Single and happy

Many singles don't have a strong enough backup plan to cover the costs of a major illness or other problems.

Ensure you have enough cash on hand to cover emergencies. For singles, the aim is between nine and twelve months of living expenses in a savings account. As you near retirement, consider bulking up to at least two years of living expenses.

Group long-term disability policies offered by employers typically replace up to 60% of your income.

To ensure you have enough coverage, aim to bring your total coverage up to 80% o 90% of your take-home pay, including bonuses and commissions.

Understanding well-being based on feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, or happiness has two problems.

• The physical-condition neglect. Humans adapt to their circumstances, meaning the poor and sick can still be relatively happy.
• Valuation neglect. Valuing life is a reflective activity. It should not be reduced to feeling happy or unhappy.

We should then acknowledge that feeling well is not the only thing people care about.

This approach claims that both personal characteristics and social circumstances affect what people can achieve with a given amount of resources.

What really matters for well-being is what the person manages to do or to be. But well-being is more than that - it also includes freedom.

Young men across large parts of the world are holding back from relationships and starting families because of unemployment and low wages. This is especially true in places where high dowry payments are expected.

Even places like Greece, Spain, and France are experiencing age-related fertility problems because young people can't afford the trappings of adulthood.

The situation of singledom is increasing in women globally. 

• In a range of places, women are becoming the majority of students at university over men, and desire to engage in their career with zeal, which delays marriage.
• One multi-country study from sub-Saharan Africa found that even when women themselves hadn't received a more formal education, they were likely to delay marriage if it was the norm around them.

In a fundamental sense, workplace happiness comes when:

• We enjoy doing the tasks assigned to us
• We feel right about the people we are working with
• We are happy with the financial benefits we get from the job
• We have the scope of improving our existing skills
• We feel respected and acknowledged at work

Happy employees are compulsory for a growing business.

A study on organizational success revealed that employees who feel happy in the workplace are 65% more energetic than employees who don’t. They are two times more productive and are more likely to sustain their jobs over a long period of time.

It is marked by intense concentration, a sense of timelessness, and a loss of self-consciousness. It’s a deeply healing and enjoyable state and one that greatly contributes to our happiness.

• They meditate.
• They exercise regularly. “Surveys show that exercise may very well be the most effective instant happiness booster of all activities.”
• They stop and smell the roses. 
• They spend time with their furry friends.
• They spend time outside.

It becomes dangerous when you focus on attaining them for your happiness in life. 

Goal attainment is, at most, equally, if not less important than the progress towards the goal. 

Achieving a goal usually reveals another, even more, challenging goal. This may bring in much more work because the pursuit of goals never ends.

Like us, other people are stuck in the same low-level self-realization: we try to gauge the other person by their looks or family or social status, which is a futile exercise in most cases.

We aren't accustomed to being happy or have a misguided idea of what happiness is.

We find the ones who would be right for us, to be wrong for us, because of our lack of experience in what good is, and the fact that we don't associate love with being happy and fulfilled.

Although the workday is over, your mind is still going strong. You gotta get your brain out of “work mode” to relax.

A simple ritual can help: Straighten up your desk. Back up your computer. Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow.

Weekends are great because we get to spend our time the way we enjoy most.

Spend 2 hours with friends or family and you just turned a dull Tuesday night into a happy Saturday.

Living a life with meaning and purpose is key to improving your psychological well-being. Your purpose doesn’t necessarily have to involve changing the world or devoting yourself to helping others.

If you lack a purpose, think about the legacy you’d like to leave behind and establish some objectives that can help you reach those goals. 

it is the combination of feeling good and functioning effectively. People with high psychological well-being report feeling capable, well-supported, and satisfied with life, besides living longer and healthier lives.

Researchers found that the absence of distress doesn’t necessarily correlate with high psychological well-being, but it does with having one’s basic needs met.