Can helping others lead greater happiness? Generally speaking, happiness or well-being consists of feeling hopeful, happy, and right about oneself, as well as energetic and connected to others. Happiness, perceived as the “psychological reward, an internal signaling device that indicates an adaptive problem has been or is in the process of being, solved successfully” (Hill, DelPriore, & Major, 2013). Likewise, ‘eating’ and ‘sex’ make people happy, as these behaviors are essential adaptive goals. To explain for this adaptive reason, performing acts of kindness might create happiness for caring for family, maintaining associations, and trading purposes. Although generosity can assume many forms, giving to others frequently involves sacrificing money or time (Liu & Aaker, 2008). …show more content…
For example, those who spend money on others are happier (Laura B. Aknin et al., 2013), or in an older study, families of recently deceased loved ones reported a psychological benefit from their decision to donate organs (Batten & Prottas, 1987). As well as, comparing retirees older than 65 that volunteer vs. those who don’t (Hunter & Lin, 1980-1981). These studies lack the ability to establish the causal relationship between kindness and happiness. It’s possible that a third variable is causing individuals to be happy and helpful such as health, income, personality, or current mental state. It’s crucial that we establish a clear causal connection, for the sake that kindness interventions may not work from this practical
For instance, last year, I volunteered at an organization to take care of kids and help them with their homework. One day, I worked with a kid who was 5 years old. I helped him with his math homework and taught him how to add and subtract. I taught him patiently and carefully. After we were done, the kid learned how to add and subtract, and he told his mom what he learned. Then the kid’s mom came to me and said “Thank you” with a smile directed to me. At that time, I felt really happy, valuable, and helpful. This kind of happiness was different than the other happiness because this happiness came from helping others. When I feel happy, I am more willing to help. I am so proud that I made a good decision because I have found out the true significance of volunteering.
Finding the level of ultimate contentment and life satisfaction can be challenging, but the perception of situations or powerful social connections strengthens the level of happiness within a person. Topic Significance: In recent years, the rate of depression in young adults has increased as people struggle to find the meaning of happiness and how they can achieve happiness. As people continue throughout their life, it is important to recognize what makes them happy.
Its practice has been seen to be efficacious in healing and improving the quality of life of many people. Whether in terms of enhancing mental health or preventing illness, gratitude is one of life’s vitalizing ingredients. Clinical trials indicate that the practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting positive effects on a person’s life. It can lower blood pressure, improve immune function, promote happiness and well being, and spur acts of helpfulness, generosity and cooperation (Emmons & Stern, 2013). Emmons and Stern (2013) from their experiments, assert that gratitude has one of the strongest links to mental health and life satisfaction in any personality trait, more so than even optimism hope or compassion. They maintain that people who experience gratitude can cope more effectively with everyday stress, show increased resilience in the face of trauma-induced stress, recover more quickly from illness, and enjoy more robust physical health.
I enjoyed reading about “Happiness Is a Collective –Not Just Individual Phenomenon”. This is very enlightening article because, in our current time, some of people may express their feelings via social media. We want to share our happiness, goals and accomplishments with others. I know when I post something positive in my life, I will go back and check the comments and see how many likes I have received on that particular post. I do this not only for the social interaction but to see the positive feedback I am receiving to keep me going on whatever I choose to post that day.
As shenahaiti.org The Power of Giving said, “All our lives, we’ve heard about the importance of others: “No man is an island.” Man does not live by bread alone.” The complexity of our society—from today’s difficult economic times, to our immense cultural diversity, to high-tech interconnectedness—makes these proverbs just as, if not more, pertinent than ever. Supporting one another—truly giving of ourselves and our humanity to others—is vital for our global well-being.” This assertion magnifies the fact that charitable donations have indirect benefits because when people help one another with things such as; running errands, help with cleaning, giving money, or even just talking to one another, makes people look up and think, “man he must be a good person.” So the people helping those desperately in need of money are thought upon being a good person, even though that was not their intended purpose. A lot say, “So people who do not donate to charity are not good and thoughtful people?” Absolutely not, plenty of people don’t donate to charity, that does not make them un-thoughtful, or bad, but people who do donate seem to get more praise and
In the Power of Good Intentions: Perceived Benevolence Soothes Pain, Increase Pleasure, and Improves, there are three major experiments that are conducted to test whether benevolent intensions undergoing stimuli can have a positive effect on how they are perceived (Kurt Gray Social Psychological and Personality Science). These perceived behaviors can be explained from social context and experience, pleasure, taste, and generalizability, benevolence and flexibility to modern research. Topics model the analysis to try and figure out more information in which could contribute to existing one.
“The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living” is a collaboration by His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., who identify many possible components that could lead to a happy and satisfying life. Their approach combines and integrates the thoughts of East and West; Buddhist principles and practices on one hand and Western science and psychology on the other. Many everyday difficulties are highlighted in this book, and Dalai Lama and Dr. Cutler attempts to help the readers find appropriate solutions in order to find a balanced and lasting happiness. Dalai Lama’s understanding of the factors that ultimately lead to happiness is based on a lifetime of methodically observing his own mind, exploring the nature of the human condition, and investigating these things within a framework first established by The
Doing kind things will benefit you in the future. Like being friends with someone rich so you can go on their yacht for fun. The idea is that every act of charity or good that you do is not because you are a good person, but really because you are selfish. A person that does not have a care in the world but for themselves would be equal to a person who donates all their time and money to a charity without receiving anything because they are both acting upon selfishness. I think it is easy to see a person’s generous acts as selfish, and I agree with Hume and his arguments against this principle, but I think there does not have to be a reason for someone to act benevolent.
not only can giving make you happy in one way but it can also make you feel happy about yourself in many other ways. Muhammad Ali once stated, " Service to others is your rent you pay for your room here on Earth."
...esult, the more directly one sees their personal efforts impact someone else, the more happiness one can gain from the experience of giving. Sometimes generosity requires pushing past a feeling of reluctance because people all instinctively want to keep good things for themselves, but once one is over this feeling, they will feel satisfaction in knowing that they have made a difference in someone else’s life. However, if one lives without generosity but is not selfish, they can still have pleasure from other virtues.
Gratitude interventions can sustain someone's subjective well-being as in other words as gratitude derived in Latin refers to the words of “kindness, generosity, and the appreciation life” (Pruyser, 1976). Understanding the relevance of gratitude interventions benefiting someone's well-being is expressed through the general desire and interest in gratitude to help the public by opening participants to the studies of gratitude interventions. Gratitude interventions according to a vast variety of studies that suggest its intention for these experiments is to see if people's well-being would be improved by simply writing down what they were grateful for (Emmons and McCullough 2003). The studies within these gratitude interventions revolved around
Early Modern Europe experienced several tragedies in which the citizens sensed that there must be a better way to live where happiness was more familiar. Alterations for what truly defines absolute happiness in a society during these times of catastrophe were expressed through utopian literature. Thomas More’s Utopia, Tomasso Campanella’s City of the Sun, and Caron De Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro together attempt to answer what truly creates a happy civilization during different periods of crisis within Europe. Each of these utopian literature’s suggest a different origin that happiness derives from, soundly signifying that change in Europe would be beneficial. The revolutionary ideas of change in Europe proposed by Utopia, City of the Sun, and The Marriage of Figaro through their individual utopias, demonstrated their beliefs that such change of social classes, the expression of pleasures morally, and a more unified government would lead to a happier, less corrupt society.
According to Webster dictionary the word Happiness in defined as Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. People when they think of happiness, they think about having to good feeling inside. There are many types of happiness, which are expressed in many ways. Happiness is something that you can't just get it comes form your soul. Happiness is can be changed through many things that happen in our every day live.
Only in recent years have psychologists begun to appreciate the benefits of happiness and positive emotion — benefits that include everything from enhanced creativity to improved immune-system function. Dr. Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, a leader in the field of positive psychology, posed the question, “What good are positive emotions?” and came up with the following possibilities.
As a bonus, when you make someone else happy, you boost your own happiness. Research has consistently shown that doing good things for other people, as opposed to doing things for yourself or doing nothing at all, increases your life satisfaction. [Source: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224540903365554] And when you are a happier person, you are a kinder person, so the benefits just keep coming.