Thanks Sarah! Indeed, eradicating that fib is one of my goals. You raise a good point though – its important to find and appreciate those that are enjoying happiness during the journey. Those are the ones we should be emulating!

The new blog design looks wonderful. Good stuff Amit!

Thanks Joel! Yeah – I recall reading a post a few days back that posts with 3 forms of media are 15x more likely to be shared than posts with just text. I believe posts with 2 forms of media are 5x more likely to be shared.

Yup, it was only until I had my recent quarter-life crisis that I realized the path of waste I was heading down. It seems that you, at least, won’t be wasting your life!

Actually, one of the more ambitious goals of positive psychology is the objectification of happiness. It’s an extremely difficult task, of course. From just the small amount of research I’ve read, there’s pretty hefty debate surrounding the different scales and measures that are being used. Looking at just the component of happiness that correlates to mood, the scales used are good. But when we get to more complicated things like satisfaction, meaning, and such, the scales are less developed and certainly less accurate. The objective view comes in to say that we should do what makes us happy, and what makes others happy (volunteering, keeping a gratitude journal, doing work we can find flow in, developing strong social connections, and so on) generally also makes us happy.

Very insightful post. Delayed gratification is one of the most terrible and harmful things we get schooled in, in my opinion. That is not to say that we shouldn’t think long term, or put in the effort now to reap the reward tomorrow. But the point is, it is important to enjoy today. It should not be, “Oh I will do this job I hate for 40 years, so I can be happy when I retire” That is one of the most stupidest argument ever, and yet majority of the society pursues it. You might be dead before you get to that. Then what? What an incredible waste of life!

Happiness of course is a very subjective subject, but the objective view comes in to saying that we should do what makes us happy, as long as it is not harmful to others. (And there is a difference between not harming others, and not worrying about hurting their feelings just because they want you to do something different.)

“I am not sure that everyone knows how to be happy though… and it is hard for them to imagine more of anything.
It is a beautiful journey though!”

Yup, that’s what we’re here for!

I love this article! Great roundup of interesting research and thoughts on happiness.

I find that many of us tend to think, “I’ll be happy when __________ happens.” Then we spend our lives waiting for ________ to happen or, after we get it, we wait for the next _________ to happen. In the meantime, our lives are going by and we’re not happy because we think we must have whatever _____ is to be happy.

I don’t think we can be happy every minute of every day, but there’s much more happiness available to us then we allow ourselves. Happiness can happen right now – we don’t need to wait for some elusive _____ to happen.

Why settle!?!?!? indeed, that was something I was saying to a friend just last week.

I am not sure that everyone knows how to be happy though… and it is hard for them to imagine more of anything.
It is a beautiful journey though!