The Quest for Happiness

 

As May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I've decided to focus on happiness .... and why should I choose this as my key topic?

It's a hot topic!!

Happiness isn't something you can pluck from a takeaway list of essential and desirable characteristics, and yet, if you Google the term 'happiness' it returns about 4,360,000,000 results!

In fact Happiness was searched more than ever on Google Search in 2020 (and 2021). People went online to look for hope. 'Google’s year-in search term proved how much people across the world were struggling throughout to survive the COVID-19 pandemic'.

One of the top topics (no surprise here) being 'Health and Happiness'. They go hand-in-hand. I'm sure you'd agree but they are both equally distinct and bear no relationship to one another in terms of definition and to assume so leads to confusion.

For example, you can be of poor health and yet still feel a sense of inner peace and contentment. You may be happy but blissfully unaware of how to reach your optimal health or be unaware of an underlying (ill-health) condition.

The consequences of failing to distinguish between health and happiness are that a) any disturbance to happiness may be viewed as a health problem, b) the boundless nature of the quest for happiness legitimises a similar quest for health.

There's equally as much written about 'health' and 'wellness' (the term health encompasses the notion of wellness) but 'Wellness' is more than just being free of illness. It is a dynamic process towards living a healthy and fulfilling life.

More than simply a positive mood, happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life, one with a sense of meaning and deep contentment. Psychology Today.

The boundless nature of the quest for happiness

Take a look at the video, within this blog, that shows the various aspects of human psyche and notice that there's a hierarchy (or layers of connectivity) of one's emotional and physical connections, that precede and underpin happiness.

Notice that as well as ...

  1. Understanding Self
  2. Understanding Others
  3. Effective Communication

... we are influenced by the world in which we live.

It is perhaps more realistic to view happiness as an optimal state; a state of complete actual and social well-being but also to acknowledge that it is a process in itself, a moveable feast; not that it is unachievable but it is a transitional, part of life's journey.

People’s perceptions and perspectives are a powerful mechanism for designing new and more effective health and education intervention. 

Let's take a closer look shall we?

Rather than try to cover all I'd like to say here, I'm going to create a cluster of blog topics that relate to this subject:

I am not a Guru

Link to Happiness

Happy Workplace

 

 

 

 

 

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