Defining What Happiness Is All About
By Vaishnavi S
What is happiness?
There is no definitive meaning to happiness. It means different things to different people. Few are contended with small moments of happiness and few feel that happiness is the life’s path. Everybody wants to be happy but ironically, most of them don’t know what makes them happy. Happiness is more like a mental or emotional state of mind that tells you that ‘you feel good, so you are happy’. This is a vague and uncertain concept. People tend to associate happiness with the ‘comfortable life’. When a man has a successful career, an enviable house, a beautiful wife, lovely kids and enough money he is considered to be a happy man by others. But, in reality, he might not be a happy soul because; he finds happiness in being wanderlust.
Happiness is defined in the Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary as ‘a state of well-being and contentment‘ and also as ‘a pleasurable or satisfying experience’. The former definition talks about true happiness and the later, about the petty moments of joy. Even an unhappy person can experience the latter. True Happiness, can be defined as ‘a state of mind, in which you are not blindly satisfied by irrational wishes, you feel joy without any guilt’.
In day to day life, happiness is considered as an emotion or more like a reaction to your mood. Sometime when you feel elated, you assume you are happy irrespective of the state of mind or situation you are in. This is definitely happiness but, not true happiness. These are joyous moments that make you realize that, it feels good to be happy. These joyous moments can change the way you look at life and lead you towards true happiness.
All emotions arise out of a cause. Like anger, hate, jealousy, happiness is also an emotion. The cause for happiness is rationale contentment. So, this means only a rational human being is capable of happiness. The goals must be rational, value must be rational and actions must also be rational without conflict of interest or guilt. Happiness as a skill could be developed when one understands the concept of ‘contentment’.
Is happiness important in life?
Of course, happiness is very important is life. The reasons are endless. To state a few, it helps you stay healthy, think clearly, increases longevity, gives an optimistic view to life, lets you love and be loved and even makes you less violent etc.
Happy people tend to take care of their health in a better way than those who are not. Happiness will increase your consciousness and responsibilities. So when you are truly happy, you will be able to think clearly and this is one of the good reasons why happy people try their best to avoid bad habits. They eat healthy food, exercise moderately and most of all are less stressed. The more contentment you finds in life, the lesser is your stress level. It is reported that 65% of heart disease oriented death around the world is due to stress. More often than not, stress is takes a toll only when our thoughts and actions are not clear.
When you are happy you feel good about yourself. The biggest obstacle to happiness is that, you tend to undervalue what you are capable of and over value what you are not. So, you don’t feel good about yourself and this creates low esteem and inferiority complex that adds to the misery. These feelings make you think and believe that people don’t have a good opinion about you. Well, though this is not entirely true, this is justifiable. When you don’t believe in yourself; why would others? As a matter of fact, the more you trust this, the more it becomes a reality. Only when you feel good about yourselves you can make people think well about you. So yes, happiness is very important for self esteem.
When you are happy, you look at life from an optimistic view. Your mind sees negative things as temporary obstacles and motivates you to break them. This emotion helps you solve problems logically and quickly. Your mind is open to analyze the situation and help you take a clear decision. Studies show that people who are happy are able to concentrate better and learn new thinks and develop new skills as their mind is devoid of unnecessary thoughts.
Everybody wants to be the center of attraction and it sure does make your day when someone gets attracted to you. Attraction need not be merely physical. Happiness is one of the attraction factors. Generally, human beings like to be associated with happy people. When you are happy, people around you tend to get the vibe.
‘Smile, who knows? Someone might fall in love with it’. Studies show that when you are happy you tend to fall in love and also attract someone to fall in love with you. Happy people have more friends and get romantically involved or get married. When you seem happy, you are likely to be admired, respected and even envied sometimes. In a way, happiness is a blessing indeed.
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