how to be a happy person
“Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.”
“Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis
While it’s true that our perception of the things around us dictates our emotions, we can’t arrive at the conclusion that the external world has absolutely no impact on the level of our happiness.
Since we humans are designed by nature to adapt to new conditions, external events don’t impact our happiness in a significant way in the long term. The primary reason behind this is that from the lens of evolution, focusing and adapting to new situations in our lives holds much more weight than being happy about previous circumstances.
However, there are a few external conditions that play a key role in our happiness, and we simply cannot adapt to them. For instance, if you want to become a genuinely happy person, then you need (1) the right people to spend time with in your life and (2) a profession, vocation, or calling that you enjoy and are really good at.
Humans at the core are social creatures and a lack of healthy social relations can severely impact our well-being and positivity. Meaningful social connections help us feel better and happier. The most important factors in this regard are the number and intensity of the relationships we have. It has been found that people who have a good number of friends (I mean real friends, not the fickle “friends” on Facebook and other social media!) or who are in a happy marriage on average score high on the happiness scale.
Along with having the right social connections, it’s also crucial that we do work that we’re good at and that aligns with our interests. When our work activities match our strengths, our happiness levels go through the roof. Each of us has been blessed with unique gifts—strengths or skills that we’re both good at and enjoy doing. You might be really good at coding, or you might have extraordinary gardening skills, or you might be a natural at making deals and closing sales. It doesn’t matter what your natural strengths are, when you do a job that is a good fit for your gifts, your work activities bring you great pleasure. You find your job more enjoyable and fulfilling, and because you never truly adapt to this work and the satisfaction it brings, the job never gets old or boring for you. In fact, it continues to bring you joy and contentment every single day, and you’re naturally inspired to become better and develop mastery in it, taking you further on the upward spiral of happiness.
If you enjoyed this insight, you’ll love my book “Daily Happiness.” Learn more here: https://books2read.com/daily-happiness
