Happiness has been the fashion only for the last century.
Apart from being more psychological than sociological, there is general agreement that happiness has common grounds for everyone. So what makes people happy?
I have read quite a few articles about this after finding out what makes me happy, and my end-point is: happiness is too broad a word to contain all different meanings attached to it, which requires weird versions like "the-feeling-when-you-do-sports-for-an-hour-and-take-a-shower-before-you-fall-asleep", or "the-feeling-when-you-kiss-and-are-kissed-back", or "the-feeling-when-you-conquer-the-world" etc...
To share a few perspectives and statistics on this issue:
---------------------------------------------
- Choice has a lot to do with happiness. The common sense tells you that lack of choice hinders happiness... Remember the saying "Ignorance is bliss"? Abundance of choice does create unhappiness: The more choice you have, the less likely you'll make the right decision of choosing the best one among them, the less satisfied you'll be with your decision because the cost of opportunity is too high.
---------------------------------------------
- Another perspective defines happiness as ecstasic moments detached from everyday routines, much like what we experience when we are producing. This feeling of flow occupies all our attention and replaces normal sensations of existence temporarily so that you enter a different reality, much like dancing I suppose... When you are in "flow" you feel focused, ecstatic, self-confident, free from worries, timeless, and intrinsicly motivated.
---------------------------------------------
- Happiness is defined seperately for having intrinsic or extrinsic sources: Feeling happy – "which requires something external to happen or for someone to do something that leaves you feeling animated and excited. It is a fleeting emotion that needs to be topped up regularly". Being happy – "which requires no external stimuli and is depicted by that warm and contented feeling that remains with you regardless of what is happening in your world. This lingering feeling means that even when you look at a wet and miserable day you can instinctively see the blessings that exist in your life."
---------------------------------------------
- If you are the hub of a large network of people -- that is, if you have a lot of connected friends or a wide social circle - you are more likely to become happy, the study (excuted by James Fowler, professor of political science at the University of California) found. But the reverse is not true. "You might only have one friend or two friends or something like that, and if you become happy, you're not going to try to get more friends. You're probably going to stick with what worked in the first place," Fowler said. The study found that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. Follow-up studies not yet published show that on Facebook, smiling profiles connect and cluster much like smoking and obese profiles does.
---------------------------------------------
- According to the Nielsen survey, there are three main drivers of happiness globally: personal financial situation, mental health and job/career. Being satisfied with your partner is also important for happiness in many markets. Results of the global happiness survey reveal that men are happier with money, while women are happier with friendships and relationships with their children, co-workers and bosses.
Nielsen looked closely at survey results to find out if a nation’s happiness level was influenced by low income inequality, low corruption or peace. Surprisingly, markets which performed poorly on these factors were in many cases the happiest nations. See the full press release here.
---------------------------------------------
And lastly, I want to add that the diverse nature of the big picture makes me happy. The alternatives the world provides shows me that there will always be different kinds of lives and paths to choose from (contrary to the choice creates confusion theory).
