LinkedIn post July 2020
📌What the longest study on happiness (almost 80 years!) shows?
More than money or fame, it was the quality of close relationships that determines the level of happiness in life.
📌One of the most important ideas in positive psychology is the ‘Happiness formula’: H = S + C + V
“The level of happiness that you actually experience (H)
=
Your biological set point (S)
+
The conditions of your life (C)
+
The voluntary activities you do (V)”
We have little control over C and none over S, but we can influence our happiness by focusing on V.
📌Pew Research Center analysis from the US and 25 other countries:
“People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups.”
Happiness is not the fruit of a single action or person. But rather a harmonious adjustment between many things, sometimes the opposite:
- Seeking wealth and perfecting relationships
- Low and high expectations
- Solitude and company
- The reality and our perception of it
- Clarity and mystery
- Give and take
- Long and short term
- The inner and the outer
- Mind and heart
- Who we want to be and how we act