Happiness. What A Pretty Name You Have!

Happiness. What a great and desired word. Everybody talks about her. We seek her, desire her, admire her, mourn her loss, and even sell her to us. But, on what do we base ourselves to say that we are happy?

Since ancient times, human beings tend to want to define concepts and be able to make them universal. In this attempt, differences of opinion arise and even more so if it is something intangible and, apparently, subjective.

It has even been affirmed that true happiness resides in previous suffering and this is the final reward for the sacrifice, dedication and unconditional work that we show in life.

Some ways of understanding happiness

These are some of the ways of understanding happiness. Very different and from different areas.

1. Materialism

For materialism, happiness is achieved through the possession of material goods, as well as achieving a good social image and success, which are the result of having them.

Much of this trend is influenced by advertising. They believe us (or, rather, they make us believe) that the products and services they offer are the best and that getting them is the option we have if we want to be better people.

Although it must be borne in mind that materialism is not the same as consumerism. According to the psychologist Miriam Tatzel, a person can be a “relaxed materialist”, who spends and consumes in a measured way or ends up taking the excessive accumulation of goods as a measure of happiness or fulfillment to the extreme.

2. Oriental philosophy

According to Eastern philosophy, happiness is a state of internal harmony that produces a well-being that is not punctual, but is stable and lasting. Nothing to do with possessions or social recognition.

Recently, Matthieu Ricard was dubbed the happiest man in the world. He left behind a life of success, recognition, and money to take a journey toward himself embracing Buddhism and following its precepts.

Apparently, his life of retreat and contemplation makes Matthieu able to focus, through the practice of meditation, in an intense way on positive thoughts and has an incredible ability to suppress anger, irritability or stress.

3. Positive psychology

Consider that what leads us towards an increase in happiness is to focus on positive emotions and the implementation of creative activities in which you contribute something good to yourself or others.

At this point you have to be careful. We cannot always carry it out. Unfortunately, there are situations in our life in which feeling bad or defeated is completely normal and logical.

In fact, when we feel with the obligation to be, feel, behave in a totally incongruous way with our personality, mood or situation , feelings of failure, guilt, demoralization and even hatred towards ourselves can arise.

4. Decision-making capacity

We can also understand happiness as the ability to make our own decisions. Thus, neither the environment nor genetics really determine our happiness, but feeling with the ability to direct the helm and that said journey leads us to what we really want, gives you a feeling of happiness.

Of course, sometimes it is not in our power and it is not always possible to do it as we would like. Therefore, we must find the middle ground between accepting that some things in life happen outside of our influence and taking responsibility for learning from experience. It makes us more independent, more self-confident, and with greater perceived control.

There are numerous ways of understanding happiness, the list is almost endless. What is clear that this feeling leads us to motivate ourselves more to continue on that path, to conquer new goals, to have a positive approach to our environment, to recover memories that provoke it and, ultimately, to fight against adversity with a smile. And for you, what is happiness?