• Tweet
• Share
• Email

• Tweet
• Share
• Email

Happiness, the end result

Since the ancient Greeks philosophers to the latest lifestyle designers, people have always seek the path to happiness.  But what exactly is happiness?  Can we define it?  What can we do to achieve it?  At Funky Success we believe the true happiness is the result of living your ideal lifestyle and contributing to the world in any shape or from to make it a better place.

Our aim is to try to have a better understanding of happiness through different authors and ideas. Will it be through a scientific, religious, philosophic or economic approach.  It is however important to keep in mind that because of its subjectivity happiness is one of the most difficult notion to define and some of the explanations may seem contradictory.  I think,  it is ultimately our own responsibility to find happiness.

Some of the most interesting and fresh ideas about happiness include:

1. The myth of money and happiness
2. Positive psychology
3. Synthetic happiness
4. The importance of the Flow
5. The importance of being the boss
6. The secret power of time
7. Smile & be happy

Other interesting scientific, religious, philosophic and economic elements about happiness include:

1. Happiness, a definition
2. Happiness and evolution
3. Happiness and genes
4. Happiness in social networks
5. Happiness and aging
6. Happiness and parenting
7. Happiness and experiences
8. Happiness and Religion
9. Happiness and Buddhism
10. Happiness and Catholicism
11. Happiness and Confucianism
12. Happiness and Islam
13. Happiness and Aristotle
14. Happiness and Economics

I’ve also included a couple of happiness mind-maps at the end of the page to help you better visualise all this happiness information.

The myth of money and happiness

First let’s get clear about the relation of money and happiness.  Doesn’t money bring you happiness or does it?  The real answer is that it actually does, but only to a certain point.  Basically, if you are starving and haven’t eaten in a while, being able to afford something to eat will make you happier, in fact you might become the happiest person on the planet at the moment.  Same thing goes if you are extremely tired and lived on the street, having the means to spend a comfortable night in a hotel will be the best thing that ever happens to you.   Research has proven many times over that an increased of income but only of to a maximum level of $10, 000, will increase your overall level of happiness.  This level is basically the minimum required to live by having enough to eat, clothing and roof on your head.  (This in fact in what my uncle constantly repeated what is needed for a man).   Those are also what Maslow would define as the first elements of his human need pyramid. Therefore I believe, for all those people that leave above those levels, should consider helping the other ones, not only to make them more happy but  make themselves more happy as well.

So if money can only bring happiness up to a certain level, why does almost everyone I ask, want to become rich.  Not only rich, but in fact fitly rich.  They want to be able to buy virtually anything.  I think there is nothing wrong with money, it’s neither good nor bad, and it’s in fact just another tool.  If you are building a house, you can talk about a specific tool, let’s say the hammer, but it definitely shouldn’t be your main focus.  First, you need to understand that in almost any complex project, you will need more then one tool, not to mention that you will require the greatest of all tools, the human element.  The other thing, shouldn’t your main focus be on what you want to achieve with those tools.  It is interesting to observe that for smart entrepreneurs, being short of money, comes to their advantage, as they simply need to find other ways to achieve their goals.  The results are what is important.  Some tools are better then other, but at the end they are only tools.  On the other side of the coin, you may have big companies throwing money (and more often then not only money) on a specific issues, without really resolving that problem, but only to make it worse.  So if it’s not about the money, what makes you happy then?

Positive psychology

If the classic science of psychology studies human behaviours based on the one that are already sick, positive psychology has an opposite approach.  Indeed not long ago, Selligman started studying successful and happy people instead with those with illness.  Which for me make perfect sense?  If your goal is to achieve success isn’t it better to look at healthy and successful people instead of the troubled ones.  This is what is called positive psychology.

One of the main ingredients is the power of your contribution.  Real success is about making a difference.  It doesn’t have to be saving the planet, you only need to make a small impact in someone else’s life and your actions need to be genuine.

Synthetic happiness

When Dan Gilbert presented two photographs and asked the audience who is the happiest a month after the actual event,  between a guy that won the lottery and someone that had a terrible car accident and is unable to walk?  The answer to almost everyone was pretty straightforward.  It must be the millionaire.  The real answer however, research had proven, it is neither one nor the other as they are actually both on the same level of happiness.  Our amazing body and mind is so powerful, that it can adapt to anything and make sense of a new reality.  Dan Gilbert presents a concept called synthetic happiness.  Basically what it means is what you might think and experience using the frontal lob of the brain, is not similar to the experience in reality; it is exactly the same thing.  There is no difference.  The only thing is what you are able to visualise, the quality of your thoughts.  Indeed you thoughts, the ways you perceive things can never be taken from you, even in extreme conditions such a concentration camp as Victor Frank has proven.

NOTE:  thinking and visualizing is part of the Funky Success process, and more information is available in that chapter.

The importance of the Flow

The flow is M. Csiksentmihaly answer to happiness.  One of his examples is when an artist is fully focusing on composing a piece he enters a state of ecstasy where nothing outside matters.  These are moments where you are completely in the now, you are completely focused and everything is doable for you as you become the only and only master.  I remember my brother once saying, who is himself a jazz musician, that you automatically now when a composer plays by vocation.  He kept emphasizing how important it is for creation.

Having somehow understood the flow, I always try to achieve it whenever I’m working.  However I noticed that it is not automatic, and some element needs to be in place.  One of them is to remove all possible distractions.  Will that be the phone, the music and especially the internet.  As beautiful and interesting surfing can be, it is crucial to turn it off to be able to fully focus.  If you are trying to multitask, don’t.   In this process of creation it should be only you and your instrument, only you and the word document….No interference.   It is not surprising then to learn that many of the greatest classic composers worked in the silence of the  night, when everyone was sleeping.

Perhaps a quick word about hours, waking up and going to sleep.  There is an expression that says the world belongs to those that wake up in the morning.  Maybe, but YOUR world belongs to you and only to you, therefore you are the master of your time, and nobody should dictate how to organize it.  You should wake up and go to sleep whenever suits you best.  For some , they will be more productive in the morning, for others it will be at night.

Another useful tip, that helps me achieving the flow, is to have a special dedicated place where you can submerge yourself in the process of creation.  Personally, I have a special room where I work.  This room have become my sanctuary, with only positive connotations.  In order to maintain this Zen-like place I need to carefully select the people that can enter, the objects that are in places, the energy level…and make it in such a way that it is stimulating and inviting to work, especially to begin your work.  What is really important is to create an environment for you to be motivated to start your work, but once in it you should be directed by the flow.

Reality is only an illusion.  Albeit a very persistent one – Einstein

I strongly believe that being in this alternate reality , in this ecstasy state, will help you to put yourself in the most productive and creative state.  Therefore it will help you create the best work in that time period (not the time matters in the flow).

The importance of being the boss

Put your future in good hands, you own

There is only way to live, and this is by your own standards.  If you will not take responsibility to create the life of your dreams, somebody else will and I can guarantee it won’t be the life you imagined.  You will be most likely stock in a busy transportation for a couple hours, and then spend almost the whole day doing tasks that you are told, and that bring small value to your life, then to finally come home and be too tired to spend good time with family and close ones.  Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against work, or the system, I just want to show you that there is another way, there is always another path to follow.  However in order to become unconventional and obtain funky success, you need to become the boss.  Nobody else will do it for, as they (the system, your employer, your colleagues…) are satisfied just that way it is now, the way you perfectly fit in the puzzle and how you are created to realize their goals.   When I say the boss, you should only be the boss of yourself, meaning the boss of your thoughts, visions, dreamlines and actions.  As for your muses and business, the ideal position is neither be the employee nor the employer , but the owner who may look at the system that he created, can influence it but is not involved on a daily basis.

There are too many people that always blame someone or a situation.  That’s ok if that’s what they choose, but it more often then not brings that feeling of being hopeless, because you are being controlled instead of controlling.  However, if you want to go forward, the best attitude to take is to you say to oneself: “I’m the boss.  I’m fully responsible for the situation I’m in.  What can I do to change it? ”.  This sort of mentality will move you forward, as you will always look for new solutions and you will become happier as you will be in control of your life.  There is in fact no greater feeling, then to convince yourself that you are the boss of any situation.  Of course, this approach is a bit more challenging when you are stuck in really difficult situation, but always remember that “with greater power comes great responsibility”.  You will be tested and you might fail, but this is the whole beauty, whatever outcome you will produce, you will gain in experiences.  You will then know that in this specific situation, with those variables, applying this action will create this result.  The more you will practice being the boss of a situation and take direct action, the more experience you will gain and the more likely the results will be the way you planed.  This will involve going outside your comfort box and might first appear as associated with a bad emotion, but the more you will do it, the more it will become associated with excitement and funky success.

The secret power of time

In this section I want to show you how Philip Zimbardo explains us that there is an optimal way to use our past, present and future thoughts to increase our happiness.  He claims that there have been a dilemma since the Adam’s apple temptation to adapt the present focus and be impulsive or be future focus with a more resisting and reflective approach.  Now or later, that is the question?

The Mashmalow experiment is a now a famous experiment done on 4 years old children. It consisted of giving the kid a Mashmalow and giving him/her the choice between having it now or waiting until they get back so they can have another one. The results showed that 2/3 of the participants decided not to wait and have the first treat, and only the remaining third decided to resist temptation and wait for the second one.
Further conducted studies explained the difference with the minority kids that resisted. It revealed that on average those kids were better students (scored 250 points higher on their SAT’s), got less in trouble and more importantly they were future focus instead of present focus.

Philip Zimbardo defines Time Perspective as “the study of how individuals divide the flow of human experience into different time frames or time zones- automatically and non-consciously”. Those time frames vary between different cultures, social classes, nations and people and might become problematic when some are underused and other overused.

Every decision is on the idea of taking an action. For some the decision time frame will be based on the present with what is going now and only the immediate situation and stimulation will be relevant. For others, their decision will be based on past memories. But finally for some the time zone will be in the future, by anticipating consequences and doing a benefit analysis.
This is the time paradox,  that you are making constant time decision that you are unaware of.

Philip claims that their are 6 time perspective factors

• Past time perspective where you focus on the positives
• Past time perspective where you focus on the negatives
• Present time perspective where you focus on the positives – hedonism
• Present time perspective where you focus on the negatives – fatalism
• Future time perspective where your focus on life goals
• Future time perspective where your focus on the transcendental and life after death

The optimal temporal mix is about having the ability to fluidly change from one time perspective to an other depending on the given situations.
He also gives the optimal temporal mix profile:

• Past-Positive – High – gives you roots to connect to your identity & Family and be grounded
• Future – Moderate High – give you the vision and wings to get to a new destination
• Present Hedonism – Moderate – gives you the energy to explore people, places and self

The people always in the future and only focusing on one aim will eventually sacrifice things such as their most valuable asset, time, will it be with Family, friends.  On the other hand, others will only live for work, achievement and control. On the other extreme they might live all their life sleeping or enjoying personal indulgences.

Philip Zimbardo conclude s that happiness will come in being able to balance time perspective.  Yes you need to focus on the future but you also need to live and enjoy the present.  A proper use of time perspective will not only help in your personal success but may also be applied to different world problems including diminishing drop out rate and addictions, enhancing the physical and psychology health of teens and improving family life.
This time perspective may be a really simple notion but the consequences can be really profound.

Smile & be happy

Do your smile because you are happy, or you are happy because smile?  Actually, what is really intriguing, is that both of the cases are true.  Meaning that, you are likely to smile when you are happy, even tough it’s not always the case, but you can also force yourself to become happier just by moving your face muscle.  There are indeed many different muscles that need to work together in order to produce a real smile.  This is taken from a NLP concept (please read the NLP chapter for more) that says that you need to change your state you need to change you physiology.  If you are sad, and you face look down and shoulders drop, you can change your emotions just by sitting straight and put your face up.  The more I read about it, the more I believe in a hollisictic approach to medicine and healing.  Everything is related.  Your body has an impact on your thoughts and emotions, just as what you might think will affect how you might act.

Happiness, a definition

Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy.  A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.

While direct measurement of happiness presents challenges, tools such as The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire have been developed by researchers. Positive psychology researchers use theoretical models that include describing happiness as consisting of positive emotions and positive activities, or that describe three kinds of happiness: pleasure, engagement, and meaning.

Research has identified a number of attributes that correlate with happiness: relationships and social interaction, extraversion, marital status, employment, health, democratic freedom, optimism, endorphins released through physical exercise and eating chocolate, religious involvement, income and proximity to other happy people.

Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness in this older sense was used to translate the Greek Eudaimonia, and is still used in virtue ethics.

Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy.

Happiness and evolution

The evolutionary perspective offers an alternative approach to understand what happiness or quality of life is about. Briefly, the questions to be answered are: What features are included in the brain that allows humans to distinguish between positive and negative states of mind, and how do these features improve humans’ ability to survive and reproduce? Answering these questions points towards an understanding of what happiness is about and how to best exploit the capacities of the brain with which humans are endowed. The perspective is presented in detail by the evolutionary biologist Bjørn Grinde in his book Darwinian Happiness, as well as in a more formal way.

Happiness and genes

Some researchers, such as David T. Lykken, have found that about 50% of one’s happiness depends on one’s genes, based on studying identical twins, whose happiness is 50% correlated even when growing up in different houses. About 10% to 15% is a result of various measurable life circumstances variables, such as socioeconomic status, marital status, health, income, sex and others. The remaining 40% is a combination of unknown factors and the results of actions that individuals deliberately engage in to become happier. These actions may vary between persons; extroverts, for example, may benefit from placing themselves in situations involving large amounts of human interaction. Also, exercise has been shown to increase one’s level of momentary subjective well-being significantly.

Michael Argyle developed the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire as a broad measure of psychological well-being. This has been criticized as an aggregate of self-esteem, sense of purpose, social interest and kindness, sense of humour and aesthetic appreciation.

Happiness in social networks

Human relationships are consistently found to be the most important correlation with human happiness.

A widely-publicized study from 2008 in the British Medical Journal reported that happiness in social networks may spread from person to person.  Researchers followed nearly 5000 individuals for 20 years in the long-standing Framingham Heart Study and found clusters of happiness and unhappiness that spread up to 3 degrees of separation on average. Happiness tended to spread through close relationships like friends, siblings, spouses, and next-door neighbours and the researchers reported that happiness spread more consistently than unhappiness through the network. Moreover, the structure of the social network appeared to have an impact on happiness, as people who were very central (with many friends and friends of friends) were significantly more likely to be happy than those on the periphery of the network. Overall, the results suggest that happiness might spread through a population like a virus.

Though it may be impossible to achieve any comprehensive measure of happiness objectively, some physiological correlates to happiness can be measured through a variety of techniques. Stefan Klein, in his book The Science of Happiness, links the dynamics of neurobiological systems (i.e., dopaminergic, opiate) to the concepts and findings of positive psychology and social psychology.

Happiness and aging

Research in the US has found that older Americans are generally happier than younger adults. The effect does not appear to be generational, because longitudinal research found that happiness increased over time for the older people who were studied. While older individuals reported more health problems, they reported fewer problems overall. Young adults reported more anger, anxiety, depression, financial problems, troubled relationships and career stress

Happiness and parenting

Studies are contradictory as to whether parents are more likely to report being happier than non-parents. One study found having up to three children increased happiness among married couples, but not among other groups with children

Happiness and experiences

One American study found that people were happier after spending money on experiences, rather than physical things.

Happiness is also correlated with the ability to “rationalize or explain” social and economic inequalities.

Envy is believed to produce unhappiness.

Happiness and Religion

There is now extensive research suggesting that religious people are happier and less stressed. It is not clear, however, whether this is because of the social contact and support that result from religious activities, the greater likelihood of behaviours related to good health (such as less substance abuse), indirect forms of psychological and social activity such as optimism and volunteering, psychological factors such as “reason for being,” learned coping strategies that enhance one’s ability to deal with stress, or some combination of these and/or other factors.

Surveys by Gallup, the National Opinion Research Centre and the Pew Organization conclude that spiritually committed people are twice as likely to report being “very happy” than the least religiously committed people. An analysis of over 200 social studies contends that “high religiousness predicts a lower risk of depression and drug abuse and fewer suicide attempts, and more reports of satisfaction with sex life and a sense of well-being,” and a review of 498 studies published in peer-reviewed journals concluded that a large majority of them showed a positive correlation between religious commitment and higher levels of perceived well-being and self-esteem and lower levels of hypertension, depression, and clinical delinquency.  A meta-analysis of 34 recent studies published between 1990 and 2001 found that religiosity has a salutary relationship with psychological adjustment, being related to less psychological distress, more life satisfaction, and better self-actualization. Finally, a recent systematic review of 850 research papers on the topic concluded that “the majority of well-conducted studies found that higher levels of religious involvement are positively associated with indicators of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, happiness, positive affect, and higher morale) and with less depression, suicidal thoughts and behaviour, drug/alcohol use/abuse.”

Happiness and Buddhism

Happiness forms a central theme of Buddhist teachings. For ultimate freedom from suffering, the Noble Eightfold Path leads its practitioner to Nirvana, a state of everlasting peace. Ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming craving in all forms. More mundane forms of happiness, such as acquiring wealth and maintaining good friendships, are also recognized as worthy goals for lay people (see sukha). Buddhism also encourages the generation of loving kindness and compassion, the desire for the happiness and welfare of all beings. According to the Buddha, “Mind is the forerunner of states of existence. Mind is chief, and (those states) are caused by the mind. If one speaks and acts with a pure mind, surely happiness will follow like one’s own shadow!” In Buddhism, the third of the Four Noble Truths states “to eliminate suffering, eliminate craving,” thus establishing happiness as beyond material and emotional possession and attainable only through an attentive practice leading to extinguishing of craving and aversion.  In SGI Buddhism happiness is obtained by getting yourself aligned with the universe by chanting Nam-myho-renge-kyo to overcome your sufferings and that of others. It teaches that one must never look outside of oneself for happiness.

Happiness and Catholicism

In Catholicism, the ultimate end of human existence consists in felicity (Latin equivalent to the Greek eudaimonia), or “blessed happiness”, described by the thirteenth-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas as a Beatific Vision of God’s essence in the next life.  According to Augustine’s Confessions, he lived much of his life without God. He sinned much and recognized his sinfulness. As a youth, he sinned for its own sake, and later, in the pursuit of a perceived good. When he lost a dear friend to death, it troubled him greatly, and he turned to God for answers. He turned to God to find true happiness and was converted to Christianity. He found that true happiness can only come from a relationship with God and appreciating God’s creation for His sake, not its own.

Happiness and Confucianism

The Chinese Confucian thinker Mencius, who 2300 years ago sought to give advice to the ruthless political leaders of the warring states period, was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the “lesser self” (the physiological self) and the “greater self” (the moral self) and that getting the priorities right between these two would lead to sagehood. He argued that if we did not feel satisfaction or pleasure in nourishing one’s “vital force” with “righteous deeds”, that force would shrivel up (Mencius,6A:15 2A:2). More specifically, he mentions the experience of intoxicating joy if one celebrates the practice of the great virtues, especially through music.

Happiness and Islam

Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) the Muslim Sufi thinker wrote the Alchemy of Happiness, a manual of spiritual instruction throughout the Muslim world and widely practiced even now.
About one hundred years later, the Hindu thinker Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, wrote quite exhaustively on the psychological and ontological roots of bliss.

Happiness and Aristotle

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 B.C.E., Aristotle stated that happiness (also being well and doing well) is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake, unlike riches, honour, health or friendship. He observed that men sought riches, or honour, or health not only for their own sake but also in order to be happy. Note that eudaimonia, the term we translate as “happiness”, is for Aristotle an activity rather than an emotion or a state.  Happiness is characteristic of a good life, that is, a life in which a person fulfils human nature in an excellent way. People have a set of purposes which are typically human: these belong to our nature. The happy person is virtuous, meaning they have outstanding abilities and emotional tendencies which allow him or her to fulfill our common human ends. For Aristotle, then, happiness is “the virtuous activity of the soul in accordance with reason”: happiness is the practice of virtue.

Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively, based on the resulting happiness of such behaviour. Utilitarian’s, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness principle as a guide for ethical behaviour

Happiness and Economics

Common market health measures such as GDP and GNP have been used as a measure of successful policy. On average richer nations tend to be happier than poorer nations, but this effect seems to diminish with wealth.  This has been explained by the fact that the dependency is not linear but logarithmic, i.e., the same percentual increase in the GNP produces the same increase in happiness for wealthy countries as for poor countries.

Economic freedom correlates strongly with happiness while social security not at all, and socialist East European countries were less happy than Western ones, even less happy than other equally poor countries.

It has been argued that happiness measures could be used not as a replacement for more traditional measures, but as a supplement.  According to Professor Edward Glaeser, people constantly make choices that decrease their happiness, because they have also more important aims. Therefore, the government should not decrease the alternatives available for the citizen by patronizing them but let the citizen keep a maximal freedom of choice.

It has been argued that happiness at work is the one of the driving forces behind positive outcomes at work, rather than just being a resultant product.

Happiness Mind Maps

Here are the different Happiness mind-maps we currently have:

Click here to view the Happiness overview mind map in a lightbox.
Click here to view the Flow – Positive Psychology and Synthetic Happiness mind map in a lightbox.
Click here to view the Positive Psychology mind map in a lightbox.