Quotes About Happiness

The truth is that relative income is not directly related to happiness. Nonpartisan social-survey data clearly show that the big driver of happiness is earned success: a person's belief that he has created value in his life or the life of others.

There are two pillars of happiness. . . . One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away."[8] And

Far from frustration and depression, he finished out his life as a happy father and reinvented himself as a teacher.

This discipline helps us work on mindfulness—living in the present as opposed to the past or future—which studies consistently find leads us to be happier people. But it also helps us to make the decisions that truly expose our best selves.

satisfaction is possible—just not with the old formulas. We need to toss out all that bad math and use this one equation instead, which incorporates the wisdom of Siddhartha and Thomas and the best modern social science: Satisfaction = What you have ÷ what you want Your satisfaction is what you have, divided by what you want.

You might accurately say that falling in love is the start-up cost for happiness—an exhilarating but stressful stage we have to endure to get to the relationships that actually fulfill us. The

More important, her curated self was a person she would admire—a hugely successful, hardworking executive. And she succeeded! But nothing is permanent, and now she felt like every hour of work was giving her less than the last, and not just less happiness—less power and prestige, too. Her problem was that the "special one" she had created was less than a full person. She had traded herself for a symbol of herself, you might say.

My financier friend had objectified herself to be special, with a self-definition that revolved around work, achievement, worldly rewards, and pride. Even though that object was slowly eroding, she was too attached to her worldly success to make the changes that could now bring her happiness.

To be a happy warrior you must work to be a genuinely happy person.

That is, he tells them that to unlock their true potential and happiness, they need to articulate their deep purpose in life and shed the activities that are not in service of that purpose.

social comparison lowers our happiness.

The secret to happiness isn't falling in love; it's staying in love, which depends on what psychologists call "companionate love"—love based less on passionate highs and lows and more on stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment.

Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy," wrote Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former famous Formula 1 race car driver. "For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success."[12] Making

Robert Waldinger, popularized the study even more with a viral TED Talk, "What Makes a Good Life?

Not only did he choose divine fulfillment over worldly specialness, he became an expert in this distinction. In his view, people who opt for the worldly path choose "substitutes for God": idols that objectify the idolater and never satisfy the craving for happiness.[5] Even if you are not a religious believer, his list rings true as the idols that attract us.

It's difficult to describe adequately the depth of the rewards that one enjoys when relationships become your "official" source of meaning and fulfillment. People compare it with finding buried treasure, with the only sadness being that it didn't happen earlier in life.

There are two pillars of happiness. . . . One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away."[8] And just for good measure, he quotes Virgil: "Omnia vincit amor": Love conquers all.

intimate friendship, whether it be from the companionate love of your spouse or an Aristotelian "perfect friend," is better than any professional success. It will salve the wounds of professional decline like nothing else.

And this leads me to underscore once again the truth that nature is not destiny and, sometimes, we must fight our natural instincts if we want to be happy.

researchers have long found that social comparison lowers our happiness.[29] But you hardly need a study to tell you that—just spend a few hours browsing Instagram and see how bad you feel about yourself. This is because you are comparing your success with your perception of others' success, as depicted in information of dubious accuracy. Nothing good comes of this.

James Madison, in the fourteenth Federalist Paper, warned that the "most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rendering us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness.

Great gifts and achievements early in life are simply not an insurance policy against suffering later on. On the contrary, studies show that people who have chased power and achievement in their professional lives tend to be unhappier after retirement than people who did not.

To adopt parts of life that will make you happy, even if they don't make you special.

Your satisfaction is what you have, divided by what you want.