Happiness – Is it an attitude or state of mind?

RGS Asthana

Senior Member IEEE

Figure 2: Sri Krishna giving sermon to Arjuna [3]

Prelude

Some say that happiness is an attitude and some say it is state of mind. You can make your opinion and to help you arrive at an opinion, I advise you to read following article as well as quotes [1].

“I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.“

- Martha Washington

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

- Charles Spurgeon

“There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.”

- Robert Collier

An cool approach to happiness which everyone can practice is to enjoy every insignificant happening in everyday life; knowing well that in everyone’s life existence is fixed but not known to anyone so enjoy every moment, enjoy life and feel happy. One need to realize that happiness is not attained by absence of problems but ability to deal with them with positive psychology.

The definition of happiness includes pleasure, contentedness, satisfaction, cheerfulness, joyfulness, gladness, delight, light-heartedness, wellbeing and enjoyment. For example, some are happy

· Having a best friend or even having a friend who is an idiot,

· With loving and being loved,

· Being motivated to stay fit,

· Receiving an unexpected gift or chocolate,

· Listening to old songs

· Living to the moment,

· Spending time with their mom, seeing their mother smile,

· Watching the person in life cook for them,

· Sleeping diagonally on bed, getting an hour of proper sleep,

· Eating whatever they want and not putting on weight,

· Shopping,

· Positive thinking,

· With an outing with their camera,

· Following their heart,

· Texting with someone who is a desk away,

· Creating,

· With home made not a choice but an attitude,

· When someone’s happiness is their happiness that is also interpreted as love,

· With success not being key to happiness but realizing that, in fact, happiness is key to success,

It is well known fact that happiness in life can be achieved once you have good health/fitness, friends and family, fun and entertainment, satisfaction at work, and last but not the least just good enough finances. For some all items may be required to achieve happiness and for a few some items out of the above may become optional or even useless. Please refer once again to the list of items given at the beginning of this article. These items in turn can easily be classified or mapped to the items given in the figure 1 placed below:

Figure 1: Mapping of happiness Vision

Salaried person when retire, they really don’t know what to do in day-time after retirement. Though in job they had very little time to think about themselves and their families and they only followed a routine day in and day out. But after retirement they have a vacuum in the office time as everyone at home has his/her routine in which just retired person is not included. In an attempt to stay fit they take walking or running as a regime. I know a person who started walking after retirement till he was tired. He would walk say 20 Km from home till he had no strength to walk back home. However, his wife would pick him up in a car to take him back home. If she came early then he would refuse to sit in the car so she would drive further to a coffee shop and wait for him to arrive. Is this a way to pass time or a method to derive happiness?

Here is a small story about happiness. Ram and Prem were neighbors. Ram was a poor farmer and Prem was a landlord.

Ram used to be very relaxed and happy. He never bothered to close the doors and windows of his house at night. He had deep sound sleeps. Although he had no money he was peaceful.

Prem used to be very tense always. He will never forget to close the doors and windows of his house at night. He could not sleep well as he was always worried that someone might break open his safes and steal away his money. He envied the peaceful Ram.

One day, Prem called Ram and gave him a boxful of cash saying, “Look my dear friend. I am blessed with plenty of wealth. I find you in poverty. So, take this cash and live in prosperity.”

Ram was overwhelmingly happy. He was joyful throughout the day. Night came. Ram went to bed as usual. But, to day, he could not sleep. He went and closed the doors and windows. He still could not sleep. He began to keep on looking at the box of cash. The whole night he was disturbed. As soon as day broke, Ram took the box of cash to Prem. He gave away the box to Prem saying, “Dear Friend, I am poor. But, your money took away peace from me. Please bear with me and take back your money.”

Moral of the above story: Money cannot buy everything. You need to learn to be satisfied with what so ever you have and you will always be happy.

As per the Wiki, the phrase Gross National Happiness (GNH); is a phrase coined in 1972 by Bhutan's fourth Dragon King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. It represents a commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's culture based on Buddhist spiritual values instead of western material development gauged by gross domestic product (GDP). I was reading Times of India newspaper in Apr 2016 and came across a news item which read, Bhutan measures prosperity of its people by GNH and not GDP, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced in April 2016 a 'happiness ministry' to measure the state's growth. "The state will be made responsible for happiness and tolerance of its citizens and will rope in psychologists to counsel people how to be always happy," said the chief Minister. United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the only country to create posts of minister of happiness in the government.

Traditions also play a big role in happiness. I was talking to an elderly person and he narrated an interesting episode. He said one fine morning my grand son came and asked his grandfather where his feet are. His Grand father was surprised but showed him his feet and the grand son touched his grand father’s feet and became visibly very happy. Grand father asked his grand son why he is happy then grand son replied that my father touches your feet daily in the morning and he is very happy so he (grand son) thought that there must be something good in touching feet.

The scientific explanation for the happiness derived by touching feet of an elderly person is that when you touch the feet of the elderly, their hearts emit positive thoughts and energy, which they transmit through their hands and toes. In essence, the completed circuit enables flow of energy and increases cosmic energy, switching on a quick connect between two minds and hearts. Your fingers and palms become the ‘receptor’ of energy and the feet of the other person become the ‘giver’ of energy. How true is this I really don’t know? But this is the reason given in Hindu religious books and of course a lot depends on the perception and belief.

A lady who mentors parents in a school told me an interesting episode. Once she was mentoring about 400 parents in a school when one parent narrated an interesting episode. He said that recently he saw his elder daughter scolding his younger son the same way I use to scold her. He realized his mistake and called his daughter and said sorry for his bad behavior. This brought a lot of happiness to him as his daughter’s behavior towards his son also changed over time bringing happiness to his son also.

Here are a few rules for happiness in a marriage:

· Both husband and wife should not be angry at the same time,

· Never yell at each other unless house is on fire,

· If one has to win an argument then let it be your spouse,

· If you must need to criticize than it must be done with most care and love,

· In a discussion never bring up mistakes from the past,

· Try to resolve an argument and then go to bed,

· Make it a mandatory habit to at least give compliment to your spouse once a day,

· When you have done something wrong accept it and ask for forgiveness, and

· It takes two to make a quarrel and one in wrong does the most talking. So now you know how not to quarrel.

Here are a few interesting quotes on happy marriage:

“Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.”

Marilyn Monroe

“In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.”

Gerald Brenan

Harvard University recommends 20 habits [2], which once cultivated are sure to bring happiness in an individual:

· Be grateful. Have a grateful heart that is appreciative of life’s beauty you’re automatically filled with happiness.

· Choose your friends carefully. The most important external factors affecting individual happiness are human relationships. So if you want to be happy, choose friends who are optimistic, who appreciate you as you are, and who can make your life richer, bigger, more fun, and more meaningful.

· Cultivate compassion. When we try to step into other people’s shoes and understand a situation from another’s point of view, we’re more likely to handle the situation with compassion, objectivity and effectiveness. This approach will help in reducing conflicts and may lead to more happiness.

· Keep learning. Learning keeps us young and dreams not only help us to think about future but also keep us alive.

· Become a problem solver. Happy people are more likely to become problem solvers. When they encounter a challenge in life, they don’t beat themselves up and fall into a depressive state. Instead, they face up to the challenge and channel their energies to find creative solutions.

· Do what you love. Since we spend over one-third of our adult life working, loving what we do has a huge impact on our overall happiness. So do what you most like it is a key to happiness.

· Live only in the vicinity of the present. When you feel depressed, you’re living in the past. When you feel worried or anxious, you’re living in the future. But when you feel content, happy and peaceful, you’re living in the present. So always try to live in present.

· Laugh often. Laughter is the most powerful anecdote to anger or depression. Research has shown that the simple act of curving the corners of your mouth can increase your feeling of happiness. So try to find humor and laughter in life’s everyday struggles.

· Practice Forgiveness. Resentment and anger are forms of self-punishment. When you forgive, you’re actually practicing kindness to yourself. So learn to forgive those who have hurt you in the past. So learn to forgive and become a better person.

· Say thanks often. Always be appreciative of the blessings in your life. And it’s equally important to express your appreciation to those who’ve made your life better in some way, big or small. So do not miss any situation where you can say ‘thank you’.

· Create deeper connections. Our happiness multiplies when we connect and bond with another human being on a deeper level.

· Keep your agreement. Our self-esteem is built on the agreements we’ve made with ourselves. And high self-esteem has a direct correlation to happiness. So keep your agreements with others and with yourself.

· Meditate: According to Harvard, people who take 8 sessions of mindfulness meditation training are, on average, 20% happier than a control group. Such training can lead to structural brain changes including increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion and introspection.

· Focus on what you’re doing. When you put your mind, heart and soul into what you’re doing, you’re creating a happiness state – called the “flow.” When you’re living in the flow, you’re less likely to care about what others may think of you, and less bothered by things that are not that important.

· Be optimistic. For happy people, the glass is always half-full. Do not imagine the very worst-case scenario every time you face a challenge, and then train yourself to reverse that tendency. Ask yourself what good can come out of the situation or what you can learn from it. Optimism very often leads to success and happiness.

· Love unconditionally. Loving someone unconditionally does not mean that you need to spend all your time with them or help them figure out their problems. Unconditional love means accepting people as they are, and allowing them to find their own ways, at their own pace.

· Don’t give up. Unfinished projects and repeated defeats inevitably dampen one’s self-esteem. If you’ve made up your mind to do something, see it through. Don’t give up until you succeed. Remember, failure is temporary but defeat is permanent. And defeat only occurs when you give up.

· Try your best and then let go. Everyone has limitations, and things don’t always turn out to be what we’d like them to be – despite our efforts. So always give your best in a situation, and then let go. Let events run their course.

· Take care of yourself. A healthy body is the first step towards happiness. If you have poor health, it’s very difficult to be happy no matter how hard you try. However, one can always do well in areas in one’s might, i.e., eat well, exercise and find time to rest. Take good care of your body, your mind and your spirit.

· Give back. Doing well is one of the surest ways to feel good. When people do well, their brains become active in the very same reward center that is stimulated when they experience other rewards.

Please note that when we talk about happiness in marriage and Harvard suggestions for happiness, many points do overlap and if you learn how to be happy as an Individual then life is like a cup full of happiness.

Joy is the root of happiness

In his book, Joy on Demand [11], the Google veteran, Chade-Meng Tan describes his experience from “constantly miserable” to a much happier guy now; How did he get there? Sometime in his mid-20s, he discovered that he wasn’t stuck with self-loathing nature; he found, is changeable with very little effort. He learned that to nurture joy is, in fact, the secret to success; no matter where you are, you can access this source of happiness.

People learn how to enjoy and appreciate a moment as they get older. A small 2014 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research [12], revealed a fact that older people name everyday positive moments like even sipping a few drops of water whereas teens cited extraordinary moments only, such as graduation or a first car or name of first boy or girl friend as defining. “Ordinary moments that make up everyday life tend to be overlooked when the future seems boundless,” the authors wrote. “However, these ordinary experiences increasingly contribute to happiness as people come to realize their days are numbered.”

Chade-Meng Tan told CBC News [11], “Right now, I’m a little thirsty, so I will drink a bit of water. And when I do that, I experience a thin slice of joy both in space and time. It’s not like ‘Yay!”” he notes in Joy on Demand. “It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of nice.’ The main aim is to derive joy from each little thing you do and when aggregated it becomes equivalent to lot of happiness.

Chade-Meng Tan tells that everyone has immeasurable capacity of natural characteristic happiness, and you only need to learn the art to tap into this resource. If you learn this art your brains will work better, your bodies will function better, you will achieve greater success at work, and you will find yourself highly smart to the people around you. This, in fact, is the right track to joy hence it leads you to the true happiness.

Can we measure happiness?

Personal happiness is something we all aspire to; so what about national happiness? Happiness can only be measured for a group, community or nation. It is not possible to measure happiness for an individual as it is highly subjective. How do we know that someone is happier than other? In fact, we cannot. The term ‘Happier’’ here represents quality and not quantity. It can only be felt. It can only be sensed. It can only be appreciated or ignored. But it cannot be measured.

For any measurement you need quantity. And for that you need numbers. You therefore need to do something to generate numbers. Therefore, one does happiness measurement only for social scientific purposes through a ‘survey.’ A lot of people answer the same closed questions [limited options], either in face-to-face interviews or on questionnaires presented on the web. Sample question and answer:

An example of such a primary scale is the combination of the single question: “Taking all things together, would you say you are ...? Options [4]:

□ Happy

□ Very happy

□ Not very happy

□ Not at all happy

Table 1 below gives happiness frequency distribution for above question asked from 200 individuals. We define the corresponding relative frequency f (j):= n (j)/N and the cumulative frequency

F (j):=F (j–1)+ f (j), with F (1):= f (1)

Table 1: Happiness frequency distribution in a hypothetical sample [1]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frequency

Response option ``Absolute ``Relative ``Cumulative

j (rating) n(j) f(j) F(j)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 “not at all happy” 20 0.10 `0.10

2 “not too happy” 40 0.20 `0.30

3 “very happy” 80 0.40 `0.70

4 “happy” 60 0.30 `1.00

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOTAL N = 200 1.00

This method only gives distribution of happiness in the population. These index numbers are so-called statistics.

The happiness surveys polled people around the globe on, how happy and satisfied people are with life. In such survey Denmark came at number one and the Scandinavian country came in at No. 2 on the World Database of Happiness of 2008. According to Webster [5], happiness is "a state of well-being and contentment." The phrase Gross National Happiness (GNH) is a measurement of the collective happiness in a nation. The term was coined in 1972 by Bhutan's fourth Dragon. If you would like to use the GNH Index or get your own assessment of your well-being, go to happycounts.org and sign up. You can create a group to use the GNH index for a community, project or population for free. If you would like to add questions to the survey or analyze your group’s data by demographics, email us for a coupon to do this without the fee [6].

Sustainable Happiness [9]

Sometimes, our degree of happiness dwindles because kins, team mates and friends around bring up their concerns and anxieties. If your wife has severe pain in leg, will you be happy? (Like Gautama Buddha became unhappy due to what was going around him). Why did Buddha leave his family? Happiness for Siddhartha and his wife Yasodhara (He used to call her Gopa) was not from happy life of wealth and status, as a common man would generally think. The source of their happiness was opening their hearts and sharing their deepest thoughts with each other. They had their own dreams — to find answers concerning the spiritual quest and the renewal of society. There is saying that Siddhartha went only after taking his wife’s as well as father’s consent. No matter what is the true story, leaving his wife and son would have been a very bold decision. He returned only when he acquired true wisdom and most of his family members then became his disciple. For Buddha, the path to happiness starts from an understanding of the root causes of suffering. He and his disciples spread his message of attaining peace and thus true sustained happiness to the world. The first and second verses of the Dhammapada [13], talk about suffering and happiness. Buddha's contemporaries described him as "ever-smiling". But Buddha's smile comes from a deep equanimity from within and is not a smile of a self-satisfied or a materially-rich man.

To be happy on sustainable basis, one needs to stay healthy in body, mind and soul. It is very important to keep in mind that actual happiness and wellbeing that is enduring and sustainable, it must encompass other people too. In fact, a person who is truly happy is not affected. The following quote may answer many questions?

“Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.”

- Gautama Buddha

Can Happiness be dependent on other factors [10]

Do not let others govern how happy you are? If you do so chances are that you’ll get hurt in the long run. True happiness is independent of all factors irrespective of what is status of others. It does not mean that you are totally immune to your surroundings. You cannot be very happy if your wife or brother is very sick. If this happens then you have reached state of nirvana - a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, nor desire, or sense of self and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. It represents the final goal of Buddhism [8].

Will our state of happiness improve, if we stop asking others how happy they are? Stop reading miserable social conditions or don't bother about the power struggle of all living beings (detachment).

In fact, there is nothing like happiness which is governed by others, if it’s dependent then it’s not happiness.

Do happy people have better health?

Being "happy" is something that feels naturally good, but defining exactly what happiness is can be a challenge. Happiness may be optimism, joy, success, and well-being, or a combo of all or even none for some people.

Happiness is positively good for health. It is more because happy people tend to eat healthier, exercise more, and get better sleep.

We know that happiness and health are related [7], but the question of causality was the big issue. After all, being unhealthy, especially if you have an illness that interferes with your normal activities of living, can hinder your feelings of well-being. But we now have evidence that causality moves in the other direction as well. In other words, happiness helps a person remain healthier and live longer. In fact, if you are happy generally you will be healthy vice versa may be true; i.e. if you are not healthy then you would not be happy.

This does not mean that unhappy people have brought bad things on themselves. Often their unhappiness could be due to the genetic make-up or to occurrence of bad events that have befallen them through no fault of their own. But they can help their health a bit by doing the things that make people happy, e.g., being grateful, having good social relationships and giving support to others, having purpose and meaning in life, and so forth.

Conclusion

I give below a few examples and reader needs to derive his/her own conclusions:

Example 1

One day a young lady asked her father, “What is achievement? Is it hard work or luck or both? Does it lead to happiness?” Father replied, “Achievement is like a bank locker which has two keys say one key is for hard work and other is for luck. However, locker opens only when both keys are used together; one by you and other by the bank manager. In a hypothetical scenario, say luck key is with god and you don’t know when he will put his key. So you have only option is to carry on with hard work, i.e., your key is in the locker always and as and when god puts his key the locker will open.”

Happiness thus obtained is not true happiness but temporary.

Example 2

I was watching a TV program and there were 3 participants singing together. There were three selectors and at the end of the song one selector has to choose only one participant. At the end of song all selectors gave a standing ovation to the singers. To me it looked as if all 3 singers have done very well.

However, selector chose a participant whose mother had expired a week before due to cancer and still the participant had worked throughout undeterred for this performance which was her as well as her mother’s dream.

This reminded me of famous Bhagwat Gita’s verse (see figure 2):

figure is at the top of the article

Figure 2: Sri Krishna giving sermon to Arjuna [3]

"Sri Krishna said to Arjuna: You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty."

(Bhagwat Gita: Chapter Two verse 47)

A simple approach to happiness is to learn to enjoy every small event in everyday life; knowing very well that in everyone’s life days are numbered so one has the limited choice to either pass them happily or with sadness.

Is happiness having an achievement? Many will say yes. But if you feel happy at having an achievement; you are likely to feel sad if there is failure. The best solution is, therefore, having expectation equal to zero. Easily said then done. But if one can achieve it then there could be perpetual situation of near happiness. This is in my view is a complex approach to happiness.

References

[1] Martha Washington quotes

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martha_washington.html

[2] Top 20 Habits for Happiness, Health, Productivity and Success

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/top-20-habits-for-happine_b_9835174

[3] Bhagwat Gita Blog

http://gita-blog.blogspot.com/2014/08/karmanye-vaadhika-raste-maa-phaleshu.html

[4] Methods for measurement of happiness

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_quer/introtext_measures3.pdf

[5] How do you measure happiness?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/measure-happiness.htm

[6] Positive Psychology News: Five Ways to Measure Happiness