preview

Balanced Psychology And A Full Life

Good Essays

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Happiness is when you want to think what you think what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Describing happiness can seem as ambiguous as accomplishing and achieving it. Without help, we as different individuals all have the same want---- happiness. However, the satisfaction in life can not be defined through just one definition or study. The concept of happiness and it’s sources have been defined through religious, psychological and abstract ground. People in general are happier when they are around a set of people that uplifts them, because psychologically their happiness is affected by their environment. Happiness is made up of comfort engagement and meaning. In life, humanity is all looking for …show more content…

Individually when someone is happy, they can share their emotions and influence the surrounding people by making them smile by sharing their confidence and expectations towards life; making them feel good about themselves. “The first route to greater happiness is hedonic, increasing positive emotion” (Seligman 2). Martin E.P Seligman talks about the greater routes to having a balanced and positive state of mind in his excerpt “A Balanced Psychology and A Full Life”. Seligman lets his audience know that the ultimate objective of positive psychology is to make people cheerful by accepting the social intake on positive emotions, significance and fulfillment. Strangely enough, I conducted an experiment of how happiness has a lot to do with the psychological effects of an individual. I walked into my biggest class, and gave every fifth person a hug. I asked them how they felt after I hugged them, and they all responded with a sense of laughter. When a person hugs someone, their levels of oxytocin decreases, which produces a reduction of stress and anger. Along with this experiment, there is a lot more research to why people should hug others. “making us feel happiness and joy… And it doesn't matter if you're the toucher or touchee. The more you connect with others -- on even the smallest physical level -- the happier you'll be." (Spechler 4). …show more content…

There is not a true definition of the fulfilled enjoyment of life, because it all depends on the individual, what they strive to have with happiness. “ In today’s world, it seems as though everyone is searching for happiness. We’re looking for it when we struggle to achieve that elusive work/life balance” (Cox 1). Happiness is as complicated as a recipe can be. Take this individual, mix them with a hint of pleasure, add the principles of engagement to enhance the flavor of the morals and top it all off with their purpose and meaning. This recipe is happiness within a person. Happiness comes from within. “Happiness is a state of internal fulfillment. Happiness is not the result of external events. We labor under the misconception that external events are within our control” (Harrison 6). Stephanie Harrison’s article in the Huffington Post “Why Happiness Comes From Within” talks about how the definition of what true happiness is defined through what we see it is. From this article, it is learned that the best way to to view happiness is by looking at what makes a human happy. People often look at other outlooks amongst society, because there is always going to be someone better than them. For example, people want to live the life of what they see on Instagram, because they feel that all of these materialistic things make a person happy. We all like to think that happiness is being on an island in the hot sun, but what we fail to realize is

Get Access