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The Three Equations for a Happy Life, Even During a Pandemic
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Studying happiness
Religion, philosophy, and the arts have long considered happiness a subject important to study.
The sciences, however, have only recently caught up: the scientific study of happiness has exploded over the past three decades.
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Subjective well-being = Genes + Circumstances + Habits
- Subjective well-being is preferred by social scientists instead of happiness because it's not so vague and subjective.
- Research shows there is a big genetic component in determining the baseline you always seem to return to after events sway your mood.
- Circumstances could make up between 10- and 40 percent of your subjective well-being. But their effects never last very long.
- The one variable that affects long-term well-being and is under our control: habits.
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Habits = Faith + Family + Friends + Work
- Faith doesn’t mean any faith in particular. Just find a structure through which you can contemplate life’s deeper questions.
- When it comes to your family and friendships and how they should be, just cultivate and maintain loving, faithful relationships. There is no magic formula.
- What makes work meaningful is not the kind of work it is, but the sense it gives you that you are earning your success and serving others.
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Satisfaction = What you have ÷ What you want
Don’t count what you own (in terms of money, power, status, or romantic partners) and try to figure out how to increase them; make an inventory of the attachments that you need to discard instead. Then, make a plan to act on eliminating them.
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Dalai Lama
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Take total ownership of everything
Take personal responsibility for your successes, failures, your health, your happiness, etc.
Personal responsibility does not involve blaming yourself or anyone else. It's a...
Make the shift
... from a blame-based mindset to one of solutions and collaboration.
When you're feeling stuck, unfulfilled or disconnected from who you are, it can be easier to blame outside circumstances and people.
Take a step back in every situation and ask yourself what you did to allow this to happen. Once you are aware of how you contributed to the situation, you can make the necessary changes in your life.
When it is not your fault
Regardless of what happens to you, be it a disease or a natural disaster, you are 100 percent responsible for how you choose to react.
The life-changing magic happens when you make the choice to respond positively. That is how you take personal responsibility when something completely out of your control makes an impact on your life.
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“Life is essentially an endless series of problems—the solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next..."
Mark Manson
Life as a Paradox
Life is full of paradoxes, and anything and everything that we hope for or desire only leads to more anxiety and stress, creating new problems for us.
We can be content. But it's not simple. To understand why we seem to be constantly dissatisfied with ourselves and the world, we must understand some basic psychological principles.
Psychological Thermostats
Our behavior, contentment, desires, expectations, and body clocks are set differently, and this may lead to conflicts and problems with others.
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Key Ideas
Human nature is more than biology
The level of happiness is part of our genetic makeup - we have a set level and cannot rise above or fall below it.
Some scientists envision the day that we can manipulate our happiness ge...
Quantifying happiness
Happiness has always been difficult to quantify because it is subjective, depending on if you have a short- or a long-term outlook on life. Recently, researchers have started to distinguish between two types of happiness:
- Hedonic happiness that provides a mental high;
- Eudaimonic happiness, a sense of well-being which involves a life well-lived.
The staples of happiness
People will always be happy when they see their children prosper when they feel loved, secure, and well-fed.
But, this formula for happiness is so obvious that most people dismiss it. They would rather look for a secret ingredient. The answer is that there is no secret.