What does it really mean to be happy?
Do you think of yourself as successful? Have you found happiness? Everyone is chasing happiness, yet not everyone manages to reach it. Some say that owning a car and a flat before thirty, earning a seven-figure salary and making manager at a big firm is the very model of a successful person — but even those who tick all those boxes don't necessarily feel the happiness they expected. Sometimes the joy is fleeting, and they end up chasing money and material life blindly. The truth is that in today's society, most people lack any clear standard for what makes a life successful, and are swayed by the views around them — fame and fortune, power, status and the like. Take Joe, the pianist in the film "Soul": after he joins a famous band and finally delivers the jazz performance he had long dreamed of, he doesn't feel the happiness he had imagined. Some people reach their goals and yet still feel hollow inside, because those goals were only the things other people approved of and society welcomed.
In an age of quick wins and instant gains, fame and fortune are all too often equated with happiness — the assumption that having money and a car means happiness, that you have won at life. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology in the United States, argues instead that fame and fortune may be only a temporary state, while true accomplishment is more often an ultimate goal worth pursuing. Consider Mother Teresa, who was canonised as a saint: she was neither wealthy nor powerful, and held no position of status, yet she quietly held fast to her belief in helping the poor, working in a spirit of self-sacrifice to help women and children affected by war, and changing the fate of many. Even in the face of illness and hardship, she held on to her conviction that helping others was worthwhile, making a great and profoundly meaningful contribution to the impoverished regions of India. Martin Seligman once observed that the word "meaning" refers to something bigger than yourself — that is, to something more important than you are. Mother Teresa was able to devote her whole life, from youth to old age, to rescuing and serving the poor, leaving the world a legacy of value and shaping a life that was both successful and meaningful.
The Well-being Model: PERMA
The well-being model is a concrete model from positive psychology. Lasting happiness, it holds, calls for five distinct elements: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning and Accomplishment.
The first element is positive emotion. There are ten kinds in all: joy, humour, interest, pride, inspiration, gratitude, serenity, hope, awe and love. The amount of positive emotion we feel is proportional to our level of happiness. Doing things we find interesting produces joy and a sense of satisfaction, and the more often these ten positive emotions arise, the stronger the happiness people feel.
The second element of well-being is engagement. When you throw yourself wholeheartedly into an activity, you lose all sense of the passing of time and reach a state of flow (Flow) — a state of self-forgetfulness. For example, when you are out enjoying nature with someone you love, chatting and laughing, fully immersed and treasuring the time you spend together, you reach a state of flow, and through it feel a range of positive emotions.
The third element of well-being is relationship. Our lives are never separate from other people — whether family, partners, friends or colleagues. When we are able to enjoy good relationships with all of them, those relationships bring a variety of positive emotions. For instance, when two people are together and both can readily share what is going on in their lives, show care for one another and exchange their thoughts, then every time they meet they gain positive emotions such as joy, gratitude and love.
The fourth element of well-being is meaning. What gives life meaning differs from person to person. Some see love as something of great significance, so they pour themselves into every relationship with real heart — and even after being hurt in love, they still have the courage to pursue it again. Others find that a sense of social or collective consciousness matters most to them, so when they encounter injustice in society they speak out boldly, ready to do so even under pressure, even when silenced, even when their lives are threatened, all because they firmly believe it is worth it. If we can find what is meaningful to us in this life, we can engage with it more fully and go deeper into the matter, and from it feel joy, satisfaction, a sense of purpose and more — which in turn helps us attain the final element of well-being: accomplishment.
For many people, accomplishment may mean fame and fortune — what today's society widely takes it to mean: having money, power, status and so on, all of which may be objective accomplishments. But if we want a lasting sense of happiness, what we should be pursuing is subjective accomplishment. For me, for example, when teaching students, being able to give them something to take away from every lesson, bringing them motivation and drive for learning, already counts as an accomplishment and gives me a great deal of meaning. Accomplishment, then, is not defined by society or the outside world, but lies in completing what you yourself want to do, what you feel you ought to do, even what is more important than you are.
Everyone can be happy
In short, by keeping good relationships with others and caring for them in our daily lives, by doing things we love and find interesting to reach a state of flow and so gather positive emotions, and by perceiving and seeking out what is meaningful to us in life — investing our energy and spirit to reach the accomplishments that belong to you — we can attain a lasting sense of happiness. Beyond giving us enduring joy, that sense of happiness can also form a protective layer in times of turmoil and danger, keeping us from feeling panicked or lost amid the chaos, because we know clearly that we are in the very process of pursuing happiness.
We don't have to chase worldly success, or live by standards set by others; as long as we live meaningfully, that, for us, is happiness. If we can turn our definition of success into happiness, surely more people will feel successful, and society too will become better. The renowned American journalist Sydney Harris once said: Happiness is a direction, not a place. May each of us travel smoothly along our own road towards happiness — a road with no endpoint, where the feeling of happiness lasts.
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Reference:
Clucas Joan Graff. (1988). Mother Teresa. Chelsea House Publications. New York.
Dweck, Carol Susan. (2016). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.
Seligman, Martin. (2006). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage.
Seligman, Martin. (2011). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment. Hachette UK.
Seligman, Martin. (2013). Flourishing: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. United States: Simon & Schuster.
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