“I don’t want to get to the end of
my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the
width of it as well”. Diane Ackerman (poet)
What is this blog about?
Welcome to the Good Life Blog and thank you very much for
all your supportive messages and donations so far! This blog is about having a good life.
This is not always easy.
Sometimes things go horribly wrong and sad events
happen. We, or people close to us, may become seriously ill or we may lose
people we love. We can feel stressed, angry, anxious, depressed
or caught in a rut. We keep making the wrong choices or may struggle with some
aspects of ourselves. We may not know how to deal with a particular life
situation, with our partner or this really difficult friend/colleague/relative.
Sometimes we may project our dissatisfaction, frustration
or resentments onto others and become a difficult person ourselves. Or we may
simply have a grumbling sense that there is a void in our life, or feel that we
have a lack of direction.
A good mood and positive feelings clearly belong to a good life, but they are not everything. The aim of the blog is to look at all kind of different aspects of our lives, which have an affect onto happiness in its broadest sense. The good news is that there is solid scientific evidence that we can achieve a better well-being by making relatively simple (although not always easy!) adjustments. As you will see over the next few months, it is all about getting the right balance between our core needs, our desires and aspirations, values and beliefs but also our personalities, our attitudes, thoughts and habits, as well as our physical resources and energy levels. Our external and life circumstances are also somewhere in the equation, although it turns out that their influence can actually be surprisingly small.
Clearly, everybody is different. Some posts may be less relevant or interesting to you than others. Similarly, some of the methods and strategies discussed over the next months may not work for you whereas others may appear more appealing. On the other hand, it can be sometimes surprisingly inspiring and helpful to explore new things, so you may want to keep your mind open.
What this blog is not about: The blog is not about pursuing a self-centered pleasure-chasing-type of happiness or mere ‘positive thinking’ while trying to ignore, or worse deny, all negative things that life throws at us. It has been shown that trying to suppress negative emotions is counterproductive and actually amplifies them in the long run.3 Instead, the blog is about learning to accept the ‘bumps in the road’ and having a good life despite of them, which also has a positive effect on the people around us.
Wherever possible, the information on this blog is going to be evidence-based. This means that the material is going to be based on scientific publications and books founded on these publications, which have been written by scientists working in this field. However, I am not a psychologist or other human health care professional. If you are in a serious personal emotional crisis or if you suspect that you are affected by a mental illness, I strongly advise you to seek professional help. For further information about this blog, please see the Disclaimer and Privacy Policy.
To start off with, we will need to look at some definitions, so that you know what I am talking about in the next few months:
A good mood and positive feelings clearly belong to a good life, but they are not everything. The aim of the blog is to look at all kind of different aspects of our lives, which have an affect onto happiness in its broadest sense. The good news is that there is solid scientific evidence that we can achieve a better well-being by making relatively simple (although not always easy!) adjustments. As you will see over the next few months, it is all about getting the right balance between our core needs, our desires and aspirations, values and beliefs but also our personalities, our attitudes, thoughts and habits, as well as our physical resources and energy levels. Our external and life circumstances are also somewhere in the equation, although it turns out that their influence can actually be surprisingly small.
Clearly, everybody is different. Some posts may be less relevant or interesting to you than others. Similarly, some of the methods and strategies discussed over the next months may not work for you whereas others may appear more appealing. On the other hand, it can be sometimes surprisingly inspiring and helpful to explore new things, so you may want to keep your mind open.
What this blog is not about: The blog is not about pursuing a self-centered pleasure-chasing-type of happiness or mere ‘positive thinking’ while trying to ignore, or worse deny, all negative things that life throws at us. It has been shown that trying to suppress negative emotions is counterproductive and actually amplifies them in the long run.3 Instead, the blog is about learning to accept the ‘bumps in the road’ and having a good life despite of them, which also has a positive effect on the people around us.
Wherever possible, the information on this blog is going to be evidence-based. This means that the material is going to be based on scientific publications and books founded on these publications, which have been written by scientists working in this field. However, I am not a psychologist or other human health care professional. If you are in a serious personal emotional crisis or if you suspect that you are affected by a mental illness, I strongly advise you to seek professional help. For further information about this blog, please see the Disclaimer and Privacy Policy.
To start off with, we will need to look at some definitions, so that you know what I am talking about in the next few months:
What is happiness?
- Various definitions of happiness have been used throughout history. Aristotle (384-322 BC) already distinguished between hedonia (= good feelings, happy mood) and eudaimonia (= general sense of well-being and prosperity).1
- The term ‘happiness’ is slightly unclear as it means different things to different people; it is mostly used synonymously with pleasure, joy and high spirits, so could be interpreted as a measure of mood (hedonia as described by Aristotle).
- Interestingly, there seem to be some cultural differences with people in ‘Western’ societies predominantly seeking happiness with elements of high-arousal such as excited and joyful positive emotions, whereas in many Asian countries people often seem to prefer a more low-arousal type of happiness characterized by peace, harmony, mastery.4 However, as we will see there are also significant individual differences, e.g. due to our different personalities.
- As the term happiness is ambiguous and has somewhat superficial connotations for many people (including many psychologists working in this field), the term ‘well-being’ seems to be often preferred to describe the more profound sense of contentment with life.2,3,4 This includes both, the hedonia and eudaimonia components of Aristotle’s definition.
- In general you can assume that even if I mention ‘happiness’, I generally use the term to include the more long-term happiness in the sense of contentment and a good quality of life, rather than just meaning a temporary happy mood. When I talk about well-being, I will generally mean the subjective mental well-being rather than the pure physical well-being, although our physical health obviously also plays a role in how we feel.
- The term subjective well-being describes how people evaluate their own lives.4
- According to the well-being theory2 by Martin Seligman, one of the main researchers in this field, the well-being of a person is largely influenced by following components:
o
Positive emotions
o
Engagement: The experience of loosing oneself in an
activity, occupation or task
o
Positive relationships with other people
o
Meaning: The sense of a deeper purpose in life; serving
something that you believe is bigger than the self (not necessarily in a
religious sense!)
o
Accomplishment and self-determination: The sense of mastery
and control over the environment
Regarding the first point
of positive emotions (PE), it may also be necessary to consider the negative emotions
(NE) a person is experiencing, as PE and NE can be independent from each other.
The combination of all PE and all NE can also be described as a ratio
(positivity ratio=PE:NE).3
So if even if I have a
high positivity ratio (many positive and few negative emotions) but have a lack
of purpose in life, feel little achievement and/or if I do not have close and
secure relationships with other people, my well-being
may be somewhat limited due to decreased fulfillment.
- Flourishing describes a high level of well-being combined with effective functioning. This means that flourishing people have a high level of mental well-being and live successful and prosperous lives, although not necessarily in a financial sense.2,3
A truly amazing person- What can we
learn from…:
Tegla Loroupe is a Kenyan long-distance
runner who did not have an easy start. Her father did not want her to go to
school, but instead expected her to stay at home to look after her younger
siblings. Despite his resistance, she managed to attend school- this was over 6
miles away from her home and Tegla Loroupe had to get there on foot. At the
school, her talent for running was discovered. With some support of her mother
and an older sister she was able to pursue a very successful professional running
career, although her father originally tried to ban her from this as well.
After she retired from active racing, she became the UN Ambassador for sport, and also got involved in conflict
resolution between rivaling tribes, campaigning for women’s rights and opening
a school for children affected by violent conflict and HIV Aids through the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation. Additionally,
she led the Refugee Olympic Team at
the Rio Olympics.
You can read more about
the inspiring life of Tegla Loroupe here:
What we can learn from Tegla Loroupe
is that it is possible for everybody to overcome obstacles by persistence and
continuous striving towards a goal. She expressed this it in her own words: “I
think I have the strength to prove that even small people can do something
big.”
The
other important point is that achieving something big and helping others along
the way helps you to experience the ‘width’ of your life, increasing your own
well-being not only on a superficial (hedonic) level but through a deeper sense
of fulfillment.
Preview:
Throughout
this year, we will look at well-being and how to increase it from all sort of
different angles. But before we do that, the post next week will first look
into the question why it is worth to actively try increase our well-being. Some of the answers may surprise you!
References and further reading:
1. Kringelbach ML, Berridge KC. The functional
neuroanatomy of pleasure and happiness. Discov Med. 2010;9(49):579-587.
2. Seligman MEP. Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness
and Well-Being- and How to Achieve Them. Nicholas Brealey Publishing; London,
UK. 2011.
3. Fredrickson B. Positivity: Groundbreaking Research
to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive. Oneworld Publications; Oxford,
England. 2010.
4. Diener E, Biswas-Diener R. Happiness: Unlocking
the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Blackwell Publishing; Oxford, UK. 2008.
If you found this information helpful, please consider supporting the campaign under Just Giving. Of course it is also great if you choose to support another charity or do a practical good deed, but it would be nice if you could let me know that you have done this because you felt inspired by this campaign. Please also feel free to share this post and let me know if you have any constructive feedback- good or bad!
Great introduction. I feel that part of the problem with a lot of the "unhappiness" nowadays is the misconception that to be happy we must be in a constant state of "high spirit/euphoria" instead of aiming for a well balanced, content well-being.
ReplyDeleteThank you for all the info, and the obvious amount of time and love you are putting on this.
Looking forward next week;)
Thank you so much for the positive feedback. I think that you are quite right that sometimes we tend to chase after the wrong 'type' of happiness, because it makes us feel great in the moment. A study has also shown that people can actually become unhappy if they are too fixated on permanently feeling well, but more on that to follow next time!
ReplyDeletePetra thank you for the fantastic work you're doing here.
ReplyDeleteHappiness is indeed a broad subject that has a variety of meanings. People view happiness very differently. Personally I think happiness is an inside job, anything that comes from the outside should be seen as a bonus to whatever happiness is already there. Most people have the wrong idea about happiness, believing that they can derive it from money, a job, material things, other people extra. But the great revelation about happiness is that those very things even when attained can trigger so much unhappiness. This takes me back to what Caco said that it's important to aim at a well balanced well being.
Hi Jo,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great point. You are absolutely spot on and probably psychic! The post next week is going to be exactly about what you said: the fact that our external circumstances are an unreliable source of happiness and how to tap onto our inner resources to achieve sustainable well-being.