Everyone knows what needs to be prepared to cook borscht. But not everyone knows what is needed for happiness. Psychologists say that for a happy life it is enough to have 8 components. What these components are and how many of them you have, you can find out right now by reading our article to the end.
Do we think about the fact that happiness is a personal choice? Every person in this world has the right to happiness, but what does he do for this? Albert Einstein once said that a person has only two options for how to live his life. The first one is that there seem to be no miracles. The second is as if the world consists of miracles.
Studies have shown that the average person lives about 76 years, that is, 3952 weeks. It’s hard to imagine, but we “wake up” 1317 of them. How long do you have to stay awake? How much time has already been wasted on quarrels, conflicts and depression? When we think about it, we realize that life is a priceless gift. And it depends only on us whether we learn to use it or not.
We can find happiness here and now - this is the real secret of success. How to do it? Believe that everything is in our hands. This idea is well illustrated in the parable of the Sufi mystic.
One wise man always looked happy. Those around him did not see him sad, grumbled or irritated. When the aged mystic was on his deathbed, a faithful disciple asked him: “Tell us the secret, how did you manage to live your whole life in joy and fun?”
The sage answered him:
“When I began to comprehend wisdom, I asked the same question to my mentor. I was 18 years old at the time, and I already felt overwhelmed, depressed and unhappy. And my 80-year-old teacher, without losing heart, always found a reason for joy, laughter, and fun.
He told me then: “I used to be as sad as you, and then I made my choice.” And then I understood everything: I also have the right to happiness, I just need to use it. After this conversation, every morning, when I open my eyes, I ask myself: “What are you choosing today – a gloomy mood or bliss?” I always prefer the second option.
In fact, this is what happens: leaving the house on a spring morning, we can enjoy the amazing singing of birds or grumble, looking at the dirt under our feet, garbage on the side of the road or stray dogs.
Psychologists say that the main reason why we cannot let happiness in is the constant desire to get what we don’t have. It's time to stop and think carefully about what a person needs to be happy. Simple answers can surprise and prompt you to choose how to live your day today.
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Safety.
According to the results of a study by American scientist John Medina, our brain cares, first of all, about safety. In practice, it looks like this: as long as a person feels threatened and aggressive, he will not be able to relax in order to enjoy the benefits. It’s another matter when we are in a protected area, feeling comfort and stability.
It is worth remembering what happened to young people after World War II. This generation is called lost for a reason - young people did not see prospects, did not know how to live on, having buried their loved ones. Wars, famines, repressions, epidemics are factors that make us unhappy. Only a person who is confident in the future gives himself the right to happiness.
Love.
Without the feeling of love, a person cannot exist. Nature created him this way. Only everyone has their own source of love. Someone follows the traditional path, finding a faithful life partner, devoting themselves to children and family. Someone expresses all their love by caring for a pet. For some, it is enough to receive the love of friends. And religious people claim that Faith gives them optimism and love.
One way or another, without this feeling it is impossible to feel complete joy. By the way, most of the psychological traumas that we discover as adults are based precisely on the lack of love and care in childhood. They just don’t let you feel happiness here and now.
A short version of 19 rules for a happy life:
1. Remember the basic rule of the Universe: a person attracts to himself what he thinks about.
2. Explore yourself and the world.
3. Surround yourself with bright, friendly, pleasant people.
4. Visualize desires and learn to distinguish true from imposed ones.
5. Do not criticize, do not discuss, do not judge other people.
6. Maintain inner harmony, learn serenity.
7. Don’t harbor grudges or anger.
8. Believe yourself and accept yourself.
9. Remember about psychosomatics (that mental problems lead to physical ailments).
10. Perceive money as a tool, but not a goal.
11. Gratitude is one of the most important conditions for a happy life.
12. Deal with your projections and establish healthy relationships with other people.
13. Carefully monitor your speech.
14. Keep everything clean: in the house, closet, thoughts.
15. Regularly ask yourself the right questions.
16. Never do, say or think anything unless asked to do so.
17. Protect yourself from negativity and information noise.
18. Practice mindfulness.
19. 17 minute rule (as a bonus).
Below I offer a list with more detailed descriptions, thanks to which you can understand the essence of the advice and get more useful information.
Target.
A person must understand why he lives, and also feel that he is valued and respected. Understanding which direction to move is the key to success. Having found ourselves, we want to further realize ourselves, conquer new heights, improve ourselves, and create.
And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in – you don’t have to be the boss of a large company in order to feel happy. Motherhood, a hobby, a favorite profession - there must be something calling to action, motivating. We are designed in such a way that we must live for someone or something, without forgetting about ourselves. Otherwise, you can lose all interest in the new day.
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Is it possible to be happy without a partner?
Many people associate their happiness with their personal life and having a partner, so loneliness is one of the main threats to happiness for some people.
You don't have to be in a relationship with someone to find happiness. Many people consider the mere existence of a relationship to be the key to success and fulfillment in life. Happiness can only be brought by a healthy relationship with a loved one, full of understanding and mutual support.
There is no need to create the illusion that the absence of a couple puts an end to a happy life. If you are confident that only having a partner will make life full and bright, you need to radically change your view of the world. Only he himself can make a person happy through the search for harmony with himself and with his thoughts.
If it seems that complete satisfaction with life will come only after finding a soulmate, there is no need to get hung up on this thought. Sometimes the reckless pursuit of relationships brings stress and disappointment instead of happiness.
Freedom.
It is the desire to be free that can motivate a person to fight or rebel. This has been the case at all times and in almost every country. After all, what could be worse than slavery and humiliation? Those who survived imprisonment claim that there was only death. But deprivation of liberty is not only territorial isolation. Freedom is taken away from us when they deprive us of the right to choose, impose their opinion, give us an ultimatum, blackmail us, or tell us what to do. It is important for a person to have the right to his own opinion and the right to happiness or error.
Is it possible to feel happy all the time?
Happiness is an almost elusive feeling from life that you don’t want to let go of. Having felt happy once, a person never ceases to wonder whether it is possible to prolong this feeling forever.
It is impossible to control all events in life, no one is immune from unpleasant moments, therefore it is especially important to maintain internal harmony and try to react to everything that happens in a positive way.
You need to learn how to respond to stress and irritants. This is where science comes in again: the stress hormone, cortisol, causes the body to feel fear, which is a reflection of similar fear from the past. It is important to understand the reasons for this feeling in order not to feed it and learn to react to the surrounding reality more positively.
Changing your thinking to a positive one is one of the best ways to feel happier. Instead of complaining about life and injustice, it is better to switch attention to the good that is around. Sometimes unpleasant moments in everyday life do not allow you to take a sober look at the world and see reasons for joy in it.
Moving forward is the real engine of happiness. Daily small achievements contribute to the release of the hormone dopamine, which, along with serotonin, is responsible for happiness and life satisfaction. And the thought that such daily effort will lead to achieving a large-scale goal in the future is in itself uplifting.
There is no exact recipe for continuous happiness, it consists of thousands of little things and is individual for everyone, the main thing is to find harmony with your inner world.
Faith.
We are used to taking care of our physical health: eating delicious food, sleeping, getting treatment. What about the internal state? He also needs recharge. This is what faith is for. It is not for nothing that there are so many different religions and teachings in the world. There is no nation that does not have its own philosophy that shapes its outlook on life. In fact, the form of government of the state can also become a belief.
In the Soviet Union, the assertion that faith is the opium of the people was considered irrefutable. This is what those who blindly believed in communism said. And someone believes in science, statistics, research, confirmed data. Whether we understand it or not, it is faith that is the beacon on our path. If the light goes out, the traveler will stop. Faith is what a person needs to be happy.
Is there such a thing as female and male happiness, what is the difference?
The happiness of a man and a woman can be similar, but at the same time significantly different. The basic principles are the same: both men and women want to have good health, the opportunity to express themselves, seek purpose in life, and receive recognition. Depending on life attitudes and priorities, interest in certain areas of life may vary. Many women cite marriage and family as the most important things in life, while men may gravitate more toward creating their own careers.
What men need to be happy
Since the Stone Age, men have been assigned the status of breadwinner and protector. A modern man strives to achieve success at work, to be strong and influential in order to be able to protect and provide for his family. Showing yourself weak for a representative of the stronger sex means undermining your authority.
It is important for men to continue the family line and pass on their life’s work, inheritance and name to their descendants. No wonder they say that every man should build a house, plant a tree and raise a son.
Research by psychologists has confirmed that it is success, authority and the speed of climbing the career ladder that provides a man with happiness and satisfaction in life.
What women need to be happy
Traditionally, women's happiness is usually associated with a woman having a family and children. A woman is more inclined to find a reliable partner and create a family with him. Many women associate happiness and meaning in life with motherhood, raising children and caring for loved ones. Women's heightened sense of beauty allows them to find their calling in art, music and dance; Some representatives of the fair sex find happiness in their careers and self-development. Communication is one of the most important tools for gaining satisfaction in life; most women see communication with friends as one of the components of happiness and good mood.
Prosperity.
This is not about wealth and accumulation at all, but about meeting basic needs. It's hard to be joyful when you don't know where to get money for treatment, food or warm clothes. Lack of money is largely the main cause of quarrels and divorces among married couples. And if the heart understands that with a sweetheart there is heaven in the hut, then the mind trusts the cruel reality more.
To earn enough money, we spend more time at work, which means we get tired more and feel worse. And in such a state, even a salary does not bring fun. It turns out to be a vicious circle. Modern studies have shown that residents of countries with low levels of economic development rarely smile and are susceptible to alcohol addiction and psychological breakdowns. It is important to find a balance between poverty and wealth so that you have time for yourself, your family, and your favorite activities. Only in this harmony will a person feel happiness here and now.
What you need to be happy: Lessons from a lifelong study
We are publishing a lecture by Robert J. Waldinger, given at TED, and its transcript.
What makes us healthy and happy throughout life? If you were now thinking about taking care of your own bright future, where would you invest your time and energy? In a recent survey of Millennials about their most important goals in life, more than 80% responded that their main goal in life was to become rich. And for the other 50% of the same youth, the most important goal in life turned out to be becoming a celebrity.
We are constantly told that we need to focus on work, diligence and achieving more. We get the impression that this is exactly what we need to strive for in order to live better. A complete picture of life, the decisions people make and the consequences of these decisions is practically inaccessible to us. Most of our knowledge about human life is based on what people remember from their past, and as we know, when looking into the past, we do not have 100% vision. We forget a lot of what happens to us in life, and sometimes our memories are distorted beyond recognition.
But what if we could see life completely as it unfolds over time? What if we could follow people from adolescence to old age and see what really makes them healthy and happy?
That's what we did. The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be considered the longest-running study of adult life . For 75 years, we followed the lives of 724 men year after year, asking them questions about work, personal life, health, and all this time we asked them without knowing how their lives would turn out.
Such studies are extremely rare. Almost no project of this kind lasts ten years, either because too many participants leave, or because funding ceases, or because of new interests among employees, or because they die without followers. But by a happy coincidence and thanks to the persistence of several generations of researchers, this project survived. About 60 of our original 724 members are still alive and involved in the project; most of them are over 90. And now we are starting a study of more than 2,000 children of these people. I am the fourth project manager.
Since 1938 we have been studying the lives of two groups of men. At the beginning of the project, the participants in the first group were second-year students at Harvard College. They All graduated from college during World War II, and most of them went to war. The second group we studied was a group of boys from the poorest areas of Boston, who were chosen for the study precisely because they belonged to the most disadvantaged families and disadvantaged of Boston in the 1930s. Most of them lived in rented apartment buildings without running water.
At the beginning of the project, all young men were interviewed. Passed all medical examinations. We came to their home and talked to their parents. Then these young men became adults, each of them with their own destiny. They became factory workers, lawyers, construction workers and doctors, and one even became President of the United States. Some of them became alcoholics. Some developed schizophrenia. Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom to the top, while others made the journey in the opposite direction.
The founders of the project, even in their wildest dreams, could not imagine that I would be standing here today, 75 years later, talking about how the project is still ongoing . Every two years, our patient and dedicated staff calls our members and asks if they can be sent another questionnaire asking about their lives.
Many people living in downtown Boston ask, “Why do you keep studying me? There is nothing interesting in my life." Harvard graduates don't ask such questions.
To get a clearer picture of their lives, we do more than just send them questionnaires. We talk to them in their living rooms. We get their medical histories from their doctors. We take their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We videotape their conversations with their wives about their deepest problems. And when ten years ago we finally asked their wives about their desire to participate in the project, many of them answered us: “It’s high time.”
So what have we learned? What lessons have been learned from the tens of thousands of pages of information accumulated about their lives? Now, these lessons are not about wealth or fame or about working hard. After 75 years of research, it is clear to us that good relationships make us happier and healthier. Dot.
We learned three main lessons about relationships. The first is that relationships with people are very useful for us, and loneliness kills . It turns out that people who have strong connections to family, to friends, to community are happier, physically healthier, and live longer than people who are deprived of the company of other people. And the state of loneliness, as it turned out, is poisonous. People who are more isolated from others than they would like are less happy, their health declines earlier, their brain function declines earlier, and they live shorter lives than those who are not lonely. And the sad thing is that whenever you ask, at least one in five Americans will tell you that they are lonely.
And we know that you can be lonely in a crowd, you can be lonely in a marriage, so the second lesson we learned is that it’s not about the number of friends or whether you have a permanent partner, but about the quality of these relationships with loved ones people _ As it turns out, living in a state of conflict is extremely harmful to our health. Conflict families, for example, where there is not enough love and affection, have a very detrimental effect on our health, this is perhaps even worse than divorce. And life in a good, spiritual environment is protection for us.
As our participants entered their late 80s, we wanted to go back to the middle of their lives and see if we could predict who would be a happy, healthy 80-year-old and who would not. Taking all the information we had when they were 50, it turned out that it was not their cholesterol level at that age that was an indicator of what they would be like in old age. This turned out to be how well their relationship was going. People who were most satisfied with their relationships at 50 turned out to be the healthiest at 80. Good, warm relationships serve as a kind of buffer for us, protecting us from the blows of fate, from turning into old people. The happiest of our couples, when they were already over 80, said that even in moments of severe physical pain, a feeling of happiness did not leave them. And people with unfulfilled relationships suffered even more on days of exacerbation of physical pain due to emotional pain.
And the third lesson we've learned about relationships and health is that good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains . It turns out that having a secure, strong attachment to another person when you're over 80 protects you, and people in relationships where they can actually rely on each other during tough times retain good memories longer. And for people whose relationships do not allow them to truly rely on each other, memory problems are observed much earlier. At the same time, good relationships do not mean complete peace of mind. For some of our 80-year-old couples, the bickering may go on day and night, but as long as they feel they can count on the other to support them when things get tough, the arguments won't do much damage to their memories.
The truth that good, close relationships contribute to our well-being is as old as time. Why is it so difficult to understand and so easy to ignore? Yes because we are people . We prefer immediate decisions; we would like to get something that will make our life better and stay that way. And relationships have no guarantees, they are complex, confusing and require constant effort, dedication to family and friends, there is no glitz and glamour. And there is no end. This is the work of a lifetime. In our 75-year study, the happiest retirees were people who actively turned work colleagues into playmates. Just like the Millennials in that recent survey, many of our men entered adulthood with the sincere belief that wealth, fame, and great achievement were what they needed to live fulfilling, happy lives. But again and again over the course of 75 years, our research has confirmed that those people who relied on relationships in the family, with friends, and with like-minded people lived better.
What do you think? Let's say you are now 25, or 40, or 60. What does investing in a relationship mean?
The possibilities are practically unlimited. This could be as simple as replacing screen time with time with people, reviving a stale relationship with something new together like going for a long walk or a date night, or calling that relative you haven't talked to in ages because they're all too familiar. quarrels threaten us with terrible retribution for those who harbor grudges against others.
I would like to end with a quote from Mark Twain. More than a century ago, looking back on his life, he wrote:
“There is no time - life is so short - for squabbles, apologies, bile and calls for accountability. There is only time to love, and even for this, so to speak, there is only a moment.”
A good life is built on good relationships.
Thank you.
Preview: photo by Sarawut Intarob
See also:
- 7 TED lectures on who we really are: Is “I” an illusion, a flow or a core?
- Welcome to the matrix: lectures by Tatyana Chernigovskaya about the brain, its abilities and mysteries
- About cognitive distortions, intuition and happiness - 3 video lectures by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman
May 29, 2017
Rest.
Many people believe that rest can wait because it is a weakness, a luxury, or an unglamorous condition. But in fact, travel, entertainment, a fun pastime are what remain in the memory forever. If you try to remember important or interesting events over the past year, then, most likely, 80% of the memories will be associated with leisure and fun: sledding in a snowstorm, going to the theater or cinema, as well as holidays spent with family. It is easier for rested people to get to work, since while we are distracted, our strength is regenerated.
Summarizing all of the above, we conclude that happiness is a subtle and fragile thing, to which everyone has the right. Well, we have already said what is needed for happiness - to protect yourself, take care of your health, love, set goals, take care of freedom, believe, take care of prosperity, and also relax. And, of course, every morning remember the wisdom of the Sufi mystic. To save them, click “share with friends.”
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Happiness the joy of life
♊
GEMINI
Geminis are social creatures
, without interlocutors they cannot imagine their happiness. If you have someone to share news, ideas and desires with, then you will be happy. However, this is sometimes not enough.
Gemini has seven Fridays a week, so it’s very difficult to say what they want at one time or another
, and what can bring the decisive point in their basket of happiness. But more often it means freedom in communication, new books, new impressions and new acquaintances.
ADVICE
: Bring joy and fun to others, make them laugh, give positive emotions, then you will easily become happier.
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CANCER
The happiness of any Cancer lies in a large and friendly family. Only surrounded by family and friends
, with their good health and well-being, Cancers can be happy, because this sign is very attached to family and home.
Also without a small and protected place
, where they could go and where they could hide, Cancers cannot imagine their happiness. Any Cancer needs a shell where it’s warm, cozy, but most importantly – safe!
