What is Happiness?

Happiness

Happiness is a state of the mind. The dictionary definition is "feelings of joy and pleasure mingled together”. A feeling of happiness is more than just an experience of joy or pleasure. It is a state of mind where the individual feels that “life is good”.

This state of mind can be induced by many means – some result in short term happiness while others result in long lasting happiness. One way of inducing long lasting happiness and bliss is meditation. For a busy person, a more practical way to becoming happier is to make steady progress towards meaningful goals.Even though this seems simple, it really is a very powerful technique to attain a state of long lasting happiness. The goals may vary from individual to individual, but for everyone happiness comes from merely making steady progress towards goals that are meaningful to them. The key is that goals have to be meaningful to you. Progress towards goals set by some one else will not bring happiness (unless you too desire the same goals).

There should be a balance in your goals to ensure that the prerequisites of happiness are fulfilled. These prerequisites include good health, sufficient income to meet basic needs, affection, some productive work or activity, defined and achievable goals and good attitude. All the money in the world will not make you happy if you ignore your health or have bad relationships. Also you must try to remove the causes of unhappiness from your life. These causes are - lack of any of the prerequisites for happiness, failure to achieve goals, envy, relationship problems, loneliness and fear of the opinion of others.

Studies have shown that a number of factors contribute to sustained happiness. Some of these are:

Good self esteem
Feeling of control over one’s life
Supportive and warm relationships (marriage/friendship )
Satisfying work
Enjoyable leisure activities
Good attitude
Good Health
Moderation in everything
Impersonal interests

Thus a very effective process of becoming happier is to set goals for improvement in each one of these areas, develop a plan of action, start executing on the plan, and then periodically review the progress towards these goals.

Above is an article I've read. I've been asking myself wat the hack is happiness. I've been reading up about happiness. But does reading up and knowing the definition of happiness and you will be able to find wat real happiness really is?

Ok! I've not been feeling very happy recently maybe thats why I've spent some time to read up wat happiness really is and how can i make myself happy. But after all these reading up I still can't find the happiness that I'm ultimately looking for. Worst still. I can't even pin point to exactly wat i'm unhappy about.

I've a job, stable income, a home i can come back to, frens to hang out with. I've all the basic stuff. Does these makes me happy? NOPE! And it's a big NO NO. Why? I guess it's easy. I wish to do better in my job, get better increment & more bonuses, a more understanding and warmer home, more heart warming and true frens!

See! All are expectations. I've come to realise that expectation is the root to happiness. You can have all kinds of expectation. There are 2 kinds of expectation you can have to make you happy. No. 1 : Achieve all your expectations and you will feel happy. No. 2 : Lower your expectation and make do with wat you have and be happy with wat you have coz there might be pple who are worse off than yourself.

I find this quote from Bette Davis very true. Here goes:

You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.