What is happiness?

I don’t think it’s overrated. And it is chemicals, but so is everything else in our bodies. It feels good for a reason. Biologically it makes sense to be happy.

Whatever it is, it is fragile and never made to last…....

Hi “boots” – how are you today Happy?

Why the boots moniker, anyway – just curious – it’s nice, but why?

@Zen I’m ok today. A little full from the Easter feast, though. How about yourself?

When I closed my first wis.dm account, I was trying to think of a good, short, and easily pronounced name. Boots came to mind, I liked it, and have stuck with it since.

to me, it’s not over rated and it’s not something you feel 24/7 but when you do feel it, life’s worth living and I feel it looking at my children or being with my love

@boots I like it!
@simone Good for you – congratulations!

What if happiness is an illusion?

@antimatter Tell me what you mean by that, and what you really feel.

Not at all. Being happy is what life is all about.
How can you possibly think that happiness is overrated?

I’m of the opinion that happiness is not over-rated and in fact, it’s certainly something the world needs a lot more of right now considering all the problems that so many people are experiencing all over the place.

I am very happy and for many reasons. Some of those would include having a great family and friends, a good career, I’m healthy, I try my best to enjoy myself each and every day, and I’m very thankful for everything I have.

It’s a question that I have been thinking of for a long time, if we can control our immotions, than we can control our leval of happiness or unhappiness. So what makes us happy or unhappy?
I think I am always happy I don’t know for sure.

Chemicals don’t mean that it is overrated. All of our emotions stem from neurotransmitters in the brain. Happiness is one of the best emotions.

no

we’re almost Jelly-ish again I see :-D

This is happiness – I’m listening to it – won’t you listen to?

Here

Happiness is a product of the phenomena known as consciousness. Scientists nor religion have yet to isolate exactly what causes it to be.

That said, happiness is the greatest thing the universe has to offer.

@Zen. GREAT song. Carole King is excellent. The other ladies were very good too.

@TaoSan, I think happiness is cyclical

I’m not sure what it is, I just know that I prefer it to the alternative.

@AlfredaPrufrock

lol :)

a sense that things make enough sense?

Happiness is often fleeting. It’s hard to be happy in the midst of misery. I can’t imagine that Capt. Phillips was happy while a hostage of Somali Pirates. But I bet he’s happy now. I can’t imagine that I’d be happy if my girlfriend left me. But I’m happy when she’s with me.

But it is always something to strive toward. Just remember. It can always get worse.

My definition of happiness has changed… For me happiness is this feeling I have that I will be fine no matter what happens. In the midst of difficult times, I have a sense of calm, and self-assuredness.

Laughing, having fun, enjoying the company of others isn’t happiness, that is having a pleasurable experience. During my recent breakup, I was sad that my relationship didn’t work out, and I miss him very much; but I am still a whole, complete, being and I am happy with and within myself.

Fluther

I think my happiness relates to peace of mind which relates to those I truly love being healthy and happy themselves

I think happiness is a self-feedback system that tells us when we’ve done something right or well. It encourages us to do those things again. Often it stems from other people’s responses to your efforts.

I don’t buy this shit that it is internal, and something you have control over. I don’t think you can just “decide” to be happy. Happy is the joy we feel when we believe we’ve done something well. It can be experienced alone, but even then, it is not purely in relation to you. It is in relation to our ideas about what other people think is good or cool.

I think there are various thresholds for happiness that are determined by brain chemistry. Your feedback system gets out of whack, and presents an extremely high bar in order to feel happy. It’s so high, you can not reach it. Ever. That’s called depression.

Sometimes the bar is so low, people are happy all the time. Then they sit back, relax, and don’t do shit. That’s called foolishness, laziness, or retirment.

The trick is adjusting your threshold for happiness, so it is difficult enough to make you work hard for it, but is not too difficult. You can adjust your notion of “working hard” so that it fits your need for happiness.

Some of us, though, have an extremely difficult time being happy with ourselves. The only way we can be happy is to get our of our heads, and purely enjoy what we’re doing. In a way, we become not ourselves. We sidestep the threshold thingy and go into another set of rules entirely.

Perversely, this usually happens when around other people, but they have all suspended judgment. For the moment, it’s only about fun. The pure joy of doing… whatever. It’s a great relief for people who can never be happy in the judgmental world.

@daloon- You’re overthinking it. Happiness is just being in a happy state of mind.

@AstroChuck Since when did I not overthink anything? Get with the program, dude! Besides which, if that were all it was, how come I don’t get so much of it?

<<sadly hanging head in shame>>
;-(

I agree with AstroChuck

We have more control than we think. That’s not to say that people will never get sad. That’s going to happen but an overall armed of happiness involves dealing with sorrow in healthy ways. One of the things that makes me unhappy is when I hang on to the sorrow.

I learned that happiness is a state of being and not a destination. It takes work though and sometimes it isn’t easy.

A warm puppy.

I might not have agreed with daloon a year ago, but I do now. When depression sets in, happiness can seem as far away as Alpha Ceti IV. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemy, and we can set the happiness bar so frikken high that no one can reach it.

I welcome every moment of happiness that finds me, because it can go away as quick as a wink.

well, maybe i mis-read the question.. i dunno.. but my other answer is thusly:

A Happy Person is literally someone with great memories. Those memories ought to be recent as well as distant. If you are the opposite of happy now you can begin to create great memories today that will be recent for a while but as you go along, those great memories will become distant and foundational to all the more recent happy memories you create. Then your happiness conversion is complete.

Climbing up the spiral and reaching the level of the yellow and turquoise meme.

@mattbrowne What?! Say what, dude?!

@mattbrowne – Those memes sound like the goal of a Bodhisattva

@fireside – Yes, therefore I said ‘climbing up the spiral’. I read Don Beck and Chris Cowan’s book as part of a business management course a few years ago. Maybe there’s a relation to Bodhisattva’s philosophies. Memes are very useful in everyday life. For Fluther for example the blue meme is very strong.

@mattbrowne – lol, I’d go with Orange or maybe Green.

Happiness is a warm gun.

Bang bang, shoot shoot.

@daloon: The joy we feel when we’ve done something well is what I call Pride, or Contentment, or Satisfaction, or maybe even Validation.

I did not choose to be happy. Like you, I thought it was completely unattainable for me—that my nature and nurture had combined for create a personal hell of a life. I then chose to accept my depression and melancholic temperament as who I am.

I also chose to practice gratitude, and to notice and acknowledge every positive thing in my life (no matter how seemingly insignificant) as a way to distract myself from dwelling on the negative. I progressively came to realize how fortunate I truly am.

For example, instead of berating myself for being sedentary and overweight, I realized how lucky I am to have the luxury of being fat and lazy, and how amazing my body actually is to have no negative health effects from it. By accepting and appreciating my body, I have developed a greater respect for it (and myself) and subsequently I have become more active and changed my relationship with food, and have lost 25 pounds (and counting!).

So not only do I not define personal “happiness” and a continual feeling of joy or pleasure (as outlined in my first comment here); but I believe that while we can’t choose to be happy and flip a switch in our brains, we CAN (and I have) choose to shift our perspective and eventually change our outlook and consequently, our brain chemistry.

Having a scientific/medical background, I know that a case study of one person doesn’t prove anything… but having lived through this transformation is all I have to go on.

@hearkat: as I’m sure you know, you’re not the only one who has used the practice of gratitude to pull themselves up.

I have another path. Hopefully I’ll meet you in that more satisfying place.

@daloon: hopefully we’ll meet regardless of what path we take or place we’re in… we still need a Philly Fluther Meetup!!

Happiness is what you make of it.
We all have choices, and though it seems impossible sometimes, we can always choose a path to happiness.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
~ Mahatma Gandhi