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What Technology Can't Change About Happiness
We are wired for personal connections
The quality of people's relationships is more important than we imagine.
Material success and psychological feelings of well-being are linked to good relationships. So is physical health.
Close relationships and connections keep you happy and healthy.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
Do you know the happiness pie chart? If you've read a book or listened to a talk about happiness in the past 15 years, there's a good chance you heard that 50 percent of our happiness is determined by our genes, 40 percent by our activities, and 10 percent by our life circumstances.
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Key Ideas
The Happiness Pie Chart
The Happiness Pie Chart, first published in 2005, states that 50% of our happiness is defined by our genes, 40% by our activities and 10% by our life circumstances.
Recent studie...
Give Yourself A Happiness Boost
Ways to give yourself a happiness boost:
- Choosing activities that fit our personality and interests, feel natural, are enjoyable and aligned with our values.
- Choosing meaningful and virtuous activities, instead of just going after pleasurable ones.
- Practicing forgiveness and gratitude.
- Trying to pursue a purpose.
- Committing to new habits by making an effort.
- Adding variety and diversity to our routine.
"How to Build a Life" is a new column that aims to give you the tools you need to construct a life that feels whole and meaningful. It seems strange to launch a column on happiness during a pandemic. The timing is, well, awkward, isn't it? Maybe not.
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Key Ideas
Studying happiness
Religion, philosophy, and the arts have long considered happiness a subject important to study.
The sciences, however, have only recently caught up:...
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.
Habits = Faith + Family + Friends + Work
Constant happiness comes from human relationships, meaningful work, and the transcendental elements of life:
- 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.