In the name of Happiness

The Science of Happiness & Well-being

Philosophers have been pondering about happiness since ancient times. When asked, ‘what is the ultimate purpose of human existence?’, Aristotle implied that purpose is what he argued to be happiness: eudaimonia, a human flourishing. It’s not an end state but a process of realizing your true nature and developing individual happiness.

As far as science goes, there isn’t a clear definition of happiness since it varies from person to person. But when we take a broader look, we can find that the science of happiness lies in our ability to create a healthy connection with others and our true nature, to be mindful, have meaningful relationships, and achieve what we want. Much like the idea of eudaimonia, isn’t it?

Though the concept of the science of happiness has evolved from the discipline of psychology, it has deep roots in various disciplines that consist of humanism, moral psychology, emotion research, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and philosophy. So, to put it simply, the science of happiness looks at what makes people happy.

In the early days of his career, Martin Seligman, an American psychologist, educator, and author, came across the theory of learned helplessness, which outlines the people who think that their actions don’t matter in their happiness. With this idea in mind, Seligman started exploring the field of learned optimism, stating that if people can learn to be negative and helpless towards life, they can also learn to be optimistic about their lives. So the concept of positive psychology was born, and over the next 20 years, Seligman has been working on drawing the attention of psychology towards the positive elements, focusing on our strengths instead of our weaknesses, building the good instead of repairing the bad in life, and everything else that can help people cultivate happier lives.

Building on this type of thinking, Dan Gilbert, a social psychologist, also referred to as Professor Happiness at Harvard University, says that most people have a remarkable ability to make the best of things. He claims that happiness can be synthesized due to what he calls a psychological immune system. This is a system of cognitive processes that help people change their views of the world so that they can feel better about the situation in which they find themselves. It’s the power of our own mindfulness that can be used to create happiness and not look for it in things or people.

Happiness as a State of Being

If someone would ask you now, ‘when were you happy?’ would you think of the time when you were celebrating something or having a great time with your loved ones? Or even when you were experiencing something for the first time? Most of us would answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, not thinking twice about it.

But what does this actually mean? It means that we connect our feelings of happiness to people or occasions when we think we have a reason to be happy. But tr

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