3 Deep Facts About Happiness
It is the holy grail of life. Everybody thinks about it and tries to reach it. And when we reach it, we want to stay there forever.
Hey Deep Learner, this is Salem. And in this post we explore 3 deep facts about happiness.
Number one- We’re Not Sure What It Is.
Happiness is hard to define. Partly because it means many different things to people. Some people define happiness as the feeling you get when you eat ice cream or have sex. Some people see it as sitting down and relaxing. Some people see it as the feeling you get when you’re having fun with people. For some it is all about the material things you get like houses and cars. For others it’s an inside job.
Psychologists distinguish between different kinds of happiness. For example, there a type of positive emotion when you’re in state getting things done. Psychologists call that A state of flow. However this is not necessarily the state that you would experience when you’re exited and passionate. And it’s not the same as pleasure which is what you would feel when you’re eating sugar.
Even Aristotle talked about the difficulty of defining happiness. But he also said that you need to articulate what it is for you, so that you have a target to aim at. If you try to be more clear about what happiness means for you, then you have a better chance of spending you days in that state.
Number two- Happiness Can Be Bad For You
Happiness is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it can have a dark side to it. This especially true because of what we just said, there are many different kinds of happinesses and not all of them are created equal.
An obvious example is Ice Cream and other pleasure. For the longest time I had a problem with this. I kept craving ice cream and cigarettes and other things like that. They felt nice in the moment and I didn’t want to deprive my self of the experience of enjoying these things. But with time I was fatter, less energetic and had more negativity in me. And so I had to make a choice to become a different person. A little more boring than I used to be maybe. But with time being healthy, energetic and positive become more pleasurable and interesting than boring pleasures like smoking.
Before you think it’s just about pleasure. Think about flow. If you try to seek being in this state all the time, always working on the thing that gives you this feeling of flow, you are still addicted and might miss out on life. This is also something that I fell for I tend got so much into physics and working that I neglect my social life and other things, which is also not the best thing. To get the best out of life you can’t be on autopilot, you need balance these things
I’m not telling you to not to get in the zone or not to experience pleasure, but you have to put things in perspective and make sure that your not driving yourself to misery by following what feels like happiness.
One thing to add to this is that, in a state of outward happiness and extroversion you’re more likely to say yes to things. Like “sure why the hell not”.
Number Three- It’s About Other People
There are a lot of people who, if I told them “happiness is about being kind and helping others”, would laugh at you. And It’s not too hard to understand why. It’s easy to say, why the hell should I help people when they won’t help me, I should just take care of my self!!
Well that might make sense, but as I was saying that, just hypothetically, I felt less happy. I want you to repeat that sentence and pause and see how you feel as you are saying it. I can’t imagine that this sentence makes a lot of people happy. It probably makes you feel happy and alone, unlike the sentence “There are really cool people out there that would help a person in need, I want to be one of them, because there are a lot of people that I can help”.
Martin Seligman, The founder of positive psychology, said it this way. Happiness is state when you’re willing to open up and collaborate with people in a win-win way. So you will feel positive, if you think positicely about interacting with other people. Most of what you brain does, and this is scientifically backed is think about other people. So if you view the world as a place of collaboration you will feel happy and people will see your happiness and will want to be your friends. If you look the world as a horrible place where everybody is trying to eat everybody, then you will feel negative and unhappy and people will stay away from you.
So I hope you will chose the positive direction, I know it’s hard, especially for some people to think like that. Selflessness sounds like a lame word to them. But you can’t picture them with a wide smile for some reason.