Much is made of "happiness" and how others are going about it wrong (especially in Christian teaching: "people use riches, fame, sex, leisure, etc. but don't be envious of them;
they're not happy!". But I think much of the strife for material things and pleasure is not so much about "happiness"
in itself; it's just a survival instinct gone off kilter. Happiness is just the emotional reward for meeting those needs. Then, it becomes an end in itself.
I agree with the glance I had of the original post, BUT I think happiness comes from perspective largely. Perspective alone is not enough, but I think it is indispensable. How you interpret a situation is based on how you FEEL about the situation. So, if you have a "negative" experience it is usually interpreted that way because you view it as emblematic of something larger. It has INHERENT meaning. For example, people react very differently when they receive the same insult even if it is accurate for both people. The reason is that the person who gets annoyed views it as something that is UNCHANGEABLE about THEMSELVES. If instead you have the perspective that this is just a situation or experience and is not inherently negative and that you have the power to change it then you will not react in the same manner.
Great point. This is what I'm grappling with now, in mid-life crisis. Finding out that I suffer from a lifelong deficit of feeling valued or desirable (starting with father, and very unconscious), that is what really leads to the "three P's" as he calls it (Personal, Pervasive, Permanent). AS, with its sensory overload, also makes these things seem larger than life.
For me there's a difference between happiness and contentment, a feeling of happiness and a deep rooted sense of well being and joy. I am a naturally cheerful and optimistic person. I am a master of reframing, I am militantly hopeful and I refuse to give on some things and some people on principle. Overall I am content on some basic levels (like maslows hierarchy of needs) and Ican experience happiness in the moment. Overall I am grateful as objectively I have tangible things to be grateful for that not everyone has.
Interesting. I would think that happiness is to contentment, as what sadness is to anger.
In this book,
http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Healing-Emotions-Conrad-Barrs/dp/0882709666 the outlines 11 primary emotions, in pairs of opposites, except for anger, "the ultimate emotion", which they claimed has no opposite. I would think this "contentment" or "peace" would fit, though they looked at that, and concluded it was not really an emotion (but rather a "spiritual state").
Sadness is a sense-negative reaction that is unique to humans (“intellect†—“intuitive†or “contemplative†mind — “heart“), while anger is "utilitarian" and shared with animals (“working†or “discursive†mind). So likewise, happiness and contentment will be their sense-positive counterparts.
The life practices he mentions are:
1. Happy people are connectors vs. those who are detached. Love and connection creates “wiring†in your brain that makes you happier. It’s about sharing vulnerabilities and being there for others.
As long as we aren't equating detached with introversion, then this seems true to me. I appear detached, but I think most people that identify as introverted would argue they are attaching themselves greatly by being introverted. Perhaps detached here means introversion without attachment.
I don't know if it's fair to categorize all unhappy thinkers as personalizing things. I guess if you want to say that negative thinkers tend to set themselves up for unhappiness, yeah sure. But you can have an unhappy thinker that doesn't personalize things that is due to that 10%. Being poor and not being able to take care of your physical needs, for instance, is one example.
It seems some of that will be shaped by type, since Thinking types will tend to be more "detached".
So I wonder if that relates in any way to the Big Five. "T/F" is generally correlated with "Agreeableness", but those correlations are not absolute, and I think T/F also figures a lot in Neuroticism; the missing fifth factor.
But I wondered how it fit. Thinking's "detachment", at least as characterized by MBTI and Keirsey discussions, appears to be the more "calm" or "stable" while Feeling is more "limbic" (neurotic).
In my own correlations, because Eysenck originally defined Neuroticism by association with the Melancholic and Choleric (and I figure fifth temperament Supine would by definition be neurotic as well) I associated Neuroticism with any "low" score in expressiveness or responsiveness (introversion, cooperativeness, directiveness and structure-focus), and Feeling would fall on the "high" responsive side (informative for S's, motive focus for N's, and thus "Agreeable" for FFM), then it seems Feeling would be less neurotic, or more stable. (P, also).
So this association of "connecting" with "happiness" would seem to go along with that. (And F+P would be even more "happy" than F+J, because of the internal standard that does not depend on others, whose behavior we cannot really control anyway).
