Quotes About Happiness

We pay to watch, read, or be in the presence of a flow experience. If quantified, you'd find it's a major chunk of the GDP.

After three decades of research, Zimbardo found that the healthiest, happiest, highest performers blend the best of both worlds. The optimal time perspective combines the energy, joy, and openness of Presents, with the strength, fortitude, and long-term vision of the Futures.

As CNN recently reported: "A decade of research in the business world proves happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31 percent, and accuracy on tasks by 19 percent, as well as a myriad of health and quality-of-life improvements.

happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31 percent, and accuracy on tasks by 19 percent

he discovered that the happiest people on earth, the ones who felt their lives had the most meaning, were those who had the most peak experiences.

These experiences were profound Ã¢â'¬â€ people were radically different on the other side. Happier, more content, significantly more fulfilled.

This did not come down to chance or luck. The happiest people on earth worked hard for their fulfillment. They didn't just have the most peak experiences, they had devoted their lives to having these experiences.

psychologists have found that the people who have the most flow in their lives are the happiest people on earth.

Happiness becomes untethered to income, because once we can meet our basic needs, the lure of all the stuff it took to meet them, begins to lose its luster. Once extrinsic drivers start to fade, intrinsic drivers take over.

The results suggest that many of the things that make people happy also make their lives meaningful, such as being connected to others, feeling productive, and not being alone or bored.

Happy people live in the present; those with meaningful lives have a narrative about their past and a plan for the future. Those with happy but meaningless lives are takers and beneficiaries; those with meaningful but unhappy lives are givers and benefactors.

The Enlightenment thus translated the ultimate question 'How can I be saved?' into the pragmatic 'How can I be happy?'—thereby heralding a new praxis of personal and social adjustment.

Religions can also clash with humanism by valuing souls above lives, which is not as uplifting as it sounds. Belief in an afterlife implies that health and happiness are not such a big deal, because life on earth is an infinitesimal portion of one's existence;

And contrary to an earlier belief, winning the lottery does, over the long term, make people happier.

As the most famous product of the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence, put it, in order to secure the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

And the story belongs not to any tribe but to all of humanity—to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist in its being. For it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance.

people are happy when they feel better off than their neighbors, unhappy when they feel worse off.

people adapt to their circumstances, good or bad, the way their eyes adapt to sun or darkness. From that neutral point, improvement is happiness, loss is misery.

But the most powerful contributor was science. "It is knowledge that is the key," Deaton argues. "Income—although important both in and of itself and as a component of wellbeing . . .—is not the ultimate cause of wellbeing.

Happy people live in the present; those with meaningful lives have a narrative about their past and a plan for the future.

Thoreau was a victim of the Optimism Gap (the "I'm OK, They're Not" illusion), which for happiness is more like a canyon. People in every country underestimate the proportion of their compatriots who say they are happy, by an average of 42 percentage points.19

the theory of the hedonic treadmill

Parents get meaning from their children, but not necessarily happiness.

People in every country underestimate the proportion of their compatriots who say they are happy, by an average of 42 percentage points.