Defining happiness is not an easy task. According to the Oxford Dictionary, happiness is the state of pleasurable contentment of mind and deep pleasure in or contentment with one's circumstances.
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Here´s an overview of further definitions and approaches to the question of what happiness is.
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Empirical approaches
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Naval Ravikant
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Happiness is….
a default state when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.
… mainly not suffering
… not desiring
… not thinking too much about the future or the past
… really embracing the present moment and the reality of what is, and the way it is.
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Happiness is not…
… just about positive thoughts and positive actions.
Every positive thought essentially holds within it a negative thought
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Own interpretation of Mr. Ravikant´s thoughts
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Paul Dolan
Paul Dolan, in his book Happiness by design, proposes that happiness means following the Pleasure-Purpose-Principle (3P) and allocating (paying) attention to the things that cause you pleasure or fulfil your purposes. It´s the concept of scarce resource allocation in economics applied to happiness. For example, you only have to think about working or studying to know that these activities can feel quite purposeful some of the time—and quite pointless at other times
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Steven Galloway
Steven Galloway, on the other hand, claims that if you remain resilient and keep on keeping on during good or bad times you will find happiness, as in the end nothing is really that good or that bad. Actually, the definition of happiness from Mr. Galloway overlaps with the previous definition from Mr. Ravikant, as (while keeping on) you accept things as they come without them affecting your peace.
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Statistical approaches
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Shortly resumed, happiness relies on six factors. These are:
This, however, requires a more detailed explanation. Please refer to the next page for more information.
Want to know more about this? Take a look a this TED Talk from Dan Gilbert
