Paper About Happiness

Within The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, he mentions that there are two ancient truths concerning how the mind works. The first truth is the foundational idea of the book: the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict with each other. The second truth is Shakespeare’s idea about how “thinking makes it so.” (or, as Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.”) Like a rider, on the back of an elephant, the conscious, reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does. Nowadays, we know the cause of these divisions, and a few ways to help the rider and the elephant work as a better team. We can improve this ancient idea today by explaining why most people’s minds have a bias toward seeing threats and engaging in useless worry. To change this bias, we can use three techniques to increase happiness, one ancient, and two very new.

Mahatma Gandhi one defined happiness as “when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Barring any better definition of happiness from either positive psychologists, self-help gurus, or any other academic source, I tend to think this is a great summation of the definition of happiness. Gandhi doesn’t say anything about how these things make you feel, rather looks at it from a point of view of harmony between thoughts, expressions, and actions. Since one single accepted definition of happiness doesn’t seem to exist, and happiness is different for everyone, this begs the question; how can you increase your own personal level of happiness?

With everything Chris and his son went through it would seem almost impossible to be optimistic in that situation. Optimism was a crucial factor in his successes. It brought him to a place where life was better, allowing him to overcome dire circumstances despite the doubts of others. When his wife left him, it seemed it would be impossible to survive with the internship that gave no salary. It seemed like their life would take a turn for the worse. However, the optimism and belief that Chris had in his abilities led to him finally being able to defeat the negative outlook of others on his choices. His positive outlook on his situation gave him the strength to beat the odds against him. His chances to get into the internship seemed very little, but he had hopes to make it in. The day of his interview, he did not have time to dress appropriately, but he took his bad situation and turn it into a positive

In the biographical film The Pursuit of Happyness, the central character Chris Gardner is a self- employed salesman with a girlfriend and five year old son, who has spent his life savings on medical machines. The sale of the medical machines is not producing consistent income and the lifestyle of his family suffers leading to his girlfriend leaving him, but Chris insists on his son being left with him. During this time Chris life changes and he becomes homeless with his five year old son and his determination is to succeed. Chris is able to enter an internship where he is

According to the Dictionary, “happiness is the mental or emotional state of well being which can be defined by others. A pleasurable or satisfying experience.”. Of course that’s true, the feeling of happiness is what it’s scientifically defined as, but happiness is much more than that. Happiness could be a certain sound, a smell, even feeling a certain piece of clothing or a thick warm blanket. People spend hours even years trying to work for what they think is happiness. They work for hours to get large amounts of money, but they never find the happiness their looking for. That’s because happiness isn't materialistic, happiness isn't something you can buy with expensive items. Even though some people believe you can buy happiness, that’s

In The Happiness Hypothesis Jonathan Haidt talks about how our brains work and how best to find happiness with the different ways it works. Haidt describes the different ways a positive and negative person’s brain works and how each can find happiness through various and different methods. He also discusses different aspects of society that can affect our level of happiness. All of these things can be considered to find the best way to raise your level of happiness.

The story of the movie The Pursuit of Happyness directed by Gabriele Muccino portrays a family who struggles with finding enough money to pay taxes and afford living expenses. The movie takes a place in San Francisco during the 80s. The two main characters are the father Chris Gardner and his son Christopher, Will Smith and Jaden Smith respectively. Gardner tries to support his family. But every time he attempts to make things better, they always end up worse. Gardner in the story wonders on "how to be happy?" He earns his money by selling the bone density

Although this film is disadvantaging to many people, it is also very beneficial. I think people that come from the lower class or an abusive household can really benefit from this film. The main point of this film is to show people that you can achieve anything you want to do no matter what background you come from, and although it might be hard because of economical/ personal issues you are not less of a person than anyone and you can still be successful. I love the idea of success because it doesn’t really have a set definition. You don’t necessarily need money to be/feel successful. You can work at Subway and still be successful while a twelve time Oscar winning actor can be successful. You sort of carve out your own success and make your own definition for it. This movie will also teach people that they are not on their own. Although you might think nobody is there for you, when you enter a room you don’t know what everyone is thinking or how everyone feels; you might now even know everyone. It is kind of like when you’re putting together a puzzle, you put certain pieces together and you get closer to finishing and you just need to keep trying to solve the puzzle because if you give up you just wasted your money on a puzzle

It all started after the era of ‘Good Feeling’, which did not last very long. The states of America were divided into three sections; the Northern states which were manufacturers, the Southern states which were made of family farms, and the Western states which had big plantation farms and used slaves to do the work. They all had their selfish reasons to be split apart, and none of them did not care how their actions affected the other section, which affected the nation.

What is being happy actually like? With the money, school, work, friends, family, etc. issues, how is it possible to become fully happy if there is always something that could be interfering with it? We live in America that promises us to to be all equal and can experience the “life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” But every news show that’s turned on, we hear about a 13 year old “entertaining” child who’s trending on every social media network about her disrespecting her mother more often than the issue on two American adults making terrorist threats and waving a confederate flag at a black child’s birthday party. We Americans get the free education until we graduate to find out that we actually don’t know what

The everlasting question of "What is Happiness?" has been inquired since the creation of men. Unfortunately, the only agreed answer that humanity came up with is that all the creatures seek happiness, but no one has the concrete directions for achieving it. Our libraries are overwhelmed with books about happiness, but no dictionary definition explains which path men must take to be happy. No mathematician gave us the axiom which we could use to solve the problem of living in bliss. No scientist brought up the formula of fusing certain ingredients to produce the "drink of happiness". Still almost all the people consider that their ultimate purport in

The thematic significance of death is important in all literary pieces, but specifically in The Stranger because death is an all encompassing theme that stretches out to each character. This is intentionally done to convey that death is inevitable and the belief of no afterlife is accepted by our main character, Meursault. The novel is in the point of view of Meursault, who does not see the point in love, work, or friendship, and is generally uninterested in life. Because of this, the theme of dying helps better exemplify the universe’s utter indifference towards humanity and its ability to illuminate the philosophy of the absurd within the piece as a whole.

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” -- Denis Waitley

Psychologists have not located assured causes that lead people to well-being. David G. Myers in his article “The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People” published in the American Psychologist (2000) and Michael Wiederman in “Why It's So Hard to Be Happy” published in the Scientific American Mind (2007), discuss the reasons which lead people to be happy, and the factors which contribute to unhappiness.

"A library of wisdom, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it." -- Plato