comes from the belief that certain situations and circumstances will make us happy. If I have such an income, happiness will come with it. If I can buy this house, I will be a happy person from now on. It seems like I will have a very happy life if I find the partner I am looking for. However, research shows otherwise. Because, we humans adapt to all kinds of situations that change in life. Whether bad events happen to us or very good things happen to us, we get used to all of these over time.
Starting from this, we need to define happiness through the process. According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, happiness "is the state of joy, satisfaction and well-being that we experience together with the feeling that our lives are meaningful, good and valuable ". This definition may seem a little complicated at first. But in essence, it talks about two separate components of happiness: Positive emotions and life satisfaction. Positive emotions are emotions such as joy, satisfaction, love, interest, and affection. However, these alone are not enough to be happy. Although a person can feel all these emotions, they may not be completely happy.
This, brings us to the second component, life satisfaction. It is about how satisfied we are with the course of our lives, the goals we set for ourselves, and how much we achieve these goals. This definition does not mean that happy people do not experience negative emotions. Negative emotions are also emotions and are part of life and human nature. However, there must be a balance between positive and negative emotions.
For a detailed definition of happiness, you can watch Martin Seligman’s short speech.
To learn more about positive psychology you can watch Martin Seligman’s Ted talk.
Author
Deniz Akdeniz (Psychologist)
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