What is needed for happiness. Be happy with what you have and where you are
How often happiness seems to us like an illusory dream, which we chase, fight for, and, having achieved, for some reason we do not feel satisfied. Why happiness eludes a person and what it ultimately consists of. This is what we will think about today.
“Man is created for happiness, like a bird for flight,” - you are probably familiar with this phrase (V.G. Korolenko, “Paradox”). However, how much do we understand the meaning of these profound words? Think about it: we were all originally created happy. And when you were little, you didn’t need any reasons to be happy. You only needed reasons to be unhappy. The first thing you need to understand once and for all: man is born for happiness.
What happens that, over time, we lose the ability to be happy for nothing?
Why do we fight for happiness?
And, really, why fight for what was given to us from birth? The happiness of other people often seems to us something very natural, while for our own we are looking for a reason. And we try to earn happiness, promising it to ourselves, like candy, for some achievements. It is not surprising that happiness is like candy - sweet, but quickly melts.
However, this happens because we are taught that to be happy you need a reason. This attitude is passed on from generation to generation, and happiness gradually turns into a secret that we are trying to unravel. So, what does a person need to be happy?
Secrets of happiness
First secret lies in the fact that the joy of life is hidden not in happy moments, but in the very feeling of happiness. After all, as you already know, happiness exists in the life of every person from birth. This doesn't mean you should laugh when you're sad. No, real happiness sounds like music, and it can be in the background. A happy person has troubles, but they are just events against the background of a happy life. And tears are just beads strung on a strong thread - happiness.
Useful tips
It’s no secret that every person has his own ideas about happiness, and completely different things can make him happy and satisfied with life.
However, due to the similar characters of people born under the same zodiac sign, happiness can be divided into 12 parts: each piece will go to one of the zodiac signs.
What is the happiness of each of the signs?
Why do you need this and not another?
How can you make yourself happy? Let's look at each sign separately.
♈ ARIES
Aries are very freedom-loving individuals; they do not tolerate any restrictions. Making Aries happy is easy - give him the opportunity to do what he likes, be ahead and decide everything yourself.
Aries are used to building their happiness alone; if they lack something, they go and take it: they achieve, earn, or strive to get what they want in other ways. This is their happiness - achieve what you want using your capabilities.
ADVICE: We should not forget that collective efforts sometimes do not harm, but bring exceptional benefits. In a rush to do everything yourself, you should stop and give the opportunity do something for others. This is especially true for Aries women who are unhappy in marriage: they take on too much!
♉ CALF
This zodiac sign loves a luxurious life; not a single Taurus will refuse to surround himself with beautiful things. Taurus's happiness depends largely on material things, but also on physical condition. If Taurus feels good physically, he has confidence in financial situation for the coming years and to him lives quite comfortably- you can be sure that he is happy!
More irrepressible natures, however, want everything they own to be at least a little better than others. This especially applies to women who want to look 100% or better than anyone else.
Another important thing for the happiness of any Taurus is to have someone nearby who can truly appreciate.
ADVICE: The main thing is not to spare money on what will bring you true pleasure!
Happiness the joy of life
♊ TWINS
Gemini has seven Fridays a week, so it’s very difficult to say what they’ll want on one moment or another, and what can bring the decisive point in their basket of happiness. But more often it means freedom in communication, new books, new impressions and new acquaintances.
ADVICE: Bring joy and fun to others, make them laugh, give positive emotions, then you will easily become happier.
♋ CANCER
The happiness of any Cancer is great and friendly family. Only surrounded family and friends, with their good health and well-being, Cancers can be happy, because this sign is very attached to family and home.
Also without small and protected place, where they could go and where they could hide, Cancers cannot imagine their happiness. Any Cancer needs a shell where it’s warm, cozy, but most importantly – safe!
ADVICE: Learn to respect, appreciate and pamper yourself, find time not only for family members and at home, but also for myself personally, then you won't be able to say that you gave best years others, making them happy, but forgot about themselves. Healthy selfishness has never made anyone unhappy!
♌ A LION
Leo's happiness lies in the ability to express himself the way he wishes. He does not tolerate being told how to live and what to do. Besides, any Leo will be happy get recognition, admiration and have a sea of fans, and he will certainly strive for this. That is why among actors and show business people there are so many representatives of the Leo sign.
Leo will feel happiness in being special, standing out from the crowd. This happiness is somewhat similar to the happiness of Aquarius, who also likes to stand out with his originality. Leo, in turn, may not be original, but definitely the best at something.
Read also:10 places where unhappy people look for happiness
Leo's happiness also lies in creativity. Any Leo is an artistic and creative person, even if creativity is not directly related to his profession. He will bring an element of creativity to any work, but will often look for an interesting hobby besides work.
ADVICE: You shouldn't put yourself above others. Bring joy to people through your creativity and be more considerate of others. By doing this you will attract much more more attention than you might think.
Happiness in the life of every sign
♍ VIRGO
Virgo is happy when there is order around her. Like others earth signs, Virgo representatives prefer create order yourself, and not expect that someone will do everything for them. As trivial as it may seem, for Virgos happiness lies in work and the ability to put everything in its place, when no one interferes and when everything goes as usual, without unpredictability. In general, if in life there is stability and order- The virgin will be happy.
It is also very important for any Virgo to have good health . This is one of the most important indicators happiness for representatives of this sign - they or their loved ones have good health, there will be happy life. This is why Virgos cherish their health so much, protect and take care of themselves and those around them in every possible way.
ADVICE: To become happier, you should lower your ideality bar, not strive for ideals, since ideals are faithful friends illusions and disappointments. Curb your pedantry, don’t expect people to be the same as you: correct and neat in everything, don’t criticize their shortcomings, but accept them for who they are, then they will be drawn to you.
♎ SCALES
Happiness is in any balance, without balance– there is no such thing as happiness, this is what typical representatives of the Libra sign think. An important living condition is a harmonious existence without any distortions in one direction or another. And harmonious relationships mean doubly happiness.
ADVICE: When it comes to happiness, rely only on yourself. You shouldn't wait for someone to come and will make you happier. If happiness is inside you, another person will only double it, and if not, then there will be no point.
Another tip: you shouldn't constantly look at other people's opinions. Yes, it matters to you, but don't make it your priority. You shouldn’t constantly think about who and what will think about you and your decisions. Try to become more independent, then you will be much happier!
♏ SCORPION
Scorpio's happiness is special, unlike any other. Scorpio is the very sign that knows how to experience joy and happiness when when someone feels bad, and also use other people’s energy for your own happiness. However, this is actually lowest level development, because Scorpios are distinguished by their awareness. Scorpios are the best manipulators and the best vampires. But, as you know, you can’t build strong happiness on someone else’s misfortune, so it’s important to have something else.
Scorpios feed frequently negative energy , turning it into something positive for yourself. The greatest happiness for representatives of this sign is to experience strong emotions, and these can be both positive and negative emotions. This does not mean at all that Scorpio must necessarily harm someone, but taking risks, walking along the edge of a knife is what brings happiness. This is why many Scorpios engage in extreme sports or tickle their nerves in other ways.
ADVICE: Aggression, resentment, jealousy of other people's successes - this is exactly what you should let go of before you become happy.
Happiness in your life
♐ SAGITTARIUS
Sagittarius Happiness - on the road, and the longer it is, the longer happiness lasts. Look at the people around you: who most often breaks away and goes in search of new experiences in foreign countries? Most likely, these will be Sagittarius, for whom the world is becoming small and wants more.
Also, for Sagittarius to be happy, they need to take position of authority. It's not obligatory career or the social ladder, the main thing is to be an authority for those around you, to feel valued and respected.
ADVICE: Always appreciate what you have here and now, don’t constantly think that a better future awaits you someday.
♑ CAPRICORN
Capricorns' happiness lies in their professional demand. Although many of them say that they would like to work less, as soon as they lose their jobs, they immediately begin to feel unhappy. If Capricorn feels that someone needs him and his work, he will be happy!
Also, Capricorn must always have a plan, and not only plan A or B, but also plans C, D, F... and so on ad infinitum. Without clear plan and without another plan, if the first one does not work, any Capricorn will feel out of place, and therefore will not be truly happy.
Perhaps James Olds first thought that there were masochists among rats. However, a subsequent autopsy of the brain of this animal showed that the electrode was implanted with some deviation and thus irritated another area - the so-called pleasure center. So, if you influence this area of the brain, you can make the rat do anything?
Further experience confirmed the scientist’s assumption. An electrode implanted in this part of the brain doomed the rat to a “pleasant” death. Having gained uncontrolled access to the current-carrying lever, the rat pressed it like crazy - up to 1000 times per hour (almost every 3.5 seconds!), forgetting about food and sleep, not paying attention to either the cubs or sexual partners. After several days of continuous high, the rat died of exhaustion.
The question arises: is there such a “happiness button” in the human brain, by pressing which you can make any pessimist or wretched person happy man? It turns out there is. It is located in the area of the corpus callosum, where the “bridge” lies between the two hemispheres. And with electrical stimulation of this area, a person experiences a feeling of unearthly bliss...
Is it all about hormones?
It would seem that finally there is a real opportunity to make all of humanity happy. But let's think: what if a person, like a rat, does not have the strength to stop in time and not drown in a continuous stream of pleasure?
In the course of studying the human “pleasure center”, new interesting data were obtained. It turned out, for example, that this part of the brain is filled with dopamine, a hormone that gives a person a feeling of euphoria and happiness. Along with other hormones responsible for mood (oxytocin, tyrosine, norepinephrine, melatonin and others), the amount of dopamine in the “pleasure center” determines how happy we feel. And if it is not enough, a person seeks to increase it by any means.
There are many ways. Power; Love; sex; tasty food; someone's attention; recognition (approval) of our merits, talents or behavior; prayer; winning a game, competition or lottery; sport; creation; leisure or travel; favorite hobby; laughter; dancing; singing; money; property; alcohol; drugs; Skydiving; driving a car fast... In a word - any thought, any event or behavior that causes a hormonal surge. And everyone chooses their own way of getting the portion of dopamine they are missing.
It turns out that a person doesn’t have to drill a hole in his brain and implant a chip in it to feel happy? Indeed, there are much safer and time-tested options for achieving happiness. However, how reliable are they?
Money is the sixteenth thing...
One of the most common myths is this: you need money to be happy. Or, as French millionaire Paul Getty once joked, “happiness is not in money, but in quantity.” It's actually not that simple.
If you believe the statistics, the wards of psychiatric hospitals in the USA and England are filled more than half (almost 60%) by very rich people (and only 30% by the poorest). Fashion, film and music stars do not get out of depression by regularly using strong antidepressants, alcohol or drugs. Businessmen who have amassed huge amounts of capital die prematurely from cancer and other diseases caused by excess stress and fear.
Several years ago, the German Society for Rational Psychology conducted a survey of about 3,000 Germans under the age of 65 to find out what makes them happy. It turned out that the most important sources of happiness for Germans are: a loving, gentle partner; a happy family; healthy, happy children; success at work; completed work; health; favorite hobbies. Money took only sixteenth place on this list.
A larger study conducted by American scientists confirmed the results of German colleagues: wealth is not a fundamental condition for happiness. And even the answers of the hundred richest people in America practically coincided with the characteristics of the happiness of average Americans.
“Do you want to be happy for one day? Don't go to work"
Maybe we should be chasing not a long ruble, but something more important and meaningful? For example, for some beautiful dream or ideal? Alas, these “firebirds” are also unreliable creatures. One parable tells how a certain man decided to marry the ideal woman and to find her, he went to wander around the world. Forty years later he returned home - alone, without his wife. And someone asked him: “Well, have you met the perfect woman?” “Yes,” the man sighed, “I met her...” “So why did you return alone, and not with her?” - “Because she was looking for the ideal man...”
Maybe we should be simpler and use “improvised” means of happiness, those recommended by psychologists: communication with friends, children, nature and animals, singing, dancing, massage, sex, laughter, physical exercise, hobbies, travel... This is probably very good means make our life, if not happy, then quite bearable. However, there is no strength here either. No matter how much we communicate with friends, they will not always be with us. No matter how much you travel, you can’t escape from yourself. No matter how much you eat the most delicious dishes, no matter how much you laugh, or have sex - all these are temporary joys. After all, you can’t just do this all day and all your life. And these sources are not inside us, but outside, which means that our happiness will always depend on external circumstances. “He is unhappy,” said Schopenhauer, “who seeks adventure, but does not see the happiness of home, whose center of gravity lies in others, and not in himself.”
A Georgian proverb teaches: “Do you want to be happy for one day? Don't go to work. Do you want to be happy for three days? Take a mistress. Do you want to be happy for ten years? Get married. Do you want to be happy all your life? Be healthy!" Maybe happiness brings health? Health, of course, is important. But just as you won’t be satisfied with water alone, you won’t be happy with health alone. Health is like air: when it is there, you don’t notice it, and therefore don’t appreciate it.
So what is happiness?
The best cure for poverty
If you dig deep into the literature on happiness, you will find three really strong conditions for happiness. The first of these is work, purposeful and creative work.
“The secret of our misfortunes,” wrote Bernard Shaw, “is that we have too much leisure to think about whether we are happy or not.” “Find something you like,” advised Maxim Gorky, “and there will be one less unfortunate person on earth.” The French philosopher Voltaire argued: “Work is the most best medicine from poverty, debauchery and bad mood.”
What you love ceases to be work and becomes creativity and even the meaning of life. Nietzsche expressed this idea brilliantly when he said: “He who knows WHY to live can endure any HOW.”
During World War II, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was sent to a concentration camp (Auschwitz). At this point, his manuscript, dedicated to the search for the meaning of life, was not yet completed. Only a passionate desire to complete the book gave him the strength to withstand the horrors of camp life. Even when he fell ill with typhus, only the need to constantly write down his notes on pieces of paper helped him overcome this disease.
Modern psychologists have come to the conclusion that we are happiest when we strive for a goal. It is precisely the state of aspiration, or, more simply, everyday work that brings us closer to the intended goal - and not at all the successful completion of the work begun! — give us the greatest joy of psychological reward. Well, scientists call idleness the main factor preventing happiness. At the same time, as it turned out, it does not matter at all what it is caused by - laziness, illness, poverty or, on the contrary, financial well-being.
Happiness is a rather subjective concept. Often a person feels unhappy while he lacks something that he really needs or that he considers necessary for himself. In the 40s of the 20th century, the American psychologist A. Maslow proposed to society a theory called “Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs.”
The pyramid includes the following seven levels human needs in ascending order:
Physiological (sleep, nutrition, health, clothing, housing, sexual relations); - need for security (protection, stability and comfort, feeling of confidence); - social (communication, belonging to any social group, Team work, family, friends, love); - self-affirmation and recognition of others (success, career, prestige, self-esteem, power); - cognition (searching and receiving new information, acquisition of different skills); - aesthetic (beauty, harmony, order); - self-actualization (self-expression and realization of one’s abilities, self-development).
As Maslow said, people usually become motivated to move to the next level when the needs of the previous level are at least partially satisfied. At the same time, a person can strive and work to achieve several goals at once, but the most pressing need basic level always more important than higher matters. If you follow this logic, a person should be happier the more fully his needs in different areas are satisfied.
Individual approach
Despite the reasonableness and logic of all kinds of theories, important role human individuality plays a role, so different people needs are expressed differently. For example, extreme sports enthusiasts have little need for safety. For a scientist, sometimes obtaining new information can be more important than social needs and comfort. For some, the desire for beauty prevails over the desire for self-affirmation. Some people are more self-sufficient, while others need constant presence in the company of people. Some people see the meaning of life in children, while others are absorbed in their own ideas. There are also people who live as hermits and are content with the minimum. Also, according to Maslow himself, the priority of certain needs depends on the person’s age.
Obviously, everyone’s concepts of happiness and desires are different. But whether happiness depends on the satisfaction of desires is a controversial issue. After all, there are people who most While people are always in high spirits, there are those who are almost always dissatisfied, regardless of the circumstances. Often a person thinks that having received something long-awaited, he will finally become happy, but in practice it turns out differently, because people’s desires are endless, and when one goal is achieved, another comes. From this we can conclude that for happiness it is important to see the good in what you already have in life and appreciate it, while at the same time striving for more. You need to be able to enjoy the current moment. You also need to know what you want, i.e. distinguish your true desires from those imposed from the outside.
Physiology also influences the subjective feeling of being unhappy or happy. People suffering from endogenous depression have low levels of serotonin and endorphins, joy hormones, so they are constantly depressed psychological state. Thus, good health and balance in the body of hormones, vitamins and minerals can also be considered an important condition for happiness.