Happiness is a universal goal. Every morally and psychologically mature person strives for it. Happiness can be a momentary surging feeling or a persistent feeling of the world and yourself.
Instructions
Step 1
Psychologists define happiness as a feeling of one's own completeness, joy and harmony in relationships with the outside world. Happiness can take different forms: strong nervous excitement for those who love noisy companies and loud parties, quiet calm for those who like to be alone and read a book.
Step 2
The phenomenon of happiness has one very big paradox: the more a person strives for it, the more difficult it is to become happy. In addition, as practice shows, older people more often feel happy than young people. The same is true for material wealth. A better-off person may not feel that unity with nature and the world around him the way a poor person would feel.
Step 3
It is also interesting that happiness is a state that applies to one particular person. It is impossible to say that a whole group of people or a whole country are happy.
Step 4
Today, there are two main and most popular concepts of happiness. The first glance represents Abraham Maslow with his pyramid of needs, the second - Victor Frankl.
Step 5
Abraham Maslow saw the happiness of a person in his self-actualization, moving towards set goals through the satisfaction of his usual needs for food, sleep and safety. Thus, a happy person is presented as talented, balanced, wise and successful.
Step 6
Viktor Frankl believed that happiness is a path, a search for meaning. And those who strive for happiness as a goal and ultimate pleasure will never comprehend it. For a person is so concentrated on the end point that he loses the true meaning of his movement through life, which means that he also loses happiness.
Step 7
The question of measuring happiness is also important for psychology. For this, the concept of "subjective well-being" is used. "Subjective well-being" depends on satisfaction with various aspects of human life: social, personal, sexual, family, work, etc.
Step 8
The feelings of happiness are also influenced by the personality traits of a person: hobbies, optimism, entertainment, self-esteem, extraversion. However, recent studies show that people who have a lot of interpersonal contacts - friendships, work, family, social - feel happier. Happy people spend less time alone, because they are in love, they have a strong marriage and loyal friends.
Step 9
A variety of approaches to the interpretation of the phenomenon of happiness and a huge amount of scientific research on this topic once again prove how multifaceted it is and how many unknown aspects it still conceals.
