Post: #1

It has taken me a long time to answer this question for myself and the answer was really simple: when you no longer seek it.

Let me give you some examples:

You are out with girl and you find yourself completely content with her. You are not looking around at other girls. You are happy with her.

You are eating in a restaurant and you are not thinking about eating anything else - you are happy with your food.

Whatever you are doing or whoever you are with once you find yourself not looking for anything else - you are happy and contented.

So enjoy it while it last!

Post: #2

Nomad77 - just wanted to say thanks. You have been dropping some interesting posts lately. Things to think about it. Appreciate it.

Post: #3

Thanks, I took a break for awhile but I am back for little while again.

Post: #4

This article is worth reading if you have a spare 10 minutes. I have quoted only a small part.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch..._page=true

Quote:What Makes Us Happy?
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

Case No. 218

How’s this for the good life? You’re rich, and you made the dough yourself. You’re well into your 80s, and have spent hardly a day in the hospital. Your wife had a cancer scare, but she’s recovered and by your side, just as she’s been for more than 60 years. Asked to rate the marriage on a scale of 1 to 9, where 1 is perfectly miserable and 9 is perfectly happy, you circle the highest number. You’ve got two good kids, grandkids too. A survey asks you: “If you had your life to live over again, what problem, if any, would you have sought help for and to whom would you have gone?” “Probably I am fooling myself,” you write, “but I don’t think I would want to change anything.” If only we could take what you’ve done, reduce it to a set of rules, and apply it systematically.

Right?

Case No. 47

You literally fell down drunk and died. Not quite what the study had in mind.

Last fall, I spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, hoping to learn the secrets of the good life. The project is one of the longest-running—and probably the most exhaustive—longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years.


A historian and prep school teacher reflects on his life and how it has been affected by his participation in the study.
From their days of bull sessions in Cambridge to their active duty in World War II, through marriages and divorces, professional advancement and collapse—and now well into retirement—the men have submitted to regular medical exams, taken psychological tests, returned questionnaires, and sat for interviews. The files holding the data are as thick as unabridged dictionaries. They sit in a wall of locked cabinets in an office suite behind Fenway Park in Boston, in a plain room with beige carpeting and fluorescent lights that is littered with the detritus of many decades of social-scientific inquiry: a pile of enormous spreadsheet data books; a 1970s-era typewriter; a Macintosh PowerBook, circa 1993. All that’s missing are the IBM punch cards used to analyze the data in the early days.

For 42 years, the psychiatrist George Vaillant has been the chief curator of these lives, the chief investigator of their experiences, and the chief analyst of their lessons. His own life has been so woven into the study—and the study has become such a creature of his mind—that neither can be understood without the other. As Vaillant nears retirement (he’s now 74), and the study survivors approach death—the roughly half still living are in their late 80s—it’s a good time to examine both, and to do so, I was granted unprecedented access to case files ordinarily restricted to researchers.

Post: #5

Thanks, will do.

Post: #6

It´s much more than 10 minutes.

Here is something I liked:

Quote:At age 50, one Grant Study man declared, “God is dead and man is very much alive and has a wonderful future.” He had stopped going to church, he said, when he arrived at Harvard. But as a sophomore, he had reported going to mass four times a week. When Vaillant sent this—and several similar vignettes—to the man for his approval to publish them, the man wrote back, “George, you must have sent these to the wrong person.” Vaillant writes, “He could not believe that his college persona could have ever been him. Maturation makes liars of us all.”

Post: #7

I think it's also important to remember that happiness is not a destination.

Not trying to get too esoteric, but I have a habit of always looking forward to some future date when I will have this or have done that and then I'll be happy. We all have this tendency.

But it's human nature that when you get there, there will be another future "event" or situation that represents happiness.

It's like the study that compared people who were burned in a fire with people who won the lottery and finding out that after a year they were basically just as happy as one another. Happiness is not a static place - it's relative to wherever you are.

And since our wants and desires are ever-expanding and limitless, getting somewhere won't necessarily make you a happier person. At the very least, you miss a lot of opportunities for life satisfaction along the way if you focus on it the future too much.

Looking for those moments like Nomad mentioned are a good way to slow down and find our happiness in the moment.

Post: #8

Ok an indicator of happiness would be for me if I am generally be able to laugh, dance, sing. If I am in the mood to be able to themit I would say I am relatively happy sat around 60%.

I think to go to higher level I have to need some happy environment with happy people whith whom I should be able to connect.

Post: #9

(04-22-2014 08:17 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  Not trying to get too esoteric, but I have a habit of always looking forward to some future date when I will have this or have done that and then I'll be happy. We all have this tendency.

But it's human nature that when you get there, there will be another future "event" or situation that represents happiness.

Alan Watts talked about this idea:

Post: #10

I would suggest the book 'The Happiness Hypothesis' by Jonathan Haidt.

It's an excellent read. Haidt uses a number of religious and historical perspectives intertwined with logic, science and the contemporary viewpoint. He just explores all avenues.

I highly recommend it.

Post: #11

Thanks, will check it out.