Happiness is something that everyone always tries to receive. Being happy in life means that you have reached the ultimate goal.
Living your life the way you imagine it, having fun with your friends, and being grateful for the things you have, all these little things lead to happiness. But what is happiness and where does it come from? Is it something that just depends upon ourselves or do other people and our environment influence our personal happiness? These questions are hard to answer since there isn’t even one specific definition that can be applied to everyone. Maybe happiness has a completely different meaning to someone else than it has to you. What we know so far is that happiness is a state of mind consisting not only of feelings of joy, contentment, and other positive emotions but also of a sense that one’s life is meaningful and valued.
In other words, people say that being happy means having a positive psychology or are in a state of subjective well-being, short SWB. However, the meaning of that depends on who you ask. It is indeed difficult to define scientifically. All we have to know here is that scientists agree on what happiness feels like which is in the end the most important thing of all. They say happiness is a feeling to be satisfied with life, in a good mood, feeling enjoyment and everything that is related to positive emotions.
Here it could be easy to mix happiness and pleasure up. While happiness applies to one’s life or current situation, it is more long term than pleasure. Happiness generally sticks around for longer than a few moments at a time, whereas pleasure can come and go in seconds. It is an instinctual, in-the-moment experience that we get from experiences like eating good food or receiving a compliment. Although happiness and pleasure can both enhance or deepen one another, they also have the potential to be unrelated. In some cases, you might experience happiness independent of pleasure based on meaning and engagement, or you might experience pleasure but battle with guilt as a consequence, which prevents you from being happy at the same time.
Let’s look a little closer at that topic and the psychology behind human happiness. In general, there are two different categories. On the one hand, hedonic happiness or well-being. These are experiences with more pleasure and less pain. It consists of an affective (a lot of positive affects) and a cognitive component (satisfaction with one’s life). On the other hand, eudaimonic happiness or well-being. This is a result of having and fulfilling life purpose, meaning, challenge, and personal growth. It is reaching one’s full potential and being fully functioning in most of life’s aspects.
Some researchers found that happiness is just a by-product of other pursuits in life, and others say that happiness is the final goal of humans. However all these theories agree that happiness is good, because it makes people happy; Happiness is neither a fleeting, momentary experience nor a stable, long-term trait; Some portion of our happiness is set by genetics. Your amount can be from 10 to 50%.
Now we talked a lot about the meaning of happiness, its definition and more, but the biggest question is still not answered. What happens in our body when we are happy and can we influence our personal happiness?
There are a lot of different factors that can make a person happy. Of course, some can’t be fully influenced by us such as our physical health, family, etc. Over others, we can have more control. One of the key factors are our loved ones in our life. Best friends, a good romantic relationship and relationships with relatives are very important. It is also about doing the things you want in life, personal freedom, feeling content with your situation, not comparing yourself with others, archiving goals, and maintaining a positive attitude.
Happiness is produced by hormones: Dopamine, the hormone responsible for making us feel good. Serotonin, which can help reduce the symptoms of depression. Endorphins, which are directly related to happiness, meaning they can help to reduce physical pain or symptoms of injury in our muscles due to their chemical properties being similar to morphine, which is used for pain relief.
Among other hormones, these are produced when Exercising, Eating chocolate (yes, this is actually true even though chocolate should be eaten in moderation), playing with pets, hugging or kissing a loved one or meditation.
Although happiness means different things to different people, everyone agrees that being happy is a great thing. Happiness is the key to making our life complete and even though there are all kind of things we can’t influence, we can still try to be successful in life and achieve goals, keeping up relationships and doing things we love. I believe that every person is capable of making a success of their life in one way or another, which will give them the best chance of feeling happy and content thereafter. Also if the start is just to eat a piece of chocolate now and then or go on a walk on a sunny day.
https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-happiness/ (Courtney E. Ackerman, 27.04.2023)
https://www.samitivejhospitals.com/article/detail/happiness-hormones (Phaisit Trakulkongsmut, 03.05.2023)