2008-12-25

Happiness Redefined

According to Harvard social psychologist, William McDougal, people can be happy while in pain and unhappy while experiencing pleasure.

To understand the concept, one must first recognised there are actually two kinds of happiness - feel-good and value-based.

Feel-Good Happiness

is a sensation-based pleasure. When we joke around or finally gotten the paif of shoes we like, we experience feel-good happiness.

Since feel-good happiness is ruled by the law of diminishing returns, the kicks get harder to come by.

This type of happiness rarely lasts longer than a few hours of time.

This basically means you can make yourself happy by buying yourself new makeup or going for a full body spa treatment but the happiness you get won't last you for years to come because feel-good happiness is not lasting.

Value-Based Happiness

Value-based happiness is a sense that our life has meaning and fulfills some larger purpose. It represents a spiritual source of satisfactoin, stemming from our deeper purpose and values.

We experience value-based happiness when we satisfy any of the 16 basic desires - the more desires we satisfy, the more value-based happiness we experience.

The great news is, since this form of happiness is not ruled by the law of diminishing returns, there is no limit to how meaningful our lives can be!

This is the inner happiness one has within themselves, and this general happiness can't be bought for it stays with you through tough times as well.