Psychologists have now come up with a formula for happiness. Pleasure + engagement + meaning = happiness.

1. IN THE NAME OF ALLAH – THE SOURCE OF MERCY – THE MOST MERCIFUL
WHAT IS HAPPINESS
Psychologists have now come up with a formula for happiness.
Pleasure + engagement + meaning = happiness.
We all know what brings us pleasure. But the trouble is all too often it is fleeting
and it just does not last.
A new school of psychology, called positive psychology, suggests that we need
two other vital ingredients if we want to achieve more lasting happiness.
First, they suggest we need to be really engaged and engrossed in what we do. In
the jargon it is called "flow". We have all experienced it. It is that feeling we get
when we just do not even bother to look at the clock because we are so into what
we are doing.
Second, positive psychologists suggest we need meaning in our lives. We can get
this from doing an interesting job, or working on a project we really believe in, or
by doing something worthwhile. While we adapt quickly to more money and
material possessions, it seems we adapt less quickly, if at all, to meaningful
things.
Problems with the formula
However, this simple formula hides a number of important issues.
The undervalued component of happiness.
It turns out you can have too much engagement and it does not necessarily lead
to more happiness.
For example, you can become engrossed in work and become a workaholic and
less happy.
You can experience flow in gambling but it will not necessarily make you happy.
The formula is not exhaustive or comprehensive.
As psychologist points out, the formula fails to take account of contentment. The
danger of relying on any formula is that it may actually make us unhappy, by
putting yet more pressure on us to live the perfect life. And what is more there is
another problem that one form of happiness often conflicts with other sources of
happiness and may even make other people unhappy. So some people argue we
should not even contemplate trying to make ourselves happier.
A little extra happiness
Positive psychologists counter this by saying that their suggestions are not
miracle cures and they accept that you cannot turn a grump into a deliriously
happy person.
Staying happier for longer
They maintain it is possible to make someone a little happier, as much as 10-15%,
if someone works at it.
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2. IN THE NAME OF ALLAH – THE SOURCE OF MERCY – THE MOST MERCIFUL
This article explains some of the exercises you can do to make yourself happier.
Research is now trying to test how well these exercises work. The exercises
include disputation, which involves challenging negative thoughts and analysing
whether you need to be as negative, playing to your strengths and counting your
blessings for the things that go well in your life.
Scientists clearly do not have all the answers. There is as yet no simple and
comprehensive formula for happiness.
However, the new emphasis on human relationships, flow and meaning does offer
an interesting insight into what really makes us happy and challenges us to think
whether it might be possible to live happier lives.
Societies, religions and individuals have various views on the nature of happiness
and how to pursue it.
In modern western society, especially in North America, it is widely believed that
happiness is attained through being successful, healthy and having beautiful
family; creating monetary wealth and success; being physically attractive even
through old age; and maintaining one's intelligence and wit. Some of these are
not supported by empirical evidence; for example, money does not appear to
increase happiness (other than for the impoverished) and having children does
not on average increase or decrease happiness.
As well, a portion of the uneducated population believes that happiness is
achieved by following the latest cultural fads, such as keeping one's clothes in
fashion or keeping them in fashion as much as humanly possible, going to the
latest clubs, restaurants or bars, buying consumer products seen as trendy or
cool, or changing a hair style so that it is current. However, most people disagree
with these preceding ideals because they consider them too superficial,
consumerist and unsatisfying.
For Americans, the happy or ideal life is sometimes referred to as the American
dream, which can be seen as the idea that any goal can be attained through
sufficient hard work and determination, birth and privilege notwithstanding.
While many artists, writers and scholars can and do consider their work to fall
within the American dream, it is usually thought of as relating to financial
success.
Positive psychology
The positive psychology definition of happiness as consisting of both positive
emotions (like comfort) and positive activities (like absorption).
The three categories of positive emotions:
Past: feelings of satisfaction, contentment, pride and serenity.
Present (examples): enjoying the taste of food, glee at listening to music,
absorption in reading, and company of people you like e.g. friends and family.
Future: feelings of optimism, hope, trust, faith and confidence.
There are three categories of present positive emotions:
Bodily pleasures, e.g. enjoying the taste of food.
Higher pleasures, e.g. glee at listening to music.
Gratifications, e.g. absorption in reading.
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3. IN THE NAME OF ALLAH – THE SOURCE OF MERCY – THE MOST MERCIFUL
The bodily and higher pleasures are "pleasures of the moment" and usually
involve some external stimulus. An exception is the glee felt at having an original
thought.
Difficulties in defining internal experiences.
It is probably impossible to objectively define happiness as we know and
understand it, as internal experiences are subjective by nature. It is almost as
pointless as trying to define the colour green such that a completely colour blind
person could understand the experience of seeing green. While we can not
objectively express the difference between greenness and redness, we can
certainly explain which physical phenomena cause green to be observed, and can
explain the capacities of the human visual system to distinguish between light of
different wavelengths, and so on. Likewise, in the following sections, we will not
attempt to describe the internal sensation of happiness, but will instead
concentrate on defining its logical basis. Importantly, we will try to avoid circular
definitions for instance, defining happiness as "a good feeling", while "good" is
defined as being "something which causes happiness".
In animals
For animals, happiness might be best described as the process of reinforcement,
as part of the organism's motivational system. The organism has achieved one or
more of its goals (pursuit of food, water, sex, shelter, etc.), and its brain is in the
process of teaching itself to repeat the sort of actions that led to success. By
reinforcing successful decision paths, it produces an equilibrium state not unlike
positive-to-negative magnets. The specific goals are typically things that enable
the organism to survive and reproduce.
By this definition, only animals with some capacity to learn should be able to
experience happiness. However, at its most basic level the learning might be
extremely simple and short term, such as the nearly reflexive feedback loop of
scratching an itch (followed by pleasure, followed by scratching more and so on)
which can occur with almost no conscious thought.
In humans
When speaking of animals with the ability to reason (generally considered the
exclusive domain of humans), goals are no longer limited to short term
satisfaction of basic drives. Nevertheless, there remains a strong relationship of
happiness to goal fulfilment and the brain's reinforcement mechanism, even if the
goals themselves may be more complex and/or cerebral, longer term, and less
selfish than a lower animal's goals might be.
Philosophers observe that short-term gratification, while briefly generating
happiness, often requires a trade-off with negative repercussions in the long run.
Examples of this could be said to include developing technology and equipment
that makes life easier but over time ends up harming the environment, causing
illness or wasting financial or other resources. Various branches of philosophy, as
well as some religious movements, suggest that "true" happiness only exists if it
has no long-term detrimental effects. Utilitarianism is a theory of ethics based on
quantitative maximisation of happiness.
From the observation that fish must become happy by swimming and birds must
become happy by flying, Only man has the unique abilities to the route of
happiness. Of all the animals only man can sit and contemplate reality. Of all the
animals only man can develop social relations to the political level. Thus the
contemplative life of a monk or professor, or the political life of a military
commander or politician will be the happiest.
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4. IN THE NAME OF ALLAH – THE SOURCE OF MERCY – THE MOST MERCIFUL
Only man is endowed with the ability necessary to generate complex language
and through that can be used to distinguish between things and form
dichotomies. These dichotomies then formed, man tries to find reasons to like one
side of things and hate the other. Hence, he loses his ability to rove freely, in true
happiness, unlike the rest of animals.
In artificial intelligence.
The view that happiness is a reinforcement state can apply to some non-biological
systems as well. In artificial intelligence, a program or robot could be said to be
"happy" when it is in a state of reinforcing previous actions that led to
satisfaction of its programmed goals. For instance, imagine a search engine that
has the capacity to gradually improve the quality of its search results by accepting
and processing feedback from the user regarding the relevance of those results. If
the user responds that a search result is good (i.e. provides positive feedback),
this tells the software to reinforce (by adjusting variables or "weights") the
decision path that led to those results. In a sense, this could be said to "reward"
the search engine. However, even if the program is made to act like it is happy,
there is little doubt that the search engine has no subjective sense of being
happy. Current computing technology merely implements abstract mathematical
programs, which lack the causal and creative power of natural systems. This does
not preclude the possibility that future technologies may begin to blur the
distinction between such machine happiness and that experienced by an animal or
human.
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love
what you are doing, you will be successful.
Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we
see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that
which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at
the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Happiness is a prolonged or lasting emotional or affective state that feels good or
pleasing. Overlapping states or experiences associated with happiness include
wellbeing, joy, sexual pleasure, delight, health, safety and love, while contrasting
ones include suffering, sadness, grief, and pain.
For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time for war, and a time for peace.
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