What is happiness? How do we as a people define what makes us
happy. More often than not when asked
this question we think of money, a new car, a bigger house, etc. But we forget that these are transient things
and do not truly impact on what touches our hearts and brings out true happiness. Based on information from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK ranks in the ninth place (together with
Venezuela) in the happiness
stakes. It seems that happiness is
not all about material wealth and living with all mod cons – the people of the
Philippines rank higher than the people of the United States! Read on to learn more about happiness in the
UK and find out how you fare in the So, how do we define happiness and ascertain just how happy we are compared with others? Wikipedia defines happiness as “a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure or joy”. The article goes on to admit that the direct measurement of happiness presents challenges! Happiness is not all about material wealth – we’ve all heard of people with untold riches who still lead unhappy lives. We’ve also all seen stories about the poorest of people who seem to face many challenges in life who seem to always be cheerful and smiling. This leads us to believe that having limitless amounts of money and being able to buy all the possessions we want may not lead to us feeling happy. Do you agree? After all being wealthy does not change a personality. A naturally miserable person will still be a misery – just a well-heeled, well-dressed misery!
This seems to point to the fact that much of our happiness is dependent upon our relationships with others. Having family and friends that we can spend plenty of time with – enjoying activities, whether work-related or leisure, leads to happiness and contentment. Having enough time to devote to following our interests, learning about subjects that have always fascinated us, learning new skills and hobbies, and the sense of achievement that comes from making stuff with our own hands! Spending time with people whose company we enjoy, doing things that we enjoy doing and having fun as we discover new information, see new sights and accomplish goals that we have set for ourselves – this is where happiness is to be found.
Usually, when we buy new possessions, we are buying somebody else’s achievement – yes, it may look great, but the novelty will soon wear off and leave us needing to buy something else to get the buzz back. Making or growing something for ourselves – the buzz is there all the time in the doing. When we’ve finished the item the result provides a great sense of achievement.
Helping others is another way of gaining a sense of achievement. When we use our knowledge or skills to help others, we are actually spreading happiness. When we use our skills to help others overcome challenges and problems that they face – we are actually improving our own lives as well as theirs. The more happy and content people there are within a society, the better that society will be to live in.
We need to accept ourselves as we are – derive our self worth from the sort of people we are rather than the possessions we have. What really matters is the way we behave towards others. Being the sort of person who makes other people happy is a way of bringing happiness into our own lives.
When we think about it – it’s not material possessions that make us happy – it’s the people around us – not just our friends and family, but our wider community. It’s being able to take our place in that community and offer our help to make sure that the community we live in is a decent and happy community that is able to help and support those who need it. A good community where you can be sure that when you need help or support, there are people you can turn to who will give that help and support freely – happy people that are happy to help.
