What makes you happy?
Can it be measured?
Who makes you happy?
During lockdown in 2020 I found a free online course while searching for something to keep me occupied, so I enrolled in the course entitled “The Science of Wellbeing” which is designed and presented by Dr Lauri Santos, Professor of Psychology and Head of Silliman Residential College at Yale University, which nearly 3 million people have enrolled in!
Many of the topics were familiar to me, although it was interesting to learn how happiness has been studied from a scientific point of view.
But there was one area that, although I knew the value of it, I had not particularly invested in as much as I wanted to lately.
Let's look at what being happy is not!
1. Happiness and emotional well-being are not extras.
2. Being happy doesn’t mean feeling positive or smiling all the time.
3. It's not an endpoint
4. Happiness doesn’t depend on other people.
People's definitions of happiness:
I asked my friends to define happiness and while there were similarities, different things defined people’s happiness. One person said it was achieving their fitness goals, another said it was spending time with family, another walks on the beach.
We all have different ways of finding happiness and finding meaning in what makes us happy as we are uniquely made.
What else makes us happy?
The area that I mentioned in my introduction, came up again while researching this topic and I was inspired to share this with you after listening to a podcast by Dr Jamil Zaki, professor at Standford University.
Finding Happiness in Helping Others
Spending time on someone else, for example, doing something for them, like cooking a meal for them, or helping them with shopping or even looking after their children so that they have time for themselves - It's not just sending a text message!
This is not a natural thing to do for most of us, and requires some effort. We often nowadays hear about how we need to take care of ourselves, do some yoga or take time to be alone, and I'm not saying that it isn't important to make time for yourself.
What I found is that when we take the time to do something for someone, something amazing happens.
Caring is the most important way of caring for ourselves
My challenge to you is to take action, reach out to someone and do something for them.
For inspiration do listen to Happiness Lessons of the Ancients which is online and on podcasts.
