Resumo de How Do We Become Consistently Happy?

How do we become consistently happy?
There seems to be so many ways to be happy and, as we will see, unhappy. Why do we know so little about this very important topic? Why haven't humans investigated it more seriously? I suspect it is because a lot of us erroneously believe we have little control over our happiness, so why bother studying it... and those of us who believe we are in control of our happiness already think we know all we need to know about it. Sad. Surely humans will in the coming decades learn to influence their own happiness to a great extent. The secret, I currently believe, is finding hard, meaningful, demanding-but-fun ways to achieve your highest values. See chapter 3. For me, a serious cultural problem may be that 75% of college students say "becoming very well off financially" is their highest aspiration--above "raising a family" and "helping others." Only 40% said that in 1970. Note that criminals, cons, deceptive business people, and drug dealers are also striving to become well off financially.
In our culture, it is commonly believed that happiness happens when you become rich, powerful, or popular. Recent research (Sheldon, Elliot, Kim & Kasser, 2001) suggests those beliefs are wrong. Their study found that meeting other needs bring more happiness. What were the most happiness-related needs? Autonomy (self-direction, being in charge of your own activities), competence (feeling and being able and effective), relatedness (having meaningful, satisfying, caring relationships) and self-esteem (accepting and feeling OK about one's self). Other research findings have also found that happiness is related to self-esteem, loving relationships, extroversion, good health, satisfying and challenging work, having exciting goals and interests, status and power (education and money), a sense of control over our good fortune and an optimistic outlook, being helpful to others, and making an effort to do new and fun things (Diener, Sandvik, & Pavot, 1990). Thus, there seems to be some research agreement about what makes us happy, but the young still yearn for extraordinary stardom and the older folks want to win the 1-in-30-million lottery. Being able, caring, and self-directed, so that we accomplish ordinary goals and have a sense of adequate mastery of common lives and relationships, has the potential of making us happy, but many of us seem to invest our hope in some highly improbable goal. The result sometimes is that we spend our lives wishing for the impossible while we merely get by at work, our relationships deteriorate, and we can't even learn to lose weight.
Waterman (1993) says there are two aspects to happiness. One is "personal expression" and the other is "hedonic enjoyment." Personal expression is self-actualization, i.e. using your talents, taking on meaningful and challenging projects, working hard and guided by your values, and feeling confident and satisfied. Hedonic enjoyment is having fun, i.e. satisfying your needs, feeling relaxed, excited, happy, content, etc., and being able to forget your personal problems. What is very surprising and perhaps quite important was Waterman's finding that the two types of happiness are highly correlated, i.e. happy people tend to achieve and have fun while unhappy people get neither. Vigorous, productive self-actualizing doesn't eliminate fun, it seems to enhance it.
Ed Diener at the University of Illinois says that life is judged happy if we have more positive experiences (an enjoyable job, loving spouse, a hobby, etc.) than negative ones on a day to day basis and, in addition, can occasionally manage to have an intensely positive experience, such as a new child, a fantastic vacation, public recognition for an achievement, etc. The frequency of positive experiences is more important, Diener says, than the intensity of occasional positive events.

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